Discussion of CelticsBlog Upgrades

[JSD]

My head hurt.

I'll circumvent the main page by googleing 'celticsblog forum' for a bit. But I'll get used to it

[Celtic]

I am a web designer and am not crazy about the redesign at all, the old site was probably due for an upgrade but I think this is a bit too much. Rather than griping about everything I hate, I have a few suggestions that perhaps someone at SBNation will read.

1. As many have said, the pictures up top are simply way too big. The pictures aren't the story, they are there to supplement the story, to use a publishing term "you're burying your lead." A one blurb tagline such as "Brandon Bass > Josh Smith" really isn't enough context to merit clicking, once inside said article, the formatting is a bit of a mess.

2. There needs to be more structure to the page, people are creatures of habit so a perpetually alterable format may not be such a great thing. As some have said there is a lot of dead space on the page, I'm sure that has to do with a non static format. In the end it makes the page difficult to follow, it comes across as scattered.

3. Right now the site requires too much vertical scrolling. SBNation likes to utilize different features like "Fanshots" and "Fanposts", I for one have never used these (we have the forums here) but why have them if they are so far down the page, they become an afterthought and just add clutter.

4. The information (which is what we all come here for) is simply too hard to find. It's hard to tell what's new, what's a breaking story, what I've read already, where polls, tweets, etc. are. Overall there probably should just be less of it. Ironically the archive page (http://www.celticsblog.com/archives) is easier to use and follow.


I understand that this redesign wasn't done on the fly, and there are some good things in it, but it definitely doesn't seem finished. Many times when you design something, since you know exactly how it works and where things are, you lose sight of wether it is really usable or not, it's happened to every web designer at least once. As it is right now Celticsblog is very difficult to navigate, especially, for those that are used to having the information they are here for, easily displayed. Perhaps panel testing was done but the core users of Celticsblog are the biggest marker, and if it's difficult to use then the design needs more work.

[Roy H.]

If you guys want to give feedback to the SBN team, here might be a good place to start:

http://www.sbnation.com/2012/9/25/3394410/welcome-to-the-new-sb-nation

I'd recommend being specific and constructive if there's anything you'd like to share.

[Rondo2287]

I don't like that Internet explorer isnt supported.  My work comp won't let me download new software so im basically stuck looking at weird stuff on the homepage

[Interceptor]

Maybe this is too cynical of me, but I feel like the advertisers are the customers, and my eyeballs are the product being sold. I mean, I don't pay SBN anything.

With all of that said, I'm fully aware that some of you will never get used to it and will always dislike the format.  For that I'm truly sorry and I don't know what to tell you other than to promise that I'll keep trying to improve my writing and I'll keep trying to manage the blog to the best of my ability so that you will continue to come to the blog in spite of the format you may not like.

Well, I'll keep visiting the front page as long as you keep making funny captions for pictures. But I wish that they'd get rid of all that useless wasted space. The whitespace is particularly galling.

[kozlodoev]

It is designed to be more mobile friendly and I'm fully on board with that as well.  We're becoming more mobile as a society and accessibility is key.

Except it's not more mobile friendly.

The old m.celticsblog.com version was mobile friendly -- just the headlines, neatly resizing to the screen of your phone.

It boggles my mind how a huge blob of pictures, which require both horizontal and vertical scrolling, can be called mobile friendly -- the site is currently virtually unreadable on my smartphone, and  I have a pretty average Samsung Captivate. All I can see on the screen at a time is about 25% of one picture.

So while I'm sure that there was a reason for the redesign, citing mobile friendliness is eyebrow-raising to say the least. For a true mobile friendly site, check out something like m.weei.com.

I understand that SBN is in this to make money. But if the strategy is setting up artificial hoops to force more clicks, that's really unfortunate.

[Interceptor]

It boggles my mind how a huge blob of pictures, which require both horizontal and vertical scrolling, can be called mobile friendly -- the site is currently virtually unreadable on my smartphone, and  I have a pretty average Samsung Captivate. All I can see on the screen at a time is about 25% of one picture.

This might be platform-specific. Nobody is going to accuse me of being in favor of the new change, but I think the site looks OK on my iPhone running the latest iOS 6 version of Safari. In fact, I think it looks better than it does in my web browser, which is a little depressing.

The one complaint I have about the mobile site is that it is so...heavy... Takes forever to load, and very slow over 3G. My data usage will go through the roof.

[kozlodoev]

It boggles my mind how a huge blob of pictures, which require both horizontal and vertical scrolling, can be called mobile friendly -- the site is currently virtually unreadable on my smartphone, and  I have a pretty average Samsung Captivate. All I can see on the screen at a time is about 25% of one picture.

This might be platform-specific. Nobody is going to accuse me of being in favor of the new change, but I think the site looks OK on my iPhone running the latest iOS 6 version of Safari. In fact, I think it looks better than it does in my web browser, which is a little depressing.

The one complaint I have about the mobile site is that it is so...heavy... Takes forever to load, and very slow over 3G. My data usage will go through the roof.

The site does not autoresize horizontally, and is traffic-intensive because of all the graphics. Both of these are platform-independent features.

If someone considers this "mobile-friendly", they have no clue what they're talking about.

[Jeff]

thanks for your opinion kozlodoev

I love it on my mobile device and find it very mobile friendly

cheers

[kozlodoev]

thanks for your opinion kozlodoev

I love it on my mobile device and find it very mobile friendly

cheers

I hope this didn't come across as disrespectful. I am just kind of sensitive when people take a good thing and mess with it (call me a status quo guy), and we had a good thing here for a very long whil (for which, of course, the credit is mostly yours).

I can rant a lot more on blogs, crowd-sourcing, and cashing in, but I fear it may be off-topic in this thread.

[Rondo2287]

I understand why SBNation wanted to do this and i really blame them not anybody associated with CB.  I come to this site for the forums anyways and usually spent little to no time on the front page.  Now I have just set up a bookmark for the forums and bypass it all together.

The other SBNation site I visit, BCInterruption, does not have forums and I have already seen my visits there drop by probably 50% because the site is unreadable.

[Alessandro]

The daily links really suffer under the new format, in my opinion ... It's just a bunch of text all bunched together, with no real spacing in between to distinguish where one link ends and another begins.

Perhaps this comes across better on a mobile device, but looking at a plain old computer monitor does a number on the eyes (again, IMO).

[Jeff]

just a note: do feel free to submit suggestions to support@sbnation.com

here's a list of fixes/tweaks they've already implemented due to feedback

- We tweaked the brightness/contrast on the green for rec'd comments and the yellow on new comments so that they would be easier to distinguish.
- We adjusted the size of the fonts and the line spacing
- We adjusted the padding on the comments

and here are some other comments that they are working on but haven't released yet

- Improving load times
- Streamlining the mobile experience
- Improving the experience in IE 8
- Tightening up layout of articles so that comments are closer to content
- Overall individual site navigation issues
- Lots and lots of other bugs and tweaks

[j804]

just a note: do feel free to submit suggestions to support@sbnation.com

here's a list of fixes/tweaks they've already implemented due to feedback

- We tweaked the brightness/contrast on the green for rec'd comments and the yellow on new comments so that they would be easier to distinguish.
- We adjusted the size of the fonts and the line spacing
- We adjusted the padding on the comments

and here are some other comments that they are working on but haven't released yet

- Improving load times
- Streamlining the mobile experience
- Improving the experience in IE 8
- Tightening up layout of articles so that comments are closer to content
- Overall individual site navigation issues
- Lots and lots of other bugs and tweaks

Will mobile browsing be coming to the forums or just the front page?

[Jeff]

the forums are a separate project, but you can try this to see if you like it better for the forums

http://forums.celticsblog.com/index.php?imode