Website Refresh, 2012 Edition

Site News19

As you might have gathered by now, SFN has a pretty different look since this morning. Poke around a bit and we’d love to hear your feedback.

New and Notable:

  • The UNC Scandal is highlighted on the homepage
  • Football and Basketball articles get highlighted on the homepage
  • You can now reply to people on the comments
  • Content hierarchy rebuilt for readability
  • Cleaned up a bunch of stuff

We’re working through a few issues as we speak. If you find a bug, let us know. If you’re missing features that used to be here, let us know and we’ll see about adding them back in.

As always, thanks to O3 for the stellar support they’ve given to SFN over the years.

Site News

19 Responses to Website Refresh, 2012 Edition

  1. gopack 08/28/2012 at 5:12 PM #

    Yes I love your new format. Moreover State Fan Nation is the first thing I read on my I pad each morning. Keep up the fantastic work.
    Bob

  2. TheAliasTroll 08/28/2012 at 5:29 PM #

    testing 1 2 3

  3. TheAliasTroll 08/28/2012 at 5:31 PM #

    i don’t like having to scroll all the way to bottom to read comments, not a huge deal, just inconvenient.

    liking the new look though

  4. tobaccordshow 08/28/2012 at 5:48 PM #

    I tend to agree that is’s an inconvenience. However, the comments section down here doesn’t compete for screen real estate with the sidebar down here allowing a much more robust view for comments and discussion.

  5. T. 08/28/2012 at 5:59 PM #

    I’m gonna be an outlier and say I’m not a huge fan of the new look — the structural layout’s fine, but not enough red IMO. Not into the bright-white-everywhere.

  6. Wufpacker 08/28/2012 at 6:03 PM #

    It appears this issue will not be as big a deal on “normal” entries. This particular entry is quite short, thus the gap. It’ll probably look more like the “Playing in a Dome” entry more often than not.

    EDIT – Forgot to say I love the ability to reply to specific comments without resorting to multiple ^’s (a system which a lot of folks don’t seem to get anyway).

  7. OG - RedTerrors 08/28/2012 at 6:05 PM #

    Took me a while to visually locate the forums link on the homepage…may want to make that more visually apparent in some way. I like the look overall…it’s very apple 😛

  8. ChemE79a 08/28/2012 at 6:36 PM #

    What I miss on the front page is the link to other blogs and news sites. My habit is just to come here and then click through if I want to see if Eagle in Atlanta has ever admitted that BC made a mistake in letting TOB go. Or if I want to check on other schools or sites. Now I actually have to make a little effort to get there.

  9. TOBtime 08/28/2012 at 7:05 PM #

    Nice job guys! Though there may be something I miss (haven’t found it yet) the overall job looks great.

  10. treznor 08/28/2012 at 8:02 PM #

    While threaded comments are nice and make things more readable at a point in time, they do lose the ability to find new comments to read. New comments are now interspersed with the original comment, so impossible to find comments you haven’t read previously.

  11. hellfishtat 08/28/2012 at 8:34 PM #

    I love it. Red, White, Black (and some grey)! Beautiful monochrome. Very classy.

    Is it Friday yet? Kinda has dual meanings this week eh?

  12. chilly water 08/28/2012 at 9:17 PM #

    Honestly its awful, the one before the last one was fine, why keep changing it?

    If it aint broke dont fix it, or else you’ll break it

  13. sundropdrinker13 08/28/2012 at 11:00 PM #

    I was gonna make a comment about the white as well. Too much of it, hurts the eyes.

  14. sundropdrinker13 08/28/2012 at 11:01 PM #

    Click on the comments button at the top. I did and it brought me down here.

  15. LifeLongWolf 08/29/2012 at 8:19 AM #

    Don’t like: Fonts and colors.

    Do like: Structure.

  16. StateFans 08/29/2012 at 9:10 AM #

    Very interesting observation — I just opened the new SFN side-by-side on my screens in both FireFox and Chrome. It clearly looks better in Firefox.

    The Firefox version is ‘tighter’ than the Chrome view. The font and view is smaller/tighter. The red looks a little darker. There is definitely a lot more color ‘contrast’ in Firefox than Chrome — for example, the grays that are used as backgrounds and headers/etc and much more prominent (and look better) in Firefox.

  17. Th3T1ck 08/29/2012 at 9:57 AM #

    There just isn’t enough contrast. Just too much white. It’s really hard for me to look at the site.

  18. wolfmans brother 08/29/2012 at 11:26 AM #

    Let me premise by saying SFN is my go to source for my daily wolfpack fix. I appreciate the hard work and longstanding commitment that has gone into this site over the years keeping it relevant, fresh, and a place for intelligent discussion about our common interests.

    That being said, put me in the camp that finds this new layout visually unappealing. IMO, not enough red. Too much white. The fonts look chintzy. And the design lacks (what Trump would call) the “class” of the last design.

    Overall I thought the prior format looked more refined. The red and white contrast on the banner just looked cool.

    Clearly picking nits here, but hey I’ve been around here a while. I guess I can…

    But seriously, thanks again to the admins. I’ll stop by daily regardless of what it looks like.

  19. gcpack 08/29/2012 at 3:17 PM #

    I agree with brother. Looks to stark and scrolling all the way for comments is unappealing.

    I never know why the techies continue to want to change things in ever facet of computing and internet functions. Like the thinking is “we better change this so it looks like we are doing something.”

    What was wrong with the way the site looked before? And the avators are gone. Some were funny.

    Oh well still like your coverage.

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