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Welcome to the New Uni Watch Website

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Good morning, and welcome to the first day of the new Uni Watch! As you can see, we’ve made some significant changes to the site — our first makeover in more than a decade.

The most obvious changes are cosmetic — new fonts, new layout, stuff like that. But our longtime web designer/developer, John Ekdahl, and I have also added lots of new formatting and functionalities that I’m really excited about. Allow me to walk you through the new landscape:

The Home Page

Instead of the long scroll of complete blog posts, we now have a more modern home page featuring at least one pinned post at the top and a listing of other recent posts below it. If you’re away from the site for a few days, this should make it much easier for you to catch up on what you’ve missed, and it should also allow newcomers to get a better sense of what Uni Watch is about.

If you scroll down below the list of recent posts, you’ll find the list of recent Tickers, because Tickers will now be their own separate posts. (More on that in a minute.) Right now there’s only one Ticker listed there — today’s. There will be more of them listed there as we move forward.

The Header Menu

The menu bar at the top of the home page is now “sticky.” Scroll down and you’ll see what I mean — it’s a big improvement!

Mobile

The site is now mobile-optimized and should look much, much better on smartphones and tablets.

Site Speed

As you click around the site, you should notice that it responds much, much faster than before. As the person who probably spends more time on the site than anyone else, I particularly appreciate this improvement!

The Publishing Schedule

Instead of doing one massive post each morning that includes the lede, multiple sub-ledes, the Ticker, and so on, I’m going to start breaking things up into separate posts. There will still be a daily lede each morning (my aim, as has always been the case, will be to get it published by 9am Eastern), and that lede may also include a few other small items, like “Too Good for the Ticker” or “What Paul Did Last Night.” But if I have a sub-lede that seems substantial enough to function on its own, I’ll publish it as its own post. The Ticker will also be its own post every day — usually published within an hour or so of the lede — and Collector’s Corner will be its own post each Tuesday. Certain occasional features, like Culinary Corner, will likely be separate posts as well. (Weekends may be the exception to this new rule, as I’m giving Phil the option of sticking with one long post per day if he prefers to do it that way. Stay tuned.)

Why are we making this change? Several reasons:

  • First and foremost, many of our posts are just too long. People tend not to consume internet content in such big gulps. It makes more sense to break things up a bit.
  • Second, sometimes there are two (or more) significant news stories on a given day. For example, last Monday MLB unveiled its All-Star jerseys and the Spurs unveiled a new throwback. Under our old format, the Spurs news got buried beneath the MLB news. That’s bad for our SEO, bad for site indexing, bad if I ever want to link back to the Spurs sub-lede (it’s doable, but cumbersome), bad for people who want to share my Spurs sub-lede on social media, bad for readers who care more about the Spurs news than about the All-Star news, and so on. It would have made more sense for the Spurs sub-lede to be a stand-alone post.
  • Third, sometimes I can knock out a sub-lede (like that Spurs item) fairly quickly, and then it sits around waiting for the next morning’s post. Under the new system, I can publish new blog entries whenever I want — in the afternoon, in the evening, whatever. This will help the site be more timely and, we hope, will also help spread out our site traffic throughout the day instead of having it all bunched up in the morning, which has long been the case.

Of course, there was nothing preventing me from doing multiple posts per day under the old site design — I simply chose not to. This new approach will be something of an experiment for me. Sticking to doing one post per day has helped me maintain a fairly dependable rhythm in my life, and I don’t want to feel like I suddenly have to scurry to write about breaking news within 30 minutes of it happening, or that I’m now “on call” 24/7 — that’s not healthy for me, and I think I also produce better work if I take more time to think about what I’m writing. But I recognize the potential advantages of breaking things up into separate posts, so I’m going to try it out and see how it goes. In fact, I already have a short post in the hopper that would normally have been a sub-lede today, but instead I’m going to post it later this morning. (Update: I have now published it.)

As it happens, today is going to be a busy day in the uni-verse: The Cavs are unveiling new uniforms, MLB’s Home Run Derby is tonight, and today may also be the day that the Bengals unveil the new white helmet that they’ve been teasing. Under our old format, all of those would be lumped together in tomorrow’s post; under our new format, they’ll be covered in separate posts, and maybe I’ll even get the Cavs and/or Bengals items published today. Or maybe not — considering how busy I’ll probably be today with the rollout of the new site, I may not have time for anything else. But at least I have the option. (Update: I’ve now published the Cavs piece.)

I realize many of you have your own dependable Uni Watch rhythms, whether it’s reading the site each morning over coffee, or during your lunch break at work, or whatever. You’ll still be able to do that — if you come to the site once a day, you’ll still see all the content that’s been posted in the previous 24 hours. You’ll just have to open a few separate tabs in order to read that content, instead of having it all in one post.

Lightboxed Photo Links

Obviously, we link to a lot of photos, especially in the Ticker, and I realize it can be a pain to have all those images opening in new tabs. So going forward, most of our photo links will open in a pop-up lightbox. To see what I mean, click here. Much better than seeing the image in a separate tab, right?

Because of the way some photo links are formatted on other sites, the lightbox functionality may not work for every single image link. In those instances, the photo will open in a new tab. (There’s also no lightbox for links to articles, tweets, and other non-image content, obviously.) But the lightbox should be a big improvement for most of our image links.

Photo Galleries

In the past, if I wanted to show you, say, six different photos of a new uniform, I had to embed all six photos in a row and you’d scroll through them. Now I have the option of doing this:

Fun, right? I’m not sure it’s actually better than the old way (it’s basically a question of scrolling vertically vs. scrolling horizontally), so I’ll probably use it sparingly. But I think it’ll come in handy now and again.

The Ticker

We’re making two big adjustments to the Ticker. First, as I mentioned above, each daily Ticker will now be a stand-alone post. My goal will be to get it posted by 10am Eastern, which should make my mornings a bit less frantic. (Editing the Ticker is usually the first thing I do when I wake up each morning, so now I’ll have a bit more time to do that, and/or maybe I’ll be able to sleep a little bit longer instead of getting up at 7am, because that task won’t be tethered to the lede anymore.) Today, however, I published the Ticker at the same time I published this entry you’re reading now, just so they’d both be available for you to see. You can see today’s Ticker here.

Second, we’re changing how the Ticker looks. I’ve always liked having the Ticker sections sequenced in the dot-dot-dot format, which I intended as a throwback to how old-school sportswriters would format small news tidbits in their columns. But I’ve grudgingly accepted the reality that this format is no longer practical in an era when so many people read Uni Watch on their phones, and when we have so much info jam-packed into the Ticker each day. So instead of having a series of dot-dot-dot paragraphs, which can be hard to read, we’ll now have a series of bulleted lists. We’ve also added several sub-categories within several of the sports. So the baseball section, for example, will now be broken up into MLB, MiLB, softball, and everything else, like this (this is a screen shot, so the links aren’t clickable):

This is what the new Ticker looks like. (And hey, we can now put captions on our photos and other images!)

Similarly, the football section will be broken up into NFL, college, CFL, and everything else; basketball will be NBA, WNBA, college, and everything else; and so on. We’ve also given a few more sports their own Ticker sections (including golf, auto racing, and a few others), so that the Grab Bag isn’t such a catchall. This should make it easier for you to find the news you’re most interested in while skipping over the stuff you don’t care about so much.

Uni Watch Plus

Starting soon-ish — probably around the start of September, when I return from my annual August break from the blog — we’re going to launch something called Uni Watch Plus, which will be sort of like Patreon, but without the Patreon interface. For a set subscription price (we haven’t yet decided on the amount, but I promise that you’ll be able to pay it without Facebook!), UW+ members will get the following benefits:

  • You will be able to read the blog without ads.
  • You will receive a checkout code for 25% off all our Teespring merchandise.
  • When posting a comment, you will have a special badge or avatar identifying you as a UW+ member.
  • You will have exclusive access to a new discussion forum, where you’ll be able to discuss uniforms, logos, and other topics with other UW+ members. (We’ll need a few moderators for the forum. If you’re interested in doing that — and especially if you have experience doing it on other discussion boards — let me know.)

Other benefits will likely be added as we go along.

Okay, I think that covers most of it! You probably have some questions. Allow me to anticipate some of them:

What about all the old posts?

They’re still there. All the old URLs still work, all the old content is still active. Most of the old posts look fine in the new site design; others look a bit glitchy or wonky, because certain bits of coding don’t translate as well to the new format — an unfortunate but unavoidable reality of site-wide redesigns.

Six months ago you paywalled your Bulletin articles. Now you’re gonna paywall the blog too?

No. Uni Watch Plus will be optional, not mandatory. You can keep reading the blog content for free, but you’ll have to deal with the ads on the site and won’t get the other UW+ benefits.

Obviously, though, we do hope lots of people sign up for UW+. As I’ve explained before, our traffic is steady, but ad revenue is down all over the internet, because advertisers are bidding less to have their banners run just about anywhere other than Facebook and Google. It’s a real problem, and it’s definitely not sustainable. We’re hoping the ad format on the redesigned site generates a bit more cash (if you scroll, you’ll see that some of the ads are “sticky,” which helps with revenue), but the reality is that we need support from the readership. Once we launch UW+, we hope you’ll consider joining.

If I subscribe to UW+, will that also give me access to your Bulletin articles?

No, those are separate subscriptions. But we may find a way to bundle them into a single purchase — stay tuned.

How will the UW+ discussion forum differ from the blog comments?

The blog comments tend to be about the specific post they’re responding to (and will probably be even more so now that I’m breaking up the big daily posts into separate posts). But on the forums, you’ll be able to talk about, well, just about anything. No need to stay on-topic — you can just start a new topic thread if you want!

Also, I’m hoping the forum will provide a chance for the Uni Watch comm-uni-ty to bond, get to know each other a bit better, and so on. Maybe there’ll be threads for regional or local users, or people with a particular sub-interest (typography, colors, cap collecting, whatever). Ideally, it’ll be easier to achieve that on a moderated forum of passionate Uni Watchers than it would be on, say, Facebook, where a couple of cranks and trolls can ruin the experience for everyone.

Also, while I’ll probably pop into the forum now and then, I won’t be monitoring the forum the way I oversee the blog comments. So you can criticize me, or criticize Uni Watch, or carry on about pretty much anything without having to worry about me saying, “Actually…” or “Let’s move on.” That doesn’t mean we’ll tolerate people getting abusive or troll-y, of course, but we’ll try to let the discussion be more freewheeling than the Uni Watch comments tend to be.

Is there a way to be notified when posts are published?

One way is to follow me on Twitter. But we may also be able to offer a feature where you can sign up for push notifications. John is looking into this — not sure how much it will cost us. If it isn’t expensive, and if enough people are interested, we’ll do it.

I like some of what you’ve done here, but I dislike some of it too.

That’s to be expected. Honestly, I’m still getting used to a lot of the changes myself. In general, though, I’m very pleased with the new setup, and I know from past experience that most people (myself included) tend to be more adaptable than they think they are, so I’m hoping we’ll all adjust to the new format without too much trouble (again, myself included).

That said, we’re definitely interested in hearing your feedback, so feel free to let us know what you think in today’s comments. I’ve also set up a dedicated email address — uwsitefeedback@gmail.com — in case you’d rather share your thoughts that way. I can’t guarantee that we’ll act on every suggestion or critique, but I promise that we’ll consider every bit of feedback we receive.

Are more changes coming?

Probably. The new site has been built in a way that should accommodate new features, new bells and whistles, and so on. So unlike the old site, which stayed more or less the same for years and years, the new site should be able to evolve.

———

Before I wrap this up, two last thoughts: First, while we’ve done our best to tie up all the loose ends, technical glitches are inevitable with an overhaul of this scale. Thanks in advance for your patience as we work out any bugs that pop up.

Finally, I want to give a giant thanks to Uni Watch web designer/developer John Ekdahl of Astroluxe Innovations. It was John’s idea, way back in 2006, to create this blog in the first place, so he’s been working with me for a long time (and as I’m sure he’d agree, I’m not always easy to work with!). John also built all the architecture for the Unified podcast last year and has helped me out with other projects over the years, but this site makeover is by far the biggest thing we’ve ever done together. Thanks, John — I’m excited about what we’ve achieved here, and about what still lies ahead.

 
  
 

ITEM! A New Raffle for the New Site

Reader Chris Hickey is celebrating the site’s relaunch by generously donating funds to cover the cost of a new membership card and a magnet. Isn’t that nice?

This will be a one-day raffle. No entry restrictions. To enter, send an email to the raffle in-box by 8pm Eastern tonight. I’ll announce the winner tomorrow.

Thanks again, Chris!

 

What Paul Did Last Night Over the Weekend

As I’ve mentioned a few times before, I love early Soviet graphic design, so for months I’ve been meaning to check out this exhibit of 1920s Soviet movie posters at the Poster House museum. Finally got around to it a few days ago, and it did not disappoint. Here’s some of what I saw (with apologies for the reflective glare on some of the shots):

Now that’s a good use of our new gallery feature!

Poster House also had some spectacular posters from the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. Check this out:

The rest of my weekend was devoted to getting ready for the site relaunch. However you spent your weekend, hope it was a good one!

Comments (139)

    Looks great, Paul. Excited to be the first commenter on the new site. Congrats!

    Which just goes to show that LESSER is more. Kudos, Matt.
    Agree, new look is great.

    Not trying to nit pick, just wanted to let you all know – for me, on Microsoft Edge, the top menu is not “sticking” as I scroll down. But either way, site looks great!

    Looks great! Last week wasn’t the same when I couldn’t access the site so emphasized how much Uni Watch is part of my daily reading. I just want to second the reply to your question: “If I subscribe to UW+, will that also give me access to your Bulletin articles?” I’d really hope a package deal could be put together (without a Facebook payment aspect).

    Just read the first post on my phone. The new format is definitely better on mobile than the old one.

    I agree! As someone who always reads UW on their phone first thing when they get up, this is a lot better.

    Agreed! So much better on mobile. I used to make a conscious choice — how much do I want to read UW right now on my phone, or should I wait till I’m at a desktop.

    This is a lot of big changes all at once–chapeau to you and the team for all the hard work and brainpower that went into the overhaul! Very excited for the new era of the site.

    I’m very excited for the new content strategy and redesign. I like what I’m hearing thus far.

    No URL field in the comments though? A couple of people I used to know caught back up with me by going to my web site. I prefer no to put my email in contact forms…

    Love it. Mobile version is so much better. Although I’ll be looking forward to a throwback day in the future when you post the old site’s version. (Just kidding)

    I’ve been holding off on subscribing to the Bulletin articles, but if they were bundled with UW+, I’d sign up for both.

    Awesome improvements. Any free, weirdly specific content like this is a gift and the community that has grown out of it is fantastic!

    I’d gotten into the habit on reading on my phone, so I very, very much appreciate the mobile-friendliness of the redesign!

    On balance, I like the changes, far more bad than good. And the things I don’t like as much (splitting off the ticker, to name one) is something I will adjust to, and I may well be in the minority. Looks nice too. I have always been one of those who reads it all at 8a, phone or desktop (depending on where I am that day), and I don’t mind long columns. I will adjust.
    One question – the UW+ subscription does not get you access to the Bulletin articles? Or vice versa? I don’t have Facebook and haven’t gotten around to looking into the alternative path (lot of things going on) but it would seem preferable to have one fee for extra access.
    Congrats!

    I would agree on the bundle idea! There’s not quite enough content on Bulletin or the proposed UW+ to get me to buy in, but both of those items bundled together would definitely be tough to pass up!

    I also wouldn’t be opposed to increasing the price of the membership card if it included a UW+ subscription (maybe a 3 month trial or a discounted full year price).

    Looking good, Paul! Still has the right feel and the new features don’t feel out of place at all. Kudos to John for the great work.

    Site looks and feels great! Nice job, team.

    I would definitely consider subscribing to UW Plus if it gave access to the Bulletin pieces, even a day or so after they’re published.

    Love the new redesign. Going to take some getting used to for the separate posts, but I think it will be great in the long run.

    One thing, as someone involved in training and creating user content, I noticed that you don’t have alt text for the photos. This isn’t an issue for me, but for those that may have sight issues or use screen readers it helps to make things more accessible to everyone. This website (link) has some great resources for web developers if you have never done this before. It is also easy (just right click on the image) to add the alt text in Word, Publisher, etc.

    The site looks fantastic & the changes all sound great to me. Great job Paul & team!

    As someone who rejoiced when the ticker went from one long list to being divided into sports, that feeling is doubled (if not more) for the new design. Congrats to all involved.

    I’m interested in a possible notification, optional of course, of new UW posts.

    MoMa had an exhibit on constructivist art a few years ago and had a ton of posters like that on display, but just not in the main building. I got a print of a poster for an old Soviet-era silent movie filmed in Ukraine, which they actually had playing in the theater. Love that stuff!

    Thanks for doing this! I love the new design. Maybe it’s just my browser (I always try to land on the side of user error first), but I don’t see the “sticky” header menu when I scroll down. I’ll try mobile and another browser and see if it’s on my end too.

    Congatulations, Paul, the site looks great! The gallery feature is really nice, I like the new font and it looks much cleaner and more organized this way. Very well done!

    I love the new format. Much better on my phone for sure. And I like the little icons for each sport on the ticker. Thanks for the improvements!

    Great new format and graphics Uni Watch team. Everything is working great! Kudos.

    One thought Paul – the name Uni Watch plus seems a bit corporate for you (Apple+ or Disney+). Perhaps something like Uni binge-Watching or binge Uni Watch?

    FYI, I’m not seeing the Ticker under the All Posts link. Not sure if the intention is to have All Posts include the Tickers or not (I suggest it does), but wanted to bring it up. Everything else looks good, though!

    This is a little confusing, and requires extra clicks (plus hovering over “Posts” in order to find the ticker link). Any possibility of including the tickers in with the posts?

    (Also, redesign looks great!)

    Seconded – the ticker is one of my favourite parts of the site and it’s gotten way harder to find. IMO it should be in-line as a daily post.

    I think the new format of posting will be great for us on the consuming end, and all the cosmetic changes seem great. The only thing I was worried about was that links wouldn’t open in new tabs, but it seems like we’re good. It’s a pet peeve of mine when a link replaces the page I was on and I have to go back. Uni Watch has always been on my good side for that. Cheers to a new era!

    I do like that you can now just press “ESC” to close a picture.

    But if you want the old way you can center mouse click to open pictures in a new tab.

    Paul, I love, freaking LOVE the lightboxed photo links tweak! I like all the improvements that you’ve made, but I wanted to highlight that one particularly. I look forward to signing up for UW+ as well!

    Great work on the new format and design. Will certainly take a little getting used to the multiple posts per day. But I think in general it makes sense for the reasons you described. Just a thought (and maybe you already mentioned this and I missed it) if posts are essentially going to be individual by topic, have you considered some sort of indexing or sort option that automatically directs to a subject matter?
    Which is to say you somehow classify each post from a list of a few options, thinking each of the pro sports, major collegiate sports, other collegiate, other amateur, food, movies, music, non-sports uniforms, etc.?
    Thinking that if there are going to be multiple posts per day, it creates the opportunity to potentially miss something as a reader. And depending on the reader, interests vary, and perhaps the new formats lends it so readers can come on an irregular basis, sort by their interests, and make sure they get all the topics they like.

    Congrats on the new site Paul! It’s never easy to make these type of changes, especially when most people are change-adverse. Excited by the parts I instantly love and am equally excited by the prospect of learning to love the parts that change my routine a bit.

    Site looks great on mobile! The post and ticker didn’t show up in my RSS reader. I’ll keep an eye out, but does the new site provide/support an RSS feed?

    Not that I could find at the moment, but sounds like Paul (and John) might be working on it. I just did the trick of adding “rss” or “feed” to the end of the URLs with posts. Looks like uni-watch.com/feed (at the moment) also only has the content posts and not the tickers.

    Thanks for posting the links in your comment, Kevin. I was looking for exactly that, because now that posts may arrive throughout the day I don’t want to miss anything.

    The new design looks terrific and I like the idea of breaking out the longer items into separate posts. I think it will help both in daily reading and also going back to try to find something after the fact.

    Thanks so much, Kevin! I use Feedly as well and I’m glad to see the feeds are now up and running. Thanks for providing the links.

    I want to reserve all judgment until a week or two in the new redesign. I especially need to see how I handle multiple posts in a day. But my first instinct is so far so good, I like what I see visually and I think I’ll like this new experience too!

    I think most people hate redesigns at first — I know I do — but this one looks really sharp. Nice work, Paul and John.

    Looks great! I especially enjoy the sport and subject filters on the mobile menu. Are they somewhere less obvious on the full site?

    Paul, this looks good and works well! A huge upgrade. Enjoy the Ticker updates and new plans ahead. I will contribute what I can to make sure we have a “CFL” section in the Ticker a bunch this summer and fall!

    So far, so good, especially on mobile, where everything actually looks properly sized and formatted, and the comments are actually usable!

    Big day for UniWatch! Congrats on the launch! I have yet to come up with the uni-world equivalent, but it’s massive.

    Q: Are the photo galleries supposed to be scrollable without clicking on them? If so, they aren’t (mobile iPhone iOS 15.5). The work great once you click on them, just took me a minute as they appear as if they should scroll left/right either via swipe or via the scroll arrows.

    Looks great so far!! Only two things I’m noticing that I don’t love: on my (admittedly old) LED monitor, the main body font of the articles is a little light-colored and hard to read- kinda looks gray, and the thin parts of the letters basically disappear. I don’t have that problem on mobile so maybe I just need to increase the font size.

    Also, I would definitely be interested in a bundled offer for bulletin and UW+… but I definitely wouldn’t pay for them separately. That’s just my take on it. I’m not sure how everyone else feels about it.

    Also, the second I opened it on mobile the first thing I saw was a picture of a big ole fungus toenail- it’s one of those gross-out ads you see all over the internet. I know that’s not your choice, which ads get served, but man that was not what I was expecting to see first thing this morning.

    At the top of the comments today I received an ad for…well it was NSFW. Thankfully I’m on my phone (where the site looks great BTW) so the boss doesn’t know.

    I have the same issue with the font being too light and hard to read (and my monitor is new). It’s a very nice font, but seeing “how it looks on the field”, it would strain my eyes a little less if it were a bit darker/heavier.

    Love this redesign. I particularly appreciate the easier ability to find older posts.

    On a uni-topic, did anyone else watch the MLB Futures Game? I caught a few innings and noticed a couple of uni-oddities, besides the comical harlequin-style jerseys for both teams:

    1. American League manager Jimmy Rollins wore a Phillies cap — not an AL team!
    2. Some players wore the caps of their parent club, but others wore the caps of their Minor League team.
    3. Edwin Jackson was the pitching coach for the American League team. He could have worn any number of caps, but wore the Dodgers. Another NL cap on the AL staff!

    The harlequin/pied look is something that looks good in my sketchbook; loses something in the translation to reality.

    Looking forward to this! I hope you did a lot of behind the scenes programing that would give you good analytics to use to improve the site. I am in for the enhanced offerings. Thank you to you, Phil and your team for all you do!

    Paul, the site looks great, Uni Watch has been part of my morning routine for as long as the site has been around – can’t wait to cozy up with the new format!

    Also: I seem to remember a few years back, when you were still with ESPN, you wrote something in a Q&A expressing you felt you were closer to the end of Uni Watch than the beginning. Which I took to mean you expected to wrap things up in a few years, or possibly hand over the keys and let someone new drive the ship. That you just redesigned the site, and continue to find new forums for your writing makes it obvious you’re not actually feeling close to the end anymore (or else I just misremembered you writing that!). Anyways, I couldn’t be happier that you’re still around, persisting in the face of numerous challenges (not just to the site, but to web journalism as a whole), and keep finding new ways to engage readers. Kudos to you, and cheers to the continued success of Uni Watch – I look forward to supporting your writing in whatever format it comes!

    New site looks great! Changes all look really good and make sense. Looking forward to additional posts as new Uni-related news happens throughout the day, even if it isn’t in a “breaking news” format/timeline. Actually looking forward to UW+, I always struggled with what to make my membership card design, so I never could make a choice. I’ll be happy to support Uni-Watch more consistently! If a “Dark Mode” isn’t already in the works, that might be a nice option for the new site.
    Thanks again for everything that Uni-Watch does!

    Love the new site, especially the expanded ticker! One question though, it appears the photo galleries don’t let me scroll on my iPhone, are they working for everyone else?

    I think they’re an improvement over their previous set, which was seemed to get messier and messier each season. I wish the black set was navy blue, but I don’t think Cleveland is leaving black behind anytime soon.

    Looks great! I will miss having everything in one post for convenience, but will gladly trade that for better mobile functionalities and those photo features (and more sleep for you of course). Kudos!

    Love the new look and format. Looking great as I scroll on my phone. Cheers Paul!

    Everything looks great! Always exciting to see you make great changes and improvements over the years. Mazel tov!

    I love the new look! Will you be building RSS feeds to automatically pull new posts and tickers into a reader?

    The new site looks great, and breaking out the Ticker and other major stories into separate posts is just fine as far as I’m concerned. The long scroll was manageable but certainly not ideal.

    Re: ad-free content

    I’ve actually appreciated certain past advertisers who align with the Uni-world. I wonder how can we still learn about them if we go UW+?

    After clicking around a bit, the first thing I might offer as a suggestion… On the Header Menu, you have a “Posts” drop down. The two choices are “All Posts” and “Tickers”.
    May I suggest a third?
    “Feed”. Or something similar, so that when I click it, I get all posts + tickers in a chronological order?
    I view your site from a laptop, and if you took my suggestion, I’d make “Feed” my bookmark.

    Thanks
    Lee

    PS – Not sure I love comments being under (potentially) 2 or 3 or 4 separate posts, but will reserve judgment for now, and give myself time to process.

    Oh, and maybe if the UW+ thing happens, allow commentators receive a notification (optional of course) if their Post/Ticker comments gets a reply? (Not just their forum comments)

    Lee

    And for those that sign up for UW+, they get an icon that features their Membership Card.

    Lee

    And in the list of Posts or Tckers, perhaps next to the date, include the number of comments. That way we can see from there what posts have new, more or many comments that we may not have seen.
    Like what you do now at the tops of the comments.

    Lee

    Nicely done Paul and the UW team. Looks great.

    Put one more in the column of requesting the bundle of UW+ and the Bulletin.

    Idea for an article (as it seemed to come up as a topic during The Open over the weekend). The return (revenge?) of the Mullet!

    Something I should have noticed before (maybe it was discussed), but didn’t until today:
    When did the W in Uni Watch lose its’ flourishes?
    The script on the T shirts/mugs has them…but they’re absent on the bats and new website header.
    I sorta miss the burgundy accents, too.

    Nice spot re: W flourishes. I hadn’t noticed either and would love to learn more.

    I never liked the old W. The flourishes made it look like the W was shrugging its shoulders and saying, “I dunno, don’t look at me!”, like this: link

    Paul and crew, love the new site on desktop and mobile. I wasn’t sure about splitting content over (potentially) the whole day, but I realized that I come back to Uni Watch a couple of times a day just out of habit and it’s exciting to find new content waiting. A push notification system would be great for fear of missing something, but I understand it could be too complicated and/or costly. The old layout had a “rustic” feel to it that I really liked, what with the long posts and ticker, but I’m already enjoying the new. Congrats!

    The site looks great! It’s obvious that this is the result of considerable thought & effort. Even beneficial upgrades to websites are typically jarring for the first few days, but this one feels like a natural, intuitive progression. Great job by all who contributed.

    A+ redesign, Paul. From top to bottom, I personally like every choice you’ve made. And love how it looks and how I’m able to navigate.

    Still don’t fully like the Bulletin paywall (it’s too expensive for just one content creator!)

    But the new site is wonderful. Great job to everyone that pitched in.

    I’m VERY change-averse, so it’s too be expected that I’ll be a bit disgruntled with all this. And, yet…I’m very much NOT. I think splitting off the ticker is a great idea, and I like the idea that there could be multiple ledes during the day if news warrants. Everything looks good and so far I like the way everything works. About the only suggestion I have, and I’m not even sure about this, is maybe have the ticker posts mixed in with the ledes so it’s easier to keep track of what one has or hasn’t read. Just a thought. Overall, though, very well done.

    Love the new look, Paul (and John)! I missed the message last week that the site would undergo a redesign, so when I came by on Friday, I got a jolt. But it was worth the surprise and the wait!

    I also noted that the “under construction” sign this weekend was very purple.

    ;)

    Getting used to the new format. Since I never use my phone to read uniwatch, some of the changes just don’t feel right yet, but I’m sure that since I am addicted to this site, I am sure I will get used to them. One thing though…Could you include the ticker in the list of “posts” when you 1st come to the site? As that is my “must read” section, to me, it would be preferable to click on the ticker link from right there instead of clicking on the posts drop down to find the tickers and then click of todays ticker. It also would bunch all the things for the day together. Just a suggestion.

    Really looking forward to the premium option. I was happy to pay when you announced a subscription model a few years ago, and the ads are getting to me a BIT much….

    Love the new look and the rationale behind all the changes.

    One thing that might be of interest – my Feedly only just loaded this post within the last 20 minutes, rather than in the morning when it was posted, and then also loaded the Mets/Cubs piece and the Cavs piece a few minutes later. It hasn’t loaded today’s Ticker post at all, presumably because I’ll need a different feed for that since it isn’t included under “All Posts”.

    The redesign is fabulous. Idid like the old one as well, but this is clean and an upgrade overall. I’m excited to see UW+, I’m one of those anti-Meta people who refuses to even visit Bulletin but really wants to chip in for costs in general. Happy to hear it’s coming!

    New site looks good, and without seeing them in action I think the changes are a great move for multiple reasons.

    It’s unfortunate that more premium tiers need to exist (particularly for the big season previews) and I find them personally disappointing but I understand why it’s happening and I’m not offended by it. I’ll keep reading.

    It’s not like those of us interested in this kind of stuff are capable of stopping, anyway.

    Like the site. And the Soviet artwork. I haven’t checked in for a while, always good stuff. Glad things look to be going well.

    OH MY THIS IS GREAT.

    I love the new design.
    I love the new image viewer.
    I love the separating the posts from tickers.
    I love having multiple posts.
    I LOVE THE TICKER HAVING BULLETS!

    I want to repeat that last one. I LOVE THE TICKER HAVING BULLETS! It was so incredibly hard to scan the ticker for what I was interested in, so much that I started copy pasting it and replacing the dots with bullets so I could read it.

    Thank you for this, and I will look forward to signing up for UW+!

    New design is good
    Way too much whitespace is bad
    Feature request: Recent posts should have a date. I can’t remember what I’ve read sometimes

    Overall, it will taking some getting used to. I liked having it all in one post every day.

    Paul, after a couple days of seeing how this would all play out…

    I’ve got to say, this redesign is a home run. Great work by you and Mr. Ekdahl!

    Paul – I just had a chance to review the changes to the site, and my initial reaction is very positive. Seems to when someone with a web presence decides to undertake a redesign, it ends up being change for change’s sake (CFCS?). I didn’t think the site needed an overhaul, but the end result does seem more user-friendly, easier to navigate and, well, more uni-fied. Mostly I’m glad to hear that all content is still archived. The ability to go back in time through earlier posts is a feature I have always liked.

    Nice job, John and Paul!

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