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Sep 12 / Dave Nemetz

New League and Team Page Design

Bleacher Creatures have probably already noticed, but we’ve launched a new design for all league, team, player, and subject pages. The new design features way more articles than the previous one, and also does a better job of dividing the articles into categories to make it easier to find what you’re looking for.

We’ve also made the right column of the new design all about the community that drives that page. Right now you’ll see stats on how many people are in the community as well as a selection of the members. The right column is also where Community Leaders in each community will be listed. Clicking “Join Now” in the Community Column adds that tag to your Lineup and makes you a member of that community so you can get updates and participate in all current and future community-specific features.

We’re working on more updates to the site for later this fall that will continue to improve the B/R experience. As always, any and all feedback is appreciated, so feel free to comment below with your thoughts.

Comments are closed.

Filed under Community, New Features
  • http://www.heavywritesthepen.com/ Angel Navedo

    I like it a lot. But I think some different colors, font-styles and font-sizes may be in order. The smaller text size doesn’t offer the articles as much prominence as the flashing “Featured Stories” display. I think newer articles may end up overlooked.

    Maybe putting the flashing articles in a colored frame could help? Something specific to the colors of the team section, if possible?

    I’d also say that the right sidebar could be re-adjusted a little. I have no business telling you guys what to do with your advertisers, but if the focus is going to be on the community, the square advert pushes those blocks off the screen. I run on the 1280 x 1024 resolution, so I can only imagine what people at smaller resolutions are dealing with.

  • http://bleacherreport.com/users/4105-Joe-Willett Joe W.

    I like the new format, more articles getting shown means easier for writers to get prominence.

  • http://bleacherreport.com/users/17335-Shyam-Parthasarathi Shyam

    Nice work guys, but I have a slight concern – like Angel above, I feel that new articles may be overlooked purely because of the featured stories system.

    Also, the sectional break-down is awesome, but the only issue is that the font-sizes are a bit too small, and yes the colours too similar.. if you get this fixed – I think BR is going to look superb.

    Great work on the Community frame as well!

  • Thomas Leemon

    Hey,

    I love the new layout. It’s pretty sweet looking. Keep up the good work.

  • http://bleacherreport.com/users/10055-Craig_Garrison_Sr Craig Garrison Sr

    Very good work, I will echo the concerns from Angel and others. I like the new box with “newest articles”, a MUCH NEEDED feature.

    The formatting of the text is an issue though, bordering may help, with a heading perhaps, and I would suggest that since you already have top writers of the “community” in the center of the page, that the additional box of “members” be moved to the bottom of the right column, with the “community leaders” box back on top of the “top writers” box. Also, in regard to the main page, shouldn’t there be an “FRONT PAGE” for each upper level category? For instance, “NFL” has all the conference and team pages under it, but not all NFL articles are team or conference specific. So article without specific team or conference tags get lost. This is also true of all the other main category pages, including the front page “Sports” category, I know there is the “multiple sport” tag, but that doesn’t really always fit either. Just a few thoughts.

    Nice work though! Like the continued efforts to improve b/r, thanks guys.

  • http://http:cfbplace.com Mitch

    Great, now after all of that hard work to get my articles viewed I’m buried again….

    Thanks for the 11 reads today.

    Mitch

  • http://http:cfbplace.com miamimitchdotcom

    Great, now after all of that hard work to get my articles viewed I’m buried again….

    Thanks for the 11 reads today.

    Mitch

  • Tyler hill

    I don’t like it, it was fine the old way. Why change it, I hate change for the sake of change.

  • Sean Crowe

    Anything that gets more articles on the main pages is a good thing. Looks fantastic!

    Nice job!

  • Naveen Maliakkal

    I think the new setup is a great upgrade to the site. It’s important that B/R exposes as many articles as possible. This is one step further in strengthening the voice of the fan.

  • Dave Nemetz

    Thanks for all the great feedback, guys! We’ll keep it in mind as we continue to make upgrades to the site.

  • http://www.heavywritesthepen.com/ Angel Navedo

    Not to continue nitpicking, because I see you guys have been hard at work with optimizing the new look, but I do believe the Community Leader box should be above the members box. Arrogance aside, it might allow more views for the messages we leave to the members.

  • http://http:cfbplace.com miamimitchdotcom

    maybe if you could click on the different categories with the page but actually this format allows less articles and is more restrictive, at least in college football where you at least used to have the conferences.

    If you want more people to get more exposure here are a few suggestions, take then or leave them:

    1)Allow on 1 post per person per 24 time period, this will bring quality over quantity and while it may exclude some from being all over a hot story my guess is it will work both ways over time and it will also make people think twice before posting drivel.

    2) Allow a story to only be “featured” once within a section. For example, if you are a top 5 writer you get your story exposed there as your icon with your latest headline. It can then get featured as part of the top articles for the day in the section (no surprise because everyone elses work/exposure has been severely compromised by the new layout so these get the bulk of the reads. Then it gets a spot in the category so it’s on the page 3 times and in some cases more while others get nothing. I mean I’m a top 20 writer in college football and i get less than 250 reads a day now when I used to get 1000′s. I earned that spot, it wasn’t given to me.

    3) what this has produced is what can be called shameless self promotion. Look at yours, mine or anyone else’s note thing on your profile. it’s loaded with “hey check this out” hey I wrote this”, people are doing this more than ever because there articles aren’t getting read in the new system.

    4) A suggestion, go back to conferences but allow writers to only be a featured writer where it shows their picture in one place, they can still be ranked in that area. for example, if you are a top 5 writer in college football then you wouldn’t be featured as a top 5 SEC writer, if you were top 5 SEC you wouldn’t be a top 5 ACC (at least not pictured though if someone clicked on the actual rankings it would show your place). This could be prioritized by putting the writer in the area he qualifies for that gets the most traffic. My guess it goes SEC then Big Ten, Big 12, ACC, Independent and big east or something like that..

    Not sure if this stuff makes sense but the new layout hasn’t been a good thing. I know you guys try and care like crazy about this stuff and we all appreciate it but this may have been a miss.

    Mitch

  • Ryan Lynch

    Things certainly look much nicer and sleaker, but for writers who are just beginning/don’t write often, it’s terribly hard for us to get our articles seen. It’s really frustrating, actually, because I’ve written a few pieces that I thought would start significant debate that barely get any reads. Isn’t there some better way to show more articles as they are just written??

  • Steve Frith

    Everything looks nice…streamlined and all that jazz………but have you noticed how things might have slowed down just a bit in certain areas since doing away with the team play by play function? The Patriots area has slowed considerably since the team play by play function was removed. It went from several comments per day to maybe one or two comments per day. It’s harder to track what’s going on in the team sections now since the play by play (for teams) was removed. Hint, hint…..