I’ve been a member and reader of BBI for over 15 years and its webmaster and programmer for nearly six. If there’s one thing that I know that BBIers don’t like, it’s change. In fact, one of my main objectives when I took over this gig was to change as little as possible.
Well, here it is, change. I’d like to talk a little bit about the the reasons for the change and what it’s going to mean to you, now and down the road.
First, from a technical standpoint, the update was well overdue. The template on which the 2007 design of the BBI front page was based hasn’t been updated in over four years. This really limited our ability to use the latest features of WordPress, the software that runs this site’s back end, and made staying up to date with the latest security patches a bit of an adventure. Not to mention that I worried someone would find a security hole in that old code and I would wake up one day to find BBI serving up trojans and malware from some place deep behind the former iron curtain.
From a design standpoint, the look of 2007 BBI could be most charitably described as “dated”. In my opinion, the new design preserves some of the funky, old school vibe that is BBI’s hallmark with a slicker, more modern layout.
But maybe the most important reason for the change is content. Except for the News & Notes posts, most of BBI’s great content was buried two or three clicks deep in the bowels of the page structure. Even on Mondays after game days, the percentage of front page viewers who would bother to click though for a game review or other article was shockingly low. In the past few weeks we’ve tried to remedy this by posting content directly on the front page. But this was a half measure at best. The new design brings the content bubbling up to the front where people can see it.
I’ll have a new post up later in the day explaining the layout, the new content sections and how everything works. Right now it’s three in the morning and the bed is calling to me. If you have a question about the new design, e-mail me at webguy (at) bigblueinteractive.com and I’ll answer either by e-mail or in my next post.
Goodnight all.
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Gary Weiner
Gary Weiner, aka Gary from The East End, is the head programmer and tech guru here at BBI. He rewrote the code for the entire Corner Forum from scratch as well as the blog software for The Front Page. If something isn’t working right, it’s probably his fault. Feel free to bug him at [email protected] with any problems, bug reports, or complaints about the mechanical operation of the site. Gary is the owner of Arribus Web Development since 1997, and has serviced such prestigious clients as: Giants Hall of Famer Harry Carson, top Long Island ad agency Austin & Williams, and Habitat for Humanity of Suffolk County. If you are interested in using Arribus’s services, please contact him directly at [email protected].
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