Welcome to the new Sox Machine (updated)
Update (8-18-2010): If the changes I made are correct, this should now be the front page of SoxMachine.com, and all previous links should redirect here without a problem.
Please let me know if you encounter any issues, whether commenting, viewing old links or seeing stories in your RSS feed. Thanks to Alan for the major assistance.
I, and you by natural extension, have reached the intermediate stage of the much-needed redesign of Sox Machine.
What you see here will eventually become main page of Sox Machine (https://soxmachine.com, not https://soxmachine.com/soxmachine), hopefully by next week, once I figure out the smoothest, most effective way to redirect it.
If you weren’t around last year, I threw this site up in a hurry after my old one spit the bit. So it’s been a mishmash of ideas that I’ve been tweaking, and I finally committed to using a couple of weeks to redraw the whole thing.
The main goal is to put the most popular stuff in front and make the whole site less daunting to navigate. I believe by the end, I will have accomplished that. Some goals I have in mind:
No. 1: A genuine mainland.
I’m pretty sure everybody here considers the Sox Machine blog the big attraction, and State of the Sox more of an academic offshoot. The numbers say that anyway, so instead of giving them equal weight on the home page, I’m placing a much greater emphasis on what people pay attention to the most.
State of the Sox will still exist (and I’ll write those first), but those will feed onto the main page on an RSS feed in the middle column. This reduces the number of looks from three to two, which I think has been necessary for a while.
No. 2: A cleaner look.
The discussions below each post are easier to follow with increased width and less obtrusive divisions.
No. 3: Breaking off the minor league roundups.
I feel the individual posts can be daunting by themselves. I write long enough as it is, and then there’s a big chunk of numbers and bullet points at the bottom.
So instead of weighing down the bottom of every post, I’m turning the minor league roundup into separate posts. Don’t worry — they’ll still be written daily, but I think devoting an entire category to roundups will make it easier to browse past performances. I’m also going to write a brief paragraph highlighting the day’s best to make it easier to find box scores.
The same thing may also happen to the Christian Marrero Reading Room as a midday feature, though I’m not decided on that yet.
No. 4: More flexibility to give posts proper weight.
The new front page will allow me to use the biggest real estate for the most active discussions, while getting less important notes out there in various ways.
Give it a spin and let me know of any ways I could improve it. I’m hoping “go back to the old look” isn’t a popular one.
I also like what you’ve done with the new look Mark Teahen, aside from that can’t-see-the-ball-in-the-outfield thing.
He was only doing that to boost Rios’ flagging UZR.
Boss redesign. Real game changer.
Back to the news at hand, all Marks were on point last night! Friday 13, baby; bark at the moon
You gonna put pics, pshops & captions in the posts? Get my updates via RSS, but those were my incentive to hit up the home page
Yup. Probably won’t need the captions on the front page, but this should recapture the big picture part of the front page, while making other posts/features more visible, too.
Jim, this site keeps getting better & better. Massive Kudos!!
>>I’m pretty sure everybody here considers the Sox Machine blog the big attraction, and State of the Sox more of an academic offshoot<<
I didn't even know SOTS existed until today.
Yeah, Jim, I’d been reading your blog for quite a while before I realized that SOTS existed (probably because people find the site through links to the blog). Lately I’ve noticed that you’re linking to the game recaps in your blog entries, and I think that combined with their place on the main page will work nicely.
This new redesign shows a lot of guts and gumption, Jim. You’re a real gamer.
Looks great, but is there a way to go from one post to the previous or next post?
How did you do it before, using the small links at the top of each post? I can see if I can restore that (I believe the same code will work), as I have some work to do on the individual post page.
Or did you do it another way?
You should see previous and next post navigation at the top of individual posts now.
The signup page now works. Sorry for anybody who encountered a loop.
My Entries & Comments RSS feeds went dead. And the above links still point to old & busted, apparently.
Duly noted. They now point to new & busted. The feed is valid, but they’re not going to any RSS readers, so I’m stumped at this point. I’ll have to do some digging, and will let you know when it’s resolved.
OK, they’re now appearing in my Google Reader. Still trying to pin down the exact reason why they stopped loading, so let me know 1) if you’re seeing them, and 2) if you stop seeing them.
The feeds are gold, Jim! Gold!
I think it would be benificial if all pages had a link to “Der Twain urn Heaven” on SSS, for spiritual uplifting.
Sorry, Jim, but the redesign is inconvenient for readers, especially if we’ve been away for a few days — what’s wrong with conventional blog format of scrolling down for previous entries?
Have you tried the Archives dropdownlist on the right rail?
This would be the course I’d recommend for now.
I have a bigger, better archives page also on the list (that will be found through the archives link up top, which currently goes nowhere), but I have some CSS work to do on it still. I’ll announce when it’s done.
I hope these are adequate workarounds.
New update: Added tag clouds to the archive and search results pages to make it easier to find past posts.