Whether you're on the masthead or part of the community, it's a great day to be involved with Sox Machine, because Sox Machine 3.0 is here.
A brief history of the previous versions:
Sox Machine 1.0: The blog that existed from 2006-2011, before I jumped over to SB Nation to run South Side Sox.
Sox Machine 2.0: The blog and podcast that Josh and I re-launched/re-branded in January 2018 and ran primarily on subscriber support through Patreon until today.
Although the mission transformed dramatically when James joined us a year and a month ago, I'd consider that Sox Machine 2.1. Under the hood, we maintained the core platform for minimal disruption as we figured out whether this arrangement had longer-term viability.
The White Sox did us no favors by setting the modern MLB record for losses in a season, but thanks to your steadfast support of our White Sox coverage, we've decided to take the optimistic approach and determine there's nowhere to go but up, which is how we've arrived at where we are today with...
Sox Machine 3.0: The blog and podcast that now runs on the Lede platform.
It's the next step in our journey as a premium, subscriber-driven source of independent White Sox news and analysis.
Why Lede?
Patreon was -- and still is -- a wonderful platform for podcasts, and when the Sox Machine Podcast was our core exclusive offering, the site-paywalling plugin worked well enough to preserve the occasional piece of written Sox Machine content for supporters. When we added James and his exclusive beat coverage to Sox Machine, however, it became rather apparent that the platform wasn't designed to work seamlessly as a third-party paywall on a standalone site.
Fortunately, the array of companies that specialize in reader-supported websites is a lot more robust than it was when we were leaving SB Nation in 2017. After researching all the options available to us, we settled on Lede for a few key reasons.
One is that I have a lot of experience on the platform as a Defector subscriber, and it just works. I've never had issues maintaining my subscription, staying logged in, and following the comments, which gives me confidence that Sox Machine subscribers would benefit from that same improvement in the user experience.
Two, Defector is radically transparent with their business operations, so I paid attention to their annual reports and detailed site updates. They'd expressed satisfaction with Lede's improvements and enhancements over the years, and did so again when I wrote them to ask about the actual work of publishing on the platform. That's been our experience so far as well. In the months that we've been working on shifting the site over, they've already implemented two key upgrades -- integrated ad-blocking for subscribers and podcast RSS feed display for subscribers -- that we'd asked about. We're not the primary reason these changes were made, but it felt like it, which is cool. Thanks to everybody at Lede, particularly Matt and Christina, for their help in migrating the site over.
Thirdly -- and crucially -- the platform places as much importance on comments as we do.
By and large, online conversations have migrated to the major social media players, and most of the content management systems that sprung up to fill the need for subscriber-supported news sites were designed with the idea that the discussion would happen on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc. Given the standard tenor of online discussions, perhaps most publishers are happy to offload any liability issues with the arguments that ensue, but the end result is that the native commenting options were bare-bones, and most of the third-party options were clunky.
We've been extremely fortunate at Sox Machine to have an active community, and it's something that can't be taken for granted. Not are you subscribing, but you're willing to make additional investments with your time and your thoughts, and so it's in our interest to make it as functional, frictionless and followable as possible.
Lede uses Coral commenting, which is a product of Vox. Those who missed the features of SB Nation comments despite my best attempts to replicate them should rejoice.
The only drawback is that we weren't able to migrate the WordPress commenting histories over to Coral, so the commenting histories are currently frozen in my WordPress export file. This is my lone regret, but the hope is that the benefits outweigh the drawbacks. Can't let perfect be the enemy of good, and this should be great.
These have been our next steps. Now, here are your next steps.
How should existing Sox Machine subscribers proceed?
Whether you're an annual or monthly supporter, start by following these three steps:
- Click "Log In"
- Click "Get a link to login via email"
- Follow the instructions on the email.
Once you're logged in, you can change your password, set your commenting user name, grab the private podcast URL to subscribe to the premium podcast, and update your payment method so it's on file.
About payments: While Patreon wouldn't allow us to export payment information, the other elements of your Patreon subscription should carry over: email address, tier of support, and the renewal date. For example, if you're an annual supporter who signed up in February or August of 2024, you won't technically have to add your payment information for several months. If you signed up last Opening Day, or are a monthly supporter, this topic will come up a lot sooner, so you could just add your payment method on file now so your membership doesn't lapse.
Payments on the Patreon page were paused when we had a firm launch date, and we'll be unpublishing and decommissioning the page in the next few days, so you shouldn't be billed for Patreon from here on out. If you somehow experience any redundant billing issues, please reach out to me at jim@soxmachine.com.
How should new subscribers proceed?
This is a lot simpler:
- Click "Subscribe" up top.
What are some perks that haven't been mentioned?
Ad-free podcast: Subscribers will be able to access the Sox Machine Podcast's private URL on their account page. Plug it into your preferred podcast client to replace the Patreon version, and you'll be good to go.
Ad-free site: As we start serving ads on non-premium articles, logged-in subscribers shouldn't see them.
Gift subscriptions: If you want to buy a Sox Machine subscription for somebody special in your life, you can click the "Gifts" button up top. We'd received this request a number of times over the years with Patreon, and it was always annoying that there wasn't a simple solution. Now there is.
Commenting: We'll be exploring some of the finer points of Coral once everybody is aboard and the discussions start flowing as normal, but we have the ability to limit comments to subscribers, and members will have the ability to hide comments from members of the community who annoy them with the "ignore" feature, so we'll get to find out who is truly itching for an argument.
Newsletters: We'll be sending out a regular newsletter highlighting exclusive stories that your subscription makes possible. Subscribers can receive this newsletter by toggling the subscription on the account page. (Note: Non-subscribers can also receive this email by registering a free account with the site.)
We thank you for your patience in getting here, and hopefully you'll enjoy it.
