From a platform perspective SB Nation hasn’t changed much in the last decade. Today’s update brings more change than SB Nation has seen in a long time and we know it’s going to take some time to get used to it. And as you do, get ready for the experience to keep evolving, too – this is just the beginning.
The new SB Nation is faster and built for community
First and foremost, we want to make sure you all are able to access your accounts. If you are having any trouble logging in or if there’s an issue with your username just reach out at support@sbnation.com. No data has been deleted and we’re confident we can resolve any account problems.
What we left largely untouched in this update is the article commenting experience. This doesn’t mean we think it’s perfect, but we wanted to keep something familiar amongst all the changes. We know that is the core experience for many of you and we’re mindful of lessons learned from the last commenting platform switch.
The communities that have been built across our network of sites made SB Nation what it is today and allowed for our community to sustain in a time when there are fewer and fewer safe, trustworthy homes for sports communities.
But we know we haven’t always been the best stewards of your communities and in the face of media industry challenges like declining search and social media traffic we’ve made short-term decisions like continually placing more ads on the page. The fact that so many of you still visit and participate in SB Nation’s communities is a testament to the site managers, writers, contributors, and your fellow users.
When we mentioned a couple weeks ago that the new platform would bring ad improvements it was understandably met with skepticism, but we have made a number of changes to improve your experience:
- There are fewer ads between the end of an article and the comment section (goodbye to that big grid of random stuff)
- There’s only one ad at the very top of article pages (there used to be two)
- Ads at the top of the homepage have been reduced or moved to benefit our loyal homepage audience
And we’ve reduced ads even further if you are logged in while visiting any community:
- Video players will no longer follow you down the page. Just scroll past one and it will be gone.
- Full page pop-ups that would sometimes interrupt your commenting experience have been disabled.
We hope these changes, along with significant improvements to site performance, will make your entire experience better.
We’ve also introduced a new feature - The Feed - that provides a new way for both community leaders and users to share news and start conversations. It’s not a finished product – we have a lot of ideas, but we’re also excited to see how it’s used and to take your feedback to steer it in the right direction.
Importantly, we aren’t just dropping this update and running away. We are excited to partner with site managers and users to make this the best platform for engaging with your favorite teams.
What’s coming soon:
- The Feed updates – More sorting options for feed and replies (e.g. most rec’ed), additional third-party embed support, edit capabilities, and more.
- Notifications – We’ve been hiding notifications inside of the Coral commenting system and we’ve also just introduced The Feed without notifications. We know this is a big gap and it is at the top of our list to add more complete and more prominent notifications.
- User profiles – The new user profiles are very minimal, but we needed a reset. We’re going to expand these to give more information about a user.
- Following – You should be able to follow your favorite sports, teams, or users you like to interact with and we should make your experience better with that information. This one is a bit further out but one we are excited to add it soon.
We have also created a new way for your requests and frustrations to be heard – the Product Feed. We’ll be sharing platform updates there as we release new things and we’d love to hear from you about how we can make the community experience better.
Today sets us up to make SB Nation and all of its communities better and we’re excited to partner with you to do that. In the meantime, keep contributing to your favorite communities, test out The Feed, and let us know what you think.
FAQ
What about Fanposts?
Fanposts have been replaced by The Feed and are now much more prominent on homepages and on mobile devices. Legacy Fanposts are still available at every community at /fanposts (e.g. bleedcubbieblue.com/fanposts).
We have already moved a few thousand of the most recent Fanposts to The Feed, including one of my favorites from this year, and we will be moving many more in the coming weeks.
Why is my join date still not right?
If you joined in 2008 or after then it should be. Real join dates are on your user profile and visible within the comments section.
If you had to make a new account along the way and you’d like to connect all your history then reach out to us at support@sbnation.com. Just give us some time for that.
If you joined one of the original blogs before 2008 when they all became connected under SB Nation then those dates are trickier for us to get, but we are looking to see if we can bring them back. We’ll keep you posted.
Is the comment count on my profile just from Coral?
No, that number includes Coral and legacy comments. We were able to retrieve legacy comment counts and we are hoping to be able to display a user’s total Rec count in the near future.
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