The New & Improved [Updated 11:00]

SFN Stuff Site News63

As you can see, some pretty drastic changes have made their way to SFN. Firstly, we’d like to congratulate the winner of the banner/logo design contest, Dustin Rhodes for his contribution. As promised, a gift card has been sent to him on behalf of O3 Strategies.

Here’s some other things you may want to check out.

We’ve included a new integration with Flickr allowing the community to share photos with eachother. We see this as a great addition, especially on gamedays to get some great shots that we might not have otherwise seen. It’s also great for our out of town viewers to still get as much “feel” of the game through your work.

  • Photo community. If you have a Flickr account, integration and sharing is easy. Browse to our Flickr group page and register to be a part. You can then use photos from your photostream to add to the group. This will automatically get updated with the 9 most recent right here on SFN. Although tailgate photos are welcomed, lets keep the photos as G-rated as possible. We encourage everyone to share and contribute to the community, so adding a new media enables us to take that to the next level.
  • Pagination that works. Comments are now (functionally) paginated. No more loading 80,000 comments at a time!
  • Easier backtracking. Browsing past entries is now easier with our archives page and the navigation up top.
  • Mobile viewing. Check out SFN on your iPhone or smartphone. The iPhone version is a little buggy but works overall. We’ll iron that out as time goes. Let us know what you think!
  • Registration issues. We’ve been hearing some complaints that folks will register but never receive the email password. Hopefully this is remedied but if you have this issue, please let us know!
  • We will also be rolling out more features as time goes by, so stay tuned.

UPDATE 11:00: The blogroll has been temporarily moved from the sidebar to the top navigation (very top). The blogroll, being as expansive as it is, was hindering page load times. Until we figure out a way around this, all of the external links are listed on the blogroll page.

Bug Fixes

Keep the info coming in the comments section

  • Fixed one of the banner issues in IE6. IE6 still looks terrible. Microsoft is ending support for that archaic browser but we’ll try to maintain support for our IE6 viewers
  • The Blog Roll has been reestablished in the sidebar for those of you looking for links to external sites.
  • The “popular” tab is now narrowed down to popular posts within the last month.
  • iPhone users will now be able to see the comments on posts.
  • IE6 is a bit more presentable now (still, you should upgrade)

SFN Stuff Site News

63 Responses to The New & Improved [Updated 11:00]

  1. howlie 05/10/2009 at 7:55 PM #

    Nice banner.
    BTW, there ought to be an ‘entry test’ on that banner, and if you can’t identify those four figures–you’re sure as hell not a State Fan and shouldn’t be able to get in.

  2. GAWolf 05/10/2009 at 8:05 PM #

    Maybe I spoke too soon. Is there a chance something was done to take the comments off of mobile (Alltel Palm Treo) when you made the change to assist the IPOD users?

    All of a sudden my mobile browser doesn’t pick up the comments.

  3. g6bentgrass 05/10/2009 at 9:25 PM #

    o3strategies-vista/ie7.0. I did not click on the ad. When I put my cursor on the top tabs and it drops down, the ad covers up the bottom half of the drop down.

  4. o3strategies 05/10/2009 at 9:33 PM #

    GAWolf, I’m having similar issues on the iPhone, but only on the latest entry. Can you see none of the comments? We’ll keep experimenting so we can make the most people happy. Keep the feedback coming.

  5. LKNpackfan 05/10/2009 at 9:46 PM #

    Badass. That is all.

  6. wufpup76 05/10/2009 at 10:18 PM #

    sweet …

    Love the new banner … the re-design will take a little getting used to, but I already feel at home again (and I’ve only been here a couple of minutes) 🙂 …

    With apologies to Va Wolf, the site is loading much faster for me – of course I’m running IE8 … definitely like the page breaks for comments

    Now for my a-hole nit-pickiness: I’ll ask what Cowdog asked – will the “Recent Comments” quick links be back? I thought that was a cool feature on the previous design … of course I’m not sure how pagination may (or may not) impact that particular feature

    Great job guys 🙂

    Go Pack!

  7. dallas-pack 05/10/2009 at 11:48 PM #

    looks great although I kinda miss the old site : felt like a comfortable old bball glove. Still, love the new banner and loads fast. thanks!

  8. StateFans 05/11/2009 at 7:01 AM #

    O3,

    The comments loaded on my Blackberry yesterday morning but stopped loading sometime during the day. Now, I can’t get any comments to load on my Blackberry

  9. StateFans 05/11/2009 at 7:33 AM #

    I obviously am not much of tech guy…so, I apologize for how simple I am. But, I thought I would also throw out a couple of things and ask a couple of questions.

    On my home desktop I currently run both IE7 and the most updated FireFox. On both browsers, the text appears a tad ‘light’. I’m getting old so my eyesight struggles (damn, interwebs!!!) This doesn’t seem to be a browser setting. Is there a way for the text to be darkened a little?

    Adding to this…on my Firefox, the font is very small. I tried changing the font in the options but that didn’t seem to make any difference.

    FWIW, my ‘zoom’ is set at 100% so it isn’t set to be too big or too small.

    Am I crazy? Am I the only one with these issues?

  10. Sweet jumper 05/11/2009 at 8:00 AM #

    I have noticed very slow loading of threads and comments. Also very slow to refresh. The computer freezes for about 15 seconds during these steps. This does not happen anywhere else other than SFN.

  11. o3strategies 05/11/2009 at 8:26 AM #

    About recent comments, yes we’re planning on adding that back. Stay tuned.

    Comments on mobile phones. We’re experimenting with a few different solutions for this so check back early and often with your mobile phone and let us know if you’re able to view them.

    Slowness. I’m not seeing any of this and we’ve got some conflicting comments about it, some reporting improved load times and some reporting slow load times. When commenting about the speed of the site, be sure to leave your OS/browser version.

  12. packbackr04 05/11/2009 at 8:26 AM #

    awesome new look for the site. great work. Statefans^^ i agree, the text in the comments show up kinda grayish… if it could be darkened it might read a little easier. but otherwise. great upgrade

  13. o3strategies 05/11/2009 at 8:45 AM #

    Text darkened up a bit.

  14. 4in12 05/11/2009 at 9:01 AM #

    I use Ubuntu 9.04 & Firefox 3.0.10. I open each link in a separate tab. The tab for this web site does not display an icon.

  15. LKNpackfan 05/11/2009 at 9:16 AM #

    o3, you might want to play with the flickr module a bit. I joined the flickr group and added some old b&w photos from the AMC/NCSU Archives. I see them successfully added to the group page at flickr.com, but not on the side-module here at SFN.

  16. VaWolf82 05/11/2009 at 9:41 AM #

    My issues appear to be both browser and access speed related.

    With XP and IE 6.0, the page loads and then “hangs” for a while. The page loads and then freezes at home for a “long” time with DSL/wireless router, but for only a few seconds at work with a 100 mbps line. Some sort of WordPress banner continues to lay on top of the SFN banner with IE6 (work and home).

    With the exact same laptop at work using XP and Firefox 2.0, the page loads quickly with no noticeable delays or issues of any kind. (IE moves seamlessly between work and home, while I’ve never figured out how to make Firefox work at home….thus explaining why I use IE6 when I’m at home.)

  17. StateFans 05/11/2009 at 9:52 AM #

    I get the same WordPress banner and basically a ‘half load’ with IE6 on my work computer that my company mandates

  18. wufpup76 05/11/2009 at 10:05 AM #

    “When commenting about the speed of the site, be sure to leave your OS/browser version.”

    ^Improved for me – XP Home; IE8

    The previous site design took a while to load for me when I was running IE7 (especially ‘Comments’ sections) – it improved some when I switched to IE8. Now with the new design and pagination for the comments it’s loading pretty quick for me on IE8 (knock on wood)

  19. packbackr04 05/11/2009 at 10:20 AM #

    03strategies^^^ thanks. text is much easier to read being a little darker.

  20. LKNpackfan 05/11/2009 at 10:25 AM #

    Home: Vista Home Premium, Firefox3 – loads fast and flawlessly
    Work: XP sp2, IE6 – fast, but half-loads with ‘Fresh News’ WP banner

  21. o3strategies 05/11/2009 at 10:26 AM #

    IE6 should be a bit more presentable now.

  22. o3strategies 05/11/2009 at 11:00 AM #

    Load times should be much quicker for those of you who experienced a “hang” when loading the page.

  23. Jonathan 05/11/2009 at 1:15 PM #

    Site looks great. One feedback point for future updates, I think threaded comments would be a huge addition.

  24. LKNpackfan 05/11/2009 at 3:05 PM #

    My employer allows only its use, so thank you, IE6 functions a lot better

  25. o3strategies 05/11/2009 at 3:09 PM #

    Yes, although IE6 isn’t 100% optimized as of yet, it’s a ton better than where it was over the weekend.

    Hopefully, Microsoft will kill that browser sooner rather than later.

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