After years of procrastination and then a couple months of waiting impatiently, this is the new website. Thanks in large part to some generous donations and some people who know a thing or two about website programming, Touch the Banner is now on WordPress and moving in the right direction. I’m glad to be here, and I’m glad you’ve found me. Please bear with me a little bit as I get my feet under me, but most features are ready to go. A few things have changed:
- Offer Boards: The format of the current and future offer boards has changed. They are all included in the drop-down menu at the top of the page. While they are no longer arranged by position, the format is improved, neater, and more informative. Furthermore, you can see highlights, links, and important notes about each player by clicking on the player’s name. (The 2016 Offer Board is still under construction as I create profiles for all 233 offers so far.)
- Message Board: I have added a message board feature to the site, which can be found under the title of “Forum” at the top of the page. I hope that we can all use this to discuss Michigan- and non-Michigan-related topics. This is a feature that was not available on Blogger, but I think it has been sorely missing as the site has grown over the past few years.
- Sign-in: Blogger was a bit of a free-for-all for random commenters and anonymous posters. Now everyone has a chance to sign in, remain signed in, and discuss topics with at least a tiny bit of accountability. This should also help us keep track of conversations.
I thank those of you who have been reading over the years and those who might just be discovering the site. If you have tweaks or suggestions for me, please let me know. I’m proud that I have built a site from nothing in 2008 to one that gets about half a million hits per month, but there are always ways to get better.
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First of all, you should be proud, you are doing an outstanding job.
Now, to begin picking your efforts apart, one by one. On this page, you might want to check into the sizing/placement of your stadium shot and/or your tabs. Your dropdown tabs are being conflicted with by the Michigan Stadium sign on the scoreboard. Size your screen back up and down and you will see it.
Are you using Drupal?
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Congratulations. Great site with great insight.
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Looks good. Nice work. This’ll take a little getting used to but it looks real sharp. It’ll be nice to get rid of the anon clutter and confusion.
First suggestion: Put the countdown in the header, it’s my favorite part of your blog and seems to get a lot more activity than the ex-wolverines for example.
-Lanknows
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Thanks! I’ll look into putting the countdown in the header. That’s not a bad idea.
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Grats! Great milestone!
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Love the new site so far!
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Thunder — nice improvement, definitely a lot more polished than the old site. Very cool that you decided to invest in a facelift.
If I can throw in my two cents — I would definitely recommend making the photographs about half the size that they currently are. Right now coming to the homepage is really overwhelming and rather crowded, and I suspect this will lead a lot of visitors to bounce. On my laptop the photos (such as the sky on this post) fill up almost my entire screen, which is way way way too big.
Thanks again! -patrick
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Thanks. I will look into that. I appreciate thoughts/suggestions. It may take a bit to get some of the kinks worked out, but I’ll work on them.
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Looks great. I miss the old site at the moment until the kinks get worked out here, but I’m glad you made the move away from blogspot to your own setup. I’ll be able to get your site when visiting China now.
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Is Blogger banned in China because it’s a Google product? Or was it just my site in particular?
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