After nearly five years with the same design we started with way back on New Year’s Day of 2008, SBI has finally undergone a facelift.
It has taken several months, and will probably take a few more days to work out the kinks, but we have completed a major transformation of the website many of you have made a regular part of your soccer-loving day.
The changes are considerable, but necessary and we ask that you join us as we make this transition into a new era at SBI. Please bear with us as we put the finishing touches on these changes, and rest assured we will be working hard to try and make it a smooth transition for all of you.
We welcome feedback on the changes. Let us know what you like, don’t like, want to see more of and want to see less of. Tell us what you love, and what you hate, and we will take it all into consideration as we complete the final aspects of SBI’s transformation.
As always, please share your thoughts below.
Looks great!
Love the new look, now what about that podcast 😉
The only feedback that I have is it would be great if the comments section could be updated live so we don’t have refresh for threads we are following.
Love it! No more waiting 2 minutes for the ad-ware links to creep past my employer’s firewall. And you’ve done the rotating pics right (hear that, Yanks abroad?) – it freezes on mouse-over in Firefox, allowing me to actually pick the story I’m interested in. Good work!
Nice! Keep it up. Fight the good fight. Change is good.
Wow, huge improvement. Love it. How about a mobile version though?
This.
muy bien. as long as the content is just as good im happy.
Really like the new look. Well done
I actually like the minimalism of the old site. It was easy and simple.
Also, this is obviously the end of one of the coolest experiments in blogging. The Designated Players. I know that name now belongs to Grantland, but it was a classic for me.
Looks great, huge improvement!
Well this was a surprise. I like it so far!
i always have SBI up while at work. did a refresh and thought i broke the website. new site lookin’ good
Awesome – this will make me come back more
I don’t have an answer, because an extremely loud and long ad is on autoplay, and it won’t stop. Something has to be done about that, or Ithe (seemingly great) redesign won’t be usable.
Awesome man I’m glad you got rid of the home typepad.con home site. Now it won’t be blocked by my work network. Best of luck and I’m psyched for this change.
Looks Good.
Here is one thing I hate about the new site. the Video advertisements that run automatically when you come to the site. I view the site at work and the audio from those adds is a problem in my office environment.
Very slick. Imagine how surprised I was to open the site and find this! It’s like Christmas in October!
geeze…wasn’t expecting that. but onwards and upwards. now i hope i can skip past the college and NASL stuff more quickly…doh!
Daaaaaaamn!!! How are you gonna do my boy, Franco, dirty like that? Haha.
Whoa! I like it. It won’t take too long to get used to.
I hate noisy video ads like the one on the right. Other than that….it looks great!
Site looks great.
I would suggest a like button for comments so people don’t have to comment “plus 1 ” after a good comment. Other than that no complaints
Congrats Ives. The new site looks terrific. As a long-time reader, I am loving the new layout. Continued success as the Ives empire continues to grow.
It looks great! Just make sure yanksabroad.com doesn’t sue you.
I also thought at first that I had somehow been re-directed to Yanksabroad.
Site looks great. The ads with audio is extremely tiresome.
Like the new site, but the audio ads are bad. Lots of folk read at work, I know I used to, and when I set up my web site, was told not to have audio come on – dead give away when at work that you’re not working. Fortunatley, I’m now retired, so the audio is no big deal — and I got to watch a lot more soccer games.
Yup, I am with this. I know you need to make ad revenue, so I don’t know if there is anything you can do… and I know this is a growing trend throughout the web. But I usually click on a few stories from the front page to open in separate tabs, and then move through them over the course of a few hours of work. When they all start playing ads simultaneously… yipes.
Audio ads crashed the Flash plug-in on my browser (Firefox 15.0.1), so no pain for me :-). But I agree, those are obnoxious, and why I keep the sound off at work. .
I get that. But it’s not like this is the only website w/ audio. Almost every website you go to for info now has audio. I just keep headphones plugged in as my solution. I know there are many others, but that lets me hear it when I want and ignore it when I want.
The ads with audio are absolutely the worst. And I’m not even reading this from work! Please please please do something about this. It’s something that could kill my allegiance to this wonderful website, not to mention absolutely kill any desire on my part to buy from the sponsors using this invasive sort of advertising.
I’ve heard this from a few people. Not sure where the video ads are playing because they’re not playing for me. I will work on getting those removed.
Great new look. I remember reading your blog with the Herald. Time flies.
Initial reaction is that the design is very nice. Runs smoothly, good software. The links on the right-hand column are an excellent resource. If they were on the old site, I never saw them. I like the capability to click on links in the comments boxes. Maybe the “Top Headlines” list of headlines should be expanded to maybe 12-15 headlines.
And, wow, just noticed: Spell Check.
So when will the SBI IPO be announced?
Looks great, glad the comment section is the same and you don’t have to log in thru some other site to comment.
I agree with this…only downside is you don’t get to know other posters as much. You still do, but it’s tougher since anybody can use any username.
As a long-time reader of your site (perhaps as far back as the 2008 launch, I don’t remember), a redesign has been long overdue.
And it looks a-freaking-mazing! So worth the wait!
Internet, take note: this is how a website redesign should go – from a good, user-friendly site to a really good user-friendly site. A clean, functional design with easy access to everything.
I probably should wait until I’ve actually surfed around on the site for a little while, but my initial reaction is very positive. Love the dropdown menus on top, and the new layout in general. More than worth the wait.
Congrats, Ives. I know it’s been a long time coming. It looks good. Best of luck with it as always. As a Creative Director in the interactive space I have a few helpful comments which I will email you. Keep an eye out for it and I hope to hear back. Cheers!
Still lacking in Fire news.
My first reaction when I got here this morning was a very audible “Whoa!”
I like it. New, fresh look from the old, tired template from way back.
Looks great, love it!
holy crap dude
You handsome S.O.B. Way to go broseph.
niiiiiice! good stuff SBI!
managing subscriptions was easy. love that aspect of it. being able to get alerts for responses or new posts is great. love the drops downs with all the different categories. this is fantastic.
figured i would let you know in the “US National Teams” drop down the top three in the list appear to be misplaced. they are already under the “SBI Awards & More” drop down.
suggestion. i would add that “edit” button! but maybe that is complicated, i’m not sure.
i also noticed you have to either save the email with the link you are sent when you click “manage your subscriptions” or go through the “email a link process” every time you want to manage your subscriptions. but maybe this is how it was designed?
so in subscriptions when you select to get notifications for “replies to my comments”, it is actually pushing notifications for replies to ANY comments.
i’ve gotten a notification for every “reply” comment in this thread.
Great looking update, Ives! Congrats.
Good Job Ives, I like it!!…Looking forward to the Podcast!!
an SBI PODCAST would be streets ahead.
I guess this means MLSSOCCER.COM will be changing their site soon!
Looks good, lots of hard work pays off
Whoa! Nice
Woah
The link for AOL Fanhouse goes to Huffingtonpost.com
this is true.
AOL and HuffingtonPost.com are owned by the same ownership group.
Sweet site Ives!
Congrats on the new site! It is looking good
Nice, Ives! Now you can start working on a message board.
Same here! I thought I was on a different site as well….LOOKS GREAT!
Thought I was on a different site. Looks great. Keep up the good work.
Same here haha… I like how you kept the commenting portion pretty much the same (no Facebook, yahoo account needed)
Looks really good! Congrats.
I like it a lot on first impression! When I first came to the site I was very confused, haha.
So was I. It took me a while to figure out I was at Ives site rather than elsewhere. I wonder if this one remembers my name like the old one did so I won’t have to retype it every time. I guess after this I’ll try to see if it does.
I like that there is a box to notify me on follow-ups.
So far I like this format.
Good, it remembers me (and probably everyone else).
Now question is can I edit my typpos.
guess not
I did not get notified when I replied to my own post. Maybe I have to subscribe for that to happen. But the text below the post comment box says I am subscribed to this post. Maybe someone else has to reply for me to get a notification.
no notification if you reply to yourself. also, you have to manage your subscriptions if you haven’t already. also, as of right now, the notification setting for “replies to my comments” is not working 100%. you will get a notification for replies to your comments, but you’ll also get a notification for every comment that is a reply (to anyone’s comments). i got an email for each of your responses to yourself.
I finally got the notice of replies, the first came an hour after I checked the box. And, I now get notified to every reply to this thread, but not to my posts. Given that Ives threads almost always have greater that 30 replies, I won’t be checking that box anymore.
I like it! I approve this message.
I like how responses TO RESPONSE are progressively idented instead of all being uniformly idented…if that makes sense.
TO RESPONSES*
…like this.
indented*
…I swear I didn’t do this on purpose.
How far will it continue to indent?
Well, I can’t “Reply” to your comment so I guess it ends right where you’re at. So, that’s 4 levels of indentation. Not bad.
Yeah, but what about responses to the original message?
They’re clearly indented.
No?
Very nice change. MOBILE site please. The world has moved to tablets and smart phones