Not to be outdone by the shakeup in the Winnipeg Blue Bomber front office, we decided it was time for a bit of a shakeup at Morning Big Blue.
No, we aren't replacing Mike with KelownaBomberFan.
For those of you using the main theme, you will have found a bit of a brighter Bomber Blue and Gold when you logged in. The site layout and navigation is pretty much the same, and should be familiar, it has just been updated with a new paint job. Take a long look at that gold bar up top where it says Morning Big Blue - A Winnipeg Fan Community and put your creative hats on, we will be launching a contest soon to replace that text with an official site logo.
We've also recently added a weekly Pick 'Em pool starting this weekend (Get your picks in before tomorrow!). As well, Blue Bomber articles from the Sun and Free Press are now being syndicated into our new News Feed forum.
We are going to be experimenting a little bit with ads on the site over the next little while. You will see blank gaps in certain places of the site while we go through the approval process. If the revenue that comes out of this is negligible, then they will eventually go away. If it can offset the cost of running the site, then great! If it brings in more then costs, then it will be invested back into the site. I will promise that the ads will be in appropriate places and not cover content.
Happy to say that we have recently passed 200 registered members. We've had over 13,000 posts in over 400 threads since moving to the new forum software, with over 3,500 of those posts coming in August alone. Buchko and Mack being fired had a helping hand in that. I think we hit a record with that thread with 590 posts and 11,000 views.
It has been a tumultuous time in Bomber land these past few weeks, and that usually means increased work for moderators as people's temper and emotions get the best of them. Happy to say that there has been very few issues that we've had to deal with. The discussion has been excellent, on point, and civilized. Thank you all for your contributions!
There are no major changes planned at this point. Some items that are out there and being thought about:
- I would like to get the Twitter feed back on the site. Still trying to find a way to do this without causing load errors in IE8.
- Speaking of Twitter. There is an addon that would tweet out created topics through the @MorningBigBlue twitter handle. It would allow you to get updates of current topics in your Twitter timeline. Debating whether or not this would be useful or more on the side of spam on Twitter. If there is interest in this, let me know.
- We now have quite a few contests going on. Including the CFL Drafts, the Lock of the Week (special thanks to Jpan85 for running this!), Pick 'Em pools. If there is interest I have been eyeing another feature to allow "betting". It wouldn't be real money. It would be something along the lines of people who participate getting a set amount of fake currency to start with and making weekly bets with it. Purely for bragging rights. If there is interest in this, let me know.
As always, your feedback is important to us. Is something on the site bugging you? Let us know. We can try to change it (or at least let you know why we can't). Have a suggestion to make the site better, tell us about it. Think we are doing a good job? Well we love to hear about that as well!
Now lets go get a win this weekend. Go Bombers!
- voodoochylde
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