If any of you read any other SBNation blogs frequently, you may have noticed that many of the MLB, NBA, and NFL sites have transitioned to what we're calling "SBN 2.0". Last Sunday, Burnt Orange Nation was the first college blog to make the migration.
The changes that have been made to all of these sites will be coming to Building the Dam soon. Since this will be a new platform, usernames will have to be reassigned. But don't worry, many of you will already have your user name saved for you when you log-in to SBN 2.0. However, there may be some cases in which your username is taken by a member of another site.
Some of the new features include:
Schedule, Scores, Stats and Roster
Building the Dam will soon have all the basic information about the Oregon State Beavers and hundreds of other teams. During games you'll see a regularly updated line score, and as the season progresses we'll track team stat totals and leaders. This is just our first step, so look for us to publish more detailed and archival stats in the future. The best part about all this sports data is that we've integrated it directly into the blog so. We now have special pages that aggregate all blog posts written about games, players and teams. (Note: College Baseball stats are not abailable at this time)
Auto-refreshing Comments
You no longer need to refresh the page to see new comments. If you're logged in, new comments will automatically appear on the page every few seconds. When you post a comment, the page will not refresh either. If you want to quickly cycle through all the new comments, you can press the C key on your keyboard. Unmark a new comment after you've read it with the X key. And use the Z key if you want to umark comments as you're cycling through them.
As you use these shortcuts to cycle through comments, press the R key to reply to the current comment. All these helpful keyboard shortcuts are listed at the top of each comments section for reference.
FanPosts (the Section Formerly Known as Diaries)
We changed their name. Why? Because we took this major upgrade as an opportunity to leave behind some vocabulary that never made much sense for a sports blog. SB Nation is the network of, by and for fans, and these are the blog posts we make. So we call them FanPosts. When you're at a bar telling someone to check out your online sports opinions, you don't have to suggest they read your diary.
FanPosts are displayed differently on the homepage - we include your avatar to give more credit for the time you spend writing great posts. The new post editor has a WYSIWYG view that provides easy formatting. It also auto-saves drafts so you don't have to worry about losing your work when you compose a post within the web browser. And you can now associate teams, players and games with your posts: these tools promote your FanPosts on our new team, player and game pages - across the entire network.
The new system does not work like the old diary editor. For example, in HTML mode the new editor doesn't auto-create a new paragraph from two line breaks. But it does offer a whole array of new features. Look for the blinking help button on the right side of the FanPost editor for quick tips, and take a look at our full guide to writing FanPosts on the new platform.
IMPORTANT - if you write your posts in Microsoft Word or some other off-line editor, you will get the most reliable behavior if you cut & paste your post into the HTML view of the FanPost editor. And if you do that, remember to wrap
tags around each paragraph so your text doesn't run together.FanShots
Many members of the community just want to post that one link, video, photo or quote, but don't need a full FanPost. We've got you covered: FanShots let you share YouTube videos, Flickr or PhotoBucket photos, quotes from articles, portions of chat transcripts, top 5 lists and simple links. If it's a video or image we'll put a thumbnail on the homepage when you post it.
For those of you who are experienced internet hunter-gatherers of Oregon State material, install the bookmarklet onto the links bar of your browser and share FanShots with the community from wherever on the web you find that killer quote or photo.
Network-wide accounts
After you register for SBN 2.0, it will be easy to register with any blog in the network. Your profile will be your hope page, displaying your statistics as well as your blog memberships.
And of course, there's the visual redesign.
There's no set timeline on the changes, but expect them in the near future. For now, head on over to a SBN 2.0 blog like Burnt Orange Nation and create a network account. If you get that out of the way now, you'll have little to worry about on the day Building the Dam migrates.
GO BEAVERS!
--JB--