The moment many of you have been waiting for is here. Welcome to the newly redesigned site for TheSabre.com!
Many of you already helped us test this version near the end of the summer. However, here’s a quick list of the features of this new site:
1. More mobile and tablet friendly: This site uses a technique called Responsive Web Design (RWD), which is a programming method of changing the way the site displays itself on different-sized devices.As the display window shrinks down from desktop size to laptop size to tablet to smart phone, the various elements of the site move around, appear and disappear, and realign themselves. Try it: if you’re reading this on a desktop or laptop display, grab the corner of your browser and resize the browser, and watch the site shift around.
We have needed a more mobile-friendly display for a long time now, and we’ve finally got it. Enjoy the site on your tablet and smart phone just as much as you enjoy it on a desktop.
2. Redesigned home page: The home page is a little different with the most recent articles. running down the left side of the screen on the desktop display. They’ll also be the first thing you see on your mobile and tablet devices. The list there is longer than the most recent five updates from the older site.You’ll also find the game info capsule in the middle column instead of above the articles. This is a cleaner presentation. The football schedule (and later basketball) always will be available on the home page now too!
3. Threaded boards: This isn’t a change on the new site from your end, but we’ve updated the code and made things more stable. Some of the features you have wanted aren’t there (like editing posts or ignoring posters), but we hope to investigate those requests again in the future. Simply put, the site’s old code had to be updated first and that took top priority for the use of our resources.For those hoping for vBulletin style forums that are in topic/linear format, we have put a change-over there on hold based on network and customer feedback. As indicated above, the site’s old code had to be updated first and that took top priority for the use of our resources. We hope to revisit this down the road.
We’ll be adding new features to the boards after things have settled down from the relaunch.
One other note on the message boards. You’ll find that we have eliminated The Soapbox board for politics – it’s not what our site was created for and it has become a bad representative of our business – and we will delete any politics discussions from The Corner. Also, we have eliminated the Fantasy/Pro Sports board. It hasn’t served its purpose and causes too many arguments among the fans. If you want to talk about football, that’s what the football board is for. If you want to talk about basketball, that’s what the basketball board is for. If you want to talk about hockey or golf, please put those on the “Olympic Sports” and not “The Corner” board, which is designated for non-sports discussions.
4. Article comments: You can now provide inline comments after articles (try it out with this one!), enabling you to directly address anything you’ve read in the articles, without having to go to the message boards.
5. Improved RSS feed and site search functionality: Our previous site couldn’t provide a good RSS feed or site search. This one does. Check out the main site RSS feed by clicking the RSS icon in the site’s header (it is the orange box with a radio type signal in it on the top left side) – you can use that to set up your Sabre RSS feed. Also, use the search function in the header to search articles and pages (but not chat boards).
6. VERY IMPORTANT! You’ll see more references to SportsWar, our parent company. If you’re a subscriber, your credit card charges will now be for “SportsWar membership”, not TheSabre.com. Emails from us will be from the “SportsWar Network”, not TheSabre.com. Please be aware of this, and don’t reject SportsWar emails, or dispute SportsWar credit card charges.
That’s it for now. Things went pretty well in developmental testing with the new site. Just let us know on the boards if you have any questions and email us if there are any major issues with the site.
Great work!
So far I like what I see. Speed is much better in terms of loading. Fonts are smaller which is tough for all of us over 50!
Making a note of the fonts. Thanks!!
Looking good! Where’s the Soapbox?
I love it!
Thanks, guys. Good work.
I love it! Is here any chance there will be an App for it soon for easy access from my I-Phone?
This is great. I know this was a ton of work – good job. Don’t get down about all the negative posts and messages that you will surely get.
Thanks a bunch! Feedback has been pretty positive so far.
Looks good!
This is great news! Thanks for all your efforts and let me personally reiterate that I am incredibly pleased by not going to vbulletin board style yet. Looking forward to the continual improvements.
I do think you will have some serious policing to do to get rid of political rhetoric and even harder to get everyone to use the Olympic Sports page, but hopefully I will be wrong.
GO HOOS! GO SPORTSWAR.COM!
Agree on the VB issue (I’m not a big fan). Thanks!
A thought, and I admit I don’t know how to implement this from a practical standpoint: Maybe now is the time to try to re-train people to use a single unified game day thread for all game discussion instead of drive-by single-thread posts, so as to solve the problem of all the good threads that get shoved off the front page and vanish on game days.
Love it!
Love the new format. The “article comments” feature is going to be an excellent addition.
Congrats on the big change! Looks great so far.
Parking Wars. Shipping Wars. Storage Wars. SportsWar. Seems like we’re always declaring war on something innocuous. I know SportsWar has been around for a while, but as much as everyone likes giving football players a hard time about comparing everything to combat and to war, now seeing it in the URL just makes me chuckle.
I don’t like change, or rap music or cell phones, but I like this new format. It looks good and seems more responsive……Sorry, I have to go those kids are on my lawn again.
Very nice upgrade. Great work. Go HOOS!
Thank you, looks great on my iPhone 5,
Which is now most frequent means of accessing the Sabre. It is my faster and easier to use
good stuff – except now NFL/fantasy junk is welcomed to “UVA” board just so as NOT to have conflict … don’t think that goal is gonna be achieved. Don’t think there is so much trafficon The Corner so as to make PGA chat go to Olympic Board to die a miserable death … oh well. Certainly hope the automatic merging of gobblers ID here will be retracted… that in itself may be the thing to make this once-voluminous poster disappear.
Trigon, it isn’t to NOT have conflict, it is because the users obviously prefer to talk about football, college or pro, on one board. We tried to migrate that conversation over, but the users/customers like it in one place so we did away with the pro board. The only day there is a lot of NFL talk really is Sunday.
As for the PGA/hockey/etc., I suspect much of that will stay on the Corner board and there are only a few times a year where that seems to be an issue for anyone. We suggested putting it on the other sports board because that would be consistent with how football/basketball/etc. are used. However, the users/customers generally make these boards breathe how they end up going – it is a live, continuous conversation that is ever-changing anyway.