Some changes to BASG
Don’t worry, we promise all of the changes are good. In fact, it’s a brand new modern website!
Almost all of us — up to a certain age, anyway — think of ourselves as persons who welcome technological innovation. However, in practice, the smallest changes alter our senses in ways that seem too jarring to fully enjoy. The slightest alterations (like a new Twitter or Facebook avatar, for instance) make us nostalgic for the simpler times of yesterday.
However, change is necessary in all walks of life, and the internet is no exception. Now that we can unveil the new version of our site, we’re at a point where we feel like we’ve done nothing other than change BASG in a positive way.
Basically, our site hadn’t gone through any changes since 2011, which in blog years means our previous theme/format was about 35 years old. A cleanup was needed. We haven’t removed anything, and a lot of things (like the commenting system) are staying the same. Even better, the features we’ve added shouldn’t clutter your desktop, tablet or phone screen.
Here’s how it used to look before this past weekend:
The site should actually work
Not sure if anyone noticed, but the previous version started showing its age by doing some weird, annoying things — like displaying the mobile version while you were reading it on a laptop, and vice versa. Far worse, the site would crash whenever we had a really big traffic spike. Our (former) webhost told us there was nothing we could do, because our dedicated server — which they charged us an exorbitant monthly fee to use — could only handle a certain number of visitors. Sorry guys, maybe try to keep people from going to your site all at once was the answer I got when speaking with customer service techs.
With an updated design and a new host (in the cloud, y’all), those problems should vanish. The site should be a lot faster, too. At this point I need to thank the two people who put in so many hours making this new site a reality: my wife Liz, as well as Ikram, our developer. I can’t tell them how much I appreciate the time they took to migrate everything over from the old site while perfecting this theme and making it our own.
You kids and your phones
Actually, I’m right there with you. Other than research done while I’m writing, most of my reading is done while staring at a device that’s less than six inches long and three inches wide. Wait, that sounded really, really bad in multiple ways. I’m talking about my iPhone 6, just so we’re clear.
We already had a mobile site, which made us pretty unique back in 2011, when the Warriors were awful and the Giants only had one measly title since moving to San Francisco. Now our first-gen mobile version looks antiquated, so it’s nice to have one that won’t cause those gosh-danged millenials to cringe and go back to figuring out which light yields the best dog-filtered selfie on SnapChat. Hey, did you know that I’m a senior citizen? Happy 65th birthday to me. After this I’m going to write a scathing post about how I just walked past an elementary school during lunchtime recess and saw a kid in one of those Chinese New Year Steph Curry jerseys. The kid banked in a three from halfcourt and jumped around like someone just told him Halloween is now held every Friday from now on. I’ll tell ya, these kids and their Curry fixations. (This scenario actually unfolded today, BTW.)
BASGCast is back (pretty soon, anyway)
As some of you might have noticed, I took a hiatus from podcasting. My life got crazy with child-raising and whatnot, and Joey McMurry (my co-host) has a hectic schedule as he strives to become the Dave Flemming of Eugene. Well, things have settled down, and it’s time to jump back behind the microphone.
The format will be different — I’m going to run the show this time, mostly doing one-on-one interviews. This is a change from the two-people-interviewing-one-person setup we had before, which isn’t always easy to navigate when everyone is in different cities/states.
Lately I’ve been listening to more podcasts than ever (fewer commercials, more in-depth interviews, less formal), and I can’t wait to get started on the new version of BASGcast. This time we’ll be on Soundcloud, too.
We’ve got a shop!
Check it out! We’ve got soft t-shirts (a must for me — I’m a tri-blend man over 100% cotton all day every day), made in the USA, for men, women, children and babies. We’ve got hoodies. We’ve got hoodie dresses. We’ve got baseball-style shirts. We’ve got hats. We’ve even got leggings (only in women’s sizes, sorry guys).
My favorite t-shirt is “The Catch,” but we’re excited about everything, including the BASG gear. It looks good, it’s comfortable, and you won’t find this stuff anywhere else.
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Hope you like the new site — now that it’s up and running, my plan is to get back to writing more frequently than I have been over the last several weeks/months. Thanks for reading and supporting Bay Area Sports Guy since 2008, we couldn’t do it without all of you.