Whohooo!!!!!!!!!!!!

It’s gotta be the coolest thing I’ve ever seen!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I don’t have a lot of time to devote to CB, so I’m not too happy about having to find everything again. There does look to be some good potential for future features, and I like the blogging community making it easier to find other sports/teams blogs.

But I’m not a fan of the “fanposts” so far… they just seem like awkwardly fromatted forum topics.

And it’s not because I don’t like change. There is just TOO much stuff going on on the page.

The most interesting thing about the blog, which is the main blog, gets maybe half the page width. The items that are taking up too much real estate are the fan posts and fan shots.

The stuff on the left hand side is okay. But fanposts like this one http://www.celticsblog.com/2008/10/26/646791/our-complex-society dominating a 1/3 of the pages width, is NOT why I come to celticsblog. Granted it’s just one post, but it still proves my point I think. Which is the reason I come to Celticsblog is because of the very knowledgeable people that are posting on the main blog. That area needs more prominence. Right that old feeling that Celticsblog had, is gone. IMO. My suggestion would be to loose the fanposts and fanshots widgets. Let people access them from the menu bar at the top of the page, if they want them.

Other annoyance, is the default avatar/icon that is used. Tired of seeing this dude in brown with his mouth hanging open. How about shamrock or something?

It sounds like joining SB Nation was a big deal for Celticsblog, but it kind of sucks to have a less useful and visually appealing page with the season almost upon us.

While I’m still going, I think part of the problem I have is that the page just looks generic. Like it has no personality. You can tell it is based off some template that every other sb nation blog likely uses. Then on top of that “genericness” the one thing that CB has always had going for it is the quality of it’s contributers. And in the new format, their work is visually minimized by having to share space with all the junk on the left and right.

Hope thing settle down, love CB, I used to check it serveral times a day. I already find myself checking it less, because the format turns me off.

I don’t particularly like the new change to SB Nation. Very generic site and too many anoying adds. It would be nice if Jeff would explain in detail why he made the change to SB nation. The cletic blog community doesn’t appear to have that small family feel it once had. I find that I won’t visit the site like I use to.

I hope Jeff got a good price when he sold celtics blog to sbnation. He deserves it. he worked very hard at developing the blog and keeping us all informed.

As far as what SBNation has done with the site – CelticsBlog is not what it used to be. It has become second rate with a generic template and the writing has suffered. It is no longer easy to find stuff or see what the community is thinking with a listing of recent forum posts on the front page. Too many annoying ads as well. I am sick of being marketed to 24×7.

All in all – SBNation is disappointing. If it doesn’t improve I may be looking for another source of Celtic news …

I concur with meangreen that celticblog has lost its small family / community feel that Jeff developed so well.

on second thought – I just looked around a little more and I gues SB Nation is pretty good. I found some of the areas that I liked to frequesnt in the past. I am just a homer I guess. I don’t like change.

Thanks Jeff for all you did to build Cletics Blog

Agree with most of the above. The writing of Messrs. Clark, Weinman, etc are still solid it’s just harder to find since the main page is so cluttered. My main complaint is that the new Celticsblog is web 2.0 when a the majority of the audience is web 1.5. If we wanted to have a celtics facebook/my space we would.

 While I’m sure there’s much more money to be made through all the advertising that comes up here including the pearls of wisdom from Hugh Downs and the pop-up trailer of Changeling, a lot is lost in this now more typical, obviously more profit driven site. While some might call this "progress" I see it as the homogenization of a once uniquely driven and fan based site. The whole thing is on the verge of being swallowed up by other interests, topics, etc…Even the space for the actual content of the site has shrunk at the expense of a lot of secondary stuff. Sorry.

There may be less ads, but the ones you have are more prominent and much more annoying. Like the ever popular animated pop-up kind - hate that.

You now have a very cluttered batch of information on the front page. That extra white space that was on the old format helped to focus the eye on the info we wanted to read, now that is gone and the useful info has been squished in the middle surrounded by brightly colored animated nonsense.

I feel all of this encourages less participation due to having to wade through so much crap to read community posts.

The feature of listing the “new” comments is really helpful when returning to the site after an absence, as well as them being highlighted in yellow, very efficient. Is there any way to incorporate similar features into the Recent Forum Topics as well?

I have to say that it’s an end of an era. To see Golden State of Mind, SacTownRoyalty and all these other great blogs assimilate as well into the SBN borg was kinda disappointing.
The pleasure of browsing thru the blogs with your morning cup was in no small part due to the unique flavor of each of those blogs. It’s a shame that there was a collective buy in to this network, but I imagine the incentives were there. It’s unfair to ask sacrifices when you’ve all given us great writing and community over the years.

Still, to sift through Blog-a-Bull to Celticsblog to what have you, the only change you see is the color scheme…even the ads stay the same from site to site…it’s really generic and rather depressing. It reeks of corporate sponsorship…I feel like I’m reading an NBA.com blog! Obviously, thats not the case and the writing on this blog is wonderful…however I echo the thoughts of the other readers in that the feeling of community is a bit diluted at best.

I also echo the sentiment of the other readers that it is too busy by far, and I am visiting the site less and less, and instead relying on Reds Army, Loys Place and Perkisabeast.

The main lede articles by Jeff somehow blend into the Daily Babble and Fan Posts…they don’t quite stand out. While there may be ‘technically’ less ads it obviously seems more crowded to the users judging by the comments.

I’m sure people are glad the site is more flexible, it’ll allow more ‘things’ to happen/post etc. gadgets and doodads.
Call me old fashioned but I prefer the most basic and streamlined systems, the blog posts, and the forums. Truehoops design for instance is by far the most reader friendly blog out there.

Finally, I really doubt this, but I hope that linkage to some of the more eccentric blogs out there (coughperkisabeastcough) won’t stop because of any SBN content restrictions.

Anyhow I’ll quit my pooping on the parade. Congratulations on the move, I guess.

1) Edit your SBnation account settings to not show avatars (gets rid of the brown dofus with his mouth hanging out avatar)

2) With your screen resolution set to 1024 × 768, select the widescreen view for the blog (can be found upper left hand corner.) This widens the actual blog area, and pushes the advertisement, fanshots and fan posts off the screen a bit. Those items will then only have half of their content on the screen.

3) Increase the size of your fonts in your browser. (Ctrl and + at the same time.) This makes the fonts big enough to finally push those annoying items on the right side, completely off the page.

With these settings I enjoy the content of the site, without the stuff that bugs me.