One month(ish) into the new site; thoughts, opinions?

[Brock Beauchamp]

Most of the site is up and running now. Ads are in place. Content is light but it's also late January; we'll be ramping up content aggressively in the coming month or so. The top prospects ranking is being built out and should launch in late February.

So what are your thoughts? What do you like, what don't you like? Go ahead and be honest about it, I genuinely want to know what people think. We try to tailor each site to the community's preferences as much as we can so let me know your thoughts!

[jaysblue]

Not sure if it's just me, but the pages in each thread seem to go on forever since we got to scroll down a lot. Like I have to scroll down over posts I've already read and it takes a while to get to the new ones down at the bottom of the page. 

As well, the ads in the middle of the threads when scrolling down through posts. Prefer them on the side, top or bottom of the pages. Not in the middle of posts. 

[Hipfan]

Overall I really like the new look. Only thing I don't like is that the around baseball thread is not in the main Blue Jays forum. I understand it's not "Blue Jays" related, but it was nice having all the main Blue Jays and baseball talk in the same forum. Having to jump out of the Blue Jays forum to the non-blue Jays forum, to keep talking about baseball is annoying, and I find myself not going into the around baseball thread nearly as much as I used to.

[Brock Beauchamp]

13 minutes ago, Hipfan said:

Overall I really like the new look. Only thing I don't like is that the around baseball thread is not in the main Blue Jays forum. I understand it's not "Blue Jays" related, but it was nice having all the main Blue Jays and baseball talk in the same forum. Having to jump out of the Blue Jays forum to the non-blue Jays forum, to keep talking about baseball is annoying, and I find myself not going into the around baseball thread nearly as much as I used to.

I encourage you to play around with the discover page. It's a cool alternative to browsing the site that you can customize to your liking.

https://jayscentre.com/discover/unread/

[Spanky99]

1 hour ago, Brock Beauchamp said:

I encourage you to play around with the discover page. It's a cool alternative to browsing the site that you can customize to your liking.

https://jayscentre.com/discover/unread/

Oh, cool beans, I'll check that feature out. How come there isn't a delete option, Brock?

 

[Spanky99]

8 hours ago, jaysblue said:

Not sure if it's just me, but the pages in each thread seem to go on forever since we got to scroll down a lot. Like I have to scroll down over posts I've already read and it takes a while to get to the new ones down at the bottom of the page. 

As well, the ads in the middle of the threads when scrolling down through posts. Prefer them on the side, top or bottom of the pages. Not in the middle of posts. 

Just click on unread content, top right and bottom right of each page, it'll take you to your unread content to avoid scrolling through pages you've already read. It's a game changer for me. You don't even need to navigate the sub-forums or anything like that. Easy Peasy.

[Brock Beauchamp]

1 hour ago, Spanky99 said:

Oh, cool beans, I'll check that feature out. How come there isn't a delete option, Brock?

It's turned off by default, just a holdover from our other sites. If people want to be able to delete their content, I'm open to that.

[Spanky99]

7 minutes ago, Brock Beauchamp said:

It's turned off by default, just a holdover from our other sites. If people want to be able to delete their content, I'm open to that.

For me, it's more about double posts or sharing a tweet someone had just prior to me and stuff like that. Not a big deal by any means, loving the new site and content, mate.

 

[Brock Beauchamp]

15 minutes ago, Spanky99 said:

For me, it's more about double posts or sharing a tweet someone had just prior to me and stuff like that. Not a big deal by any means, loving the new site and content, mate.

Okay, all old-timey members should now have the ability to click the ... at top right of each post and select delete.

[Spanky99]

26 minutes ago, Brock Beauchamp said:

Okay, all old-timey members should now have the ability to click the ... at top right of each post and select delete.

Awesome, thanks Brock.

[John_Havok]

Is it possible to have the articles separated from the forum threads? 

I get that content generation is key in driving traffic, but I don't want to have scroll through all the articles to get to the non-article threads. And honestly, the volume of articles already is irritating, but that's just "old man yelling at clouds" syndrome

Is that available in customization? 

[TylerDurden]

Ads under every post makes me not want to use the site and I probably wont.

[JaysAllMighty]

Good job Brock, I really like the new format.  Since I spend time on this site every day I am happy to contribute $60 a year, it's well worth it in my opinion and I don't see any adds... bonus!

[Brock Beauchamp]

3 hours ago, JaysAllMighty said:

Good job Brock, I really like the new format.  Since I spend time on this site every day I am happy to contribute $60 a year, it's well worth it in my opinion and I don't see any adds... bonus!

Thank you!

[Brock Beauchamp]

15 hours ago, John_Havok said:

Is it possible to have the articles separated from the forum threads? 

I get that content generation is key in driving traffic, but I don't want to have scroll through all the articles to get to the non-article threads. And honestly, the volume of articles already is irritating, but that's just "old man yelling at clouds" syndrome

Is that available in customization? 

Is it really that big of a problem? I've been trying to move older article threads to the news forum each morning but admittedly, I've been slacking this week. But during the season when I have game threads every morning, I'll be more diligent about making sure this forum doesn't fill up with article threads.

[Orgfiller]

Is there presently a way of marking items as "read" from the Unread Section? Additionally I wish it was possible to combine the news and threads into one in the unreads since they're effectively one and the same, so having to manually mark both as unread is a bit cumbersome at the moment. This is obviously quite minor and most of the trouble would go away if I knew of/there was an option to mark topics as read.

Loving the site and love the influx of content. It's not always necessarily groundbreaking stuff, but there's good analysis in there and a few articles have opened my eyes up.

[Brock Beauchamp]

1 hour ago, Orgfiller said:

Additionally I wish it was possible to combine the news and threads into one in the unreads since they're effectively one and the same, so having to manually mark both as unread is a bit cumbersome at the moment.

This is the bane of my existence, to be honest. I've spent years trying to figure out a good solution to this and every solution breaks so many things that it's terrifying to implement.

Though recently I've come up with an idea that might work, thinking of giving it a go but it REALLY changes how we operate behind the scenes so I need to get buy-in from several other people on it.

[Orgfiller]

2 hours ago, Brock Beauchamp said:

This is the bane of my existence, to be honest. I've spent years trying to figure out a good solution to this and every solution breaks so many things that it's terrifying to implement.

Though recently I've come up with an idea that might work, thinking of giving it a go but it REALLY changes how we operate behind the scenes so I need to get buy-in from several other people on it.

I feel ya. Like I said, it's definitely not as big of an issue if I could just quickly pass by the unreads and mark them as read with the simple click of a button. The only way I see this possible currently is by clicking into the unread and going back.

[Delete_My_Account_Thanks]

Love the changes you've made Brock!  The articles are nice and especially the changes to the forum moderation standards that have led to less bullying/attacks by certain posters who used to get away with a lot on the old site, and would end up chasing off new board members who didn't share their same opinions. 

Credit also goes out to the posters who have adapted to this and no longer pick on others.

Much more welcoming to everyone.

I am planning to donate to the board as a result of this.

[John_Havok]

On 1/31/2025 at 8:42 AM, Brock Beauchamp said:

Is it really that big of a problem? I've been trying to move older article threads to the news forum each morning but admittedly, I've been slacking this week. But during the season when I have game threads every morning, I'll be more diligent about making sure this forum doesn't fill up with article threads.

I don't presume to speak for others, just me. 

If I want to read an article, I prefer clicking to the place where the articles are. If I want to read discussion posts about general blue jays or baseball topics, I would rather click there and not have to sift past the stuff I don't want to read. 

It's just an extension of the same logic as to why the minor league portion of the forums is separated from the the others, why the non-baseball is separated. 

Articles here. 

Forums there

News over here.