Red Sox Faithful - Offseason Site Ideas

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Offseason Site Ideas

#1 - October 10, 2005 @ 5:27 PM EST

Boston Red Sox

363 Posts

Hey guys! Hope you're all still doing well. I just wanted to let you all know that sometime this offseason I'd like to find more time to update our site (this time ensuring that we don't lose anything like our switch from the ezBoard). I've become very familiar with the ColdFusion programming language (thanks to work) and may look to change some things into that format, but I'll see how difficult that would be. But if we could do it, I could probably add in more useful stuff for us to use (maybe even figure out the automatic scoreboard updates, because it was a hastle to do the game updates for the first half of the season). Let me know what you guys think, and maybe we can revisit the direction of the site.

#2 - October 11, 2005 @ 5:11 AM EST

BosoxBob

Pawtucket Red Sox

206 Posts

Well, I have a whole laundry list of things I had planned on doing last offseason and never got around to. Heck, Theo got an AL East standings section on the real Monster before I got it on ours! Here's what I recall: Monster changes:[list:d1694a359e][*:d1694a359e]Fix distance markers [*:d1694a359e]Add light towers and Coke bottle [*:d1694a359e]Fix alignment issues with scoreboard [*:d1694a359e]Update crowd pic with original (has more detail, like aisles) [*:d1694a359e]Add AL East standings[/list:u:d1694a359e]Also, I need to finish up the 2004 playoffs section with more game pix. I know I thought of some good ideas during the season, but I can't recall any of them at the moment. Stay tuned... FYI - I'm currently working on my Papi vs ARod MVP evaluation, based on the outcome of every plate appearance and the game situation at the time. I plan on posting/updating a graph of the comparison as I complete each month (Papi has a healthy lead through mid-April. :D )

#3 - October 19, 2005 @ 2:18 PM EST

berstch

Lowell Spinner

25 Posts

Thought I would chime in some. I think the changes that were talked about last year that didn't happen should take priority. I feel kind of limited in what I can do since we switched over to here because I don't know the system like I knew ezBoard. Sure, it was limited, but I knew how to do almost everything over there. I know we have a lot more options here, but I am not sure how to take advantage of them. I think the site itself is good, but it just needs more content. Is promotion the key to this? We are set up to be member driven, but we just don't have enough members. Maybe we should figure out how to get more. The only visual thing I could suggest for the whole site would be a newer looking skin, which I don't even know if this is possible to be done. I would like to keep the same colors and all, but just update the graphics presentation. Is this possible guru? Let me know anything I can do to help.

#4 - November 13, 2005 @ 11:54 PM EST

BosoxBob

Pawtucket Red Sox

206 Posts

Hopefully I'm not opening up a can of worms by doing this, but I'm trying to publicize my article on the MVP race - the one that's currently on the front page. Besides posting here about the article, I've emailed a guy who runs a (very ironically named) site called HireMeTheo.com, and I also posted a notice on an MVP thread at Boston.com. I'm thinking of posting something tomorrow on the Sox Therapy section of BaseballThinkFactory.org (as a comment to the inevitable story about the MVP), and may do the same at several other well-known Sox or sabermetric-type sites. I'm also hoping to send an email to the Herald's Tony Massarotti (whose article started all of this) if I can get his address from NSD. If nothing else, at least Mazz can have the satisfaction of knowing he was right, and maybe he'll give us a mention. If you guys are worried about this, let me know and I'll put on the brakes. But frankly, I'd like to see this place be a little bit busier.

#5 - January 5, 2006 @ 5:25 PM EST

GuruGreg

Boston Red Sox

363 Posts

Hey guys... I've been working on some other ideas, as I've been fairly unhappy with some of the limitations I've come across when trying to add things over here, but they are still in mid-development. Hopefully by the end of the month they'll look much better. Also, in the time that we lost the www.redsox2000.com domain, NYYS and I talked about maybe changing the site name because maybe people are assuming it's out of date. Therefore, I have registered http://www.redsoxfaithful.com and will be focusing much of my development towards that. Just wanted to let you guys know that I have been keeping busy working on some updates!

#6 - January 6, 2006 @ 7:37 AM EST

BosoxBob

Pawtucket Red Sox

206 Posts

I had meant to reply to that email about the site name (I had correctly guessed that the domain name had expired when the site didn't come up that day), but never got around to it. Re the new domain name, I was going to suggest 21stCenturySox.com (I believe ekanenh first recommended this several years ago, as well as coming up with a variation to the song lyrics for the old Doors song "20th Century Fox"). But I like your selection as well (though I'm surprised that it was available), and it avoids any confusion with that other Sox championship team. Hey, an idea stuck me as I was thinking about the new name. It reminded me of another site called Fenway Faithful run by a woman named Christine who used to pop in occasionally to our message board way back when. I checked out her site and it is nothing like her old site (which had its own message board, game stories, trivia, and other Sox info like an all-time list of Sox player's numbers). It appears that time/money issues have prevented her from maintaining the site at its previous level. I also recently went through my bookmarks to arrange them and prune out dead links and ran across a link to a site called Bartlett Park, a site with a slick appearance based on Fenway, but with little content. So anyway, my thought was to contact some of the operators of these infrequently updated sites and see if they'd be willing to pool their resources/time and contribute to our new site. For instance, it would be nice to have game reports for each game, like NYYS used to do. So maybe Christine could do that as she'd done in the past, but she wouldn't have to be responsible for site maintenance. The guys from BP could write some articles, say. So what do you think?

#7 - January 6, 2006 @ 3:30 PM EST

GuruGreg

Boston Red Sox

363 Posts

Bob, I think that would be a great idea to get some more people together to work on this stuff. I love working on all the design and programming stuff, but I'm not the best when it comes to content. If we could get more contributors on board, I think that would be great!

#8 - January 11, 2006 @ 3:45 AM EST

berstch

Lowell Spinner

25 Posts

Great idea BSB... sorry I haven't been around at all guys... I feel guilty not doing anything around. I think part of the reason why I haven't done anything in a very long time is that I can not get comfortable with the postnuke system. I tried several times, but just don't really get it. With as much work as we put into the site, I think it is a shame that we don't have any content aside from the message board, and that itself is quite a bit down from when we were on ezboard. I think site oriented content will drive message board content and feed more and more users. I don't think we are overkill on the subject, because we do some things that other sites don't, using original articles and a main site with the message board with a supplementation. I have suggested that to SoSH several times thinking that a place of that size could easily pull of a main site and become the undisputed king of redsox internet land. RedSoxNation.net has come the closest, but their site consists mainly of interviews. I think if we get more articles and statistical analysis, ala BSB's breakdown of the MVP race, our quality will definately create a niche. I have also found this site pretty hard to navigate... I think we need to polish the look and trim the sections down to stuff that is important. If a section is not updated in months, what is the point of cluttering space on the site, and confusing the readers. I think we need to have quality content that is well presented and easy to access. The visitors will come by word of mouth and some networking, which is why I think BosoxBob's idea is great. I could go either way with the domain name. I think we have established ourselves as RS2K and more people know about us than we might think, but at the same time, a new name might help a relaunch and stimulate interest. Whatever I can do to help, I would love to do it. The best way to reach me is twatson@ufl.edu. I look forward to hearing what you guys think!

#9 - January 25, 2006 @ 5:58 PM EST

BosoxBob

Pawtucket Red Sox

206 Posts

Just wanted to provide a quick update. I was contacted yesterday by the guy (Mike) who runs HireMeTheo.com. He does sabermetric analysis and wrote up a nice piece about my Ortiz/MVP story. Anyway, he wanted to know if I would be interested in collaborating with him, either by submitting some of my stuff to go on his site, or combining efforts and possibly merging our stuff into a single site. So I responded by telling him about our efforts to change/expand here and said we'd be interested in having him contribute in the future. For the time being, I intend to write a few articles (like that Crisp analysis I put on the board) that I'll post both here and there. I'm also going to see if he'll put a link to our site on his page.