Rivals announces new message boards...

[Vernon]

Eric Winter, the head of Rivals, just released the following regarding the new forums.


Hey everyone,

Just a quick head's up that Rivals.com will be launching brand spanking new "National" Message Boards early Thursday morning. Starting at approximately 9 p.m. PT Wednesday night, Rivals.com will begin the process of migrating data for the following Message Boards: High School Sports Central and for you National Pastime fans - College Baseball Clubhouse.

Once the migration is complete (approximately 4 to 5 hours with no major complications), the new Rivals.com "National" Message Boards will be live and ready for your enjoyment. The Rivals.com team will monitor the new boards for the next 72 hours, and if all goes well, we intend on launching the new Message Boards across every site in the network (including your home sites) this coming Monday night/Tuesday early am.

Here are some of the new Features & Benefits for the new Rivals.com Message Boards:

1. They are a responsive design; meaning, they were designed for desktop, tablets and mobile - all in one design and all at the same URL. No need to go to a different address to get the proper version for your device

2. They have a modern, secure and actively maintained framework built for speed & stability

3. There will be no limit on Thread History, so you can reference old topics or replies at any time

4. There is Private Messaging, Social Profiles and Rich(er) Content - embeddable video, embeddable Tweets, etc

5. You now can set up alerts and follow users so you don't miss replies to topics you're participating in or miss great posts from your favorite users. In your News Feed you'll be able to see all of the topics, users, and content that you wish to follow.

6. Dynamic quoting system so what you select within a thread can be quoted without copying and pasting any code. You select what you want to quote and click Reply over that selection, and it will be put automatically in your reply. You can quote multiple posts and automatic quotingis set up so that you can always follow the conversation with a user forgetting to quote.

7. Improved navigation and search: quickly jump to the first unread post in a thread or to the top and bottom of each thread. Advanced search features include by keyword, date or thread title. Plus, you can link directly to a thread or a reply within a thread with permalinks.

Screenshots: New Message Boards

Once we launch Thursday morning, you will notice a pinned post titled: "Help! How Do I ... for the New Rivals.com Message Boards." Click on that link and you will have numerous threads walking you through everything you need to help make your Message Board experience a truly fun and dynamic one.

Thank you for being a Rivals.com subscriber. Your loyalty to Rivals.com and its local publisher sites is one of the reasons we continue to have the strongest community in the business.

The Rivals.com team and I will have more Product enhancement announcements in May ... and more to come after that.

Best regards,


Eric Winter
Head of Rivals.com

 

[LowFatMilk]

My unsolicited thoughts (followed by a question for V)....

--Many sites have been providing huge fails with 'upgraded' layouts....hopefully Rivals gets it right.

--"No limit on thread history" is an awesome feature. I can't tell you how many times I've wanted to quote posts previously written by several diff people that disappeared.

--"Private Messaging"-- Nice to have... ...plus the two guys in the Pens threads can now communicate directly.

--"Follow Users"-- Cool, now all my fans will be easily able to find all my posts.

--'"ynamic Quoting" Seems we have that already. Maybe it makes it possible to just do partial quotes without having to delete in the reply ??

QUESTION FOR V-- Are both 'Thread' and 'Topic' view still going to be available ??

 

[wvurelic]

The new ESPN web design absolutely sucks. Hope this one is better and fairly easy to get around in.

 

[Vernon]

Originally posted by LowFatMilk:

My unsolicited thoughts (followed by a question for V)....

--Many sites have been providing huge fails with 'upgraded' layouts....hopefully Rivals gets it right.

--"No limit on thread history" is an awesome feature. I can't tell you how many times I've wanted to quote posts previously written by several diff people that disappeared.

--"Private Messaging"-- Nice to have... ...plus the two guys in the Pens threads can now communicate directly.

--"Follow Users"-- Cool, now all my fans will be easily able to find all my posts.

--'"ynamic Quoting" Seems we have that already. Maybe it makes it possible to just do partial quotes without having to delete in the reply ??

QUESTION FOR V-- Are both 'Thread' and 'Topic' view still going to be available ??

Definitely a concern when it comes to releasing new sites. People hate change, although they generally demand it until it happens. I will say I really like what I've seen so far behind the scenes and if I didn't I would tell you...that's just my nature.

Love the idea having posts archived, huge addition.

Private messaging is great unless we find people harassing other users.

Follow users makes it much easier to keep up with the people you like reading.

You're correct on the dynamic quoting and it also allows you to quote several different people in one posts.

Thread view is dead. It's caused some serious fights over on the Blue Lot because a vocal minority are unhappy about it going away but honestly it's just not a format that is supported on forums today. If I could keep it I probably would be I'm the only site owner that has a decent amount of thread view users.

 

[fprio]

This could be one forum change I take a liking to.

 

[PaintedontheSky]

"People hate change, although they generally demand it until it happens".......... I cannot recall reading a more accurate statement on a message board than this one, ever.

 

[GoWVU]

You nailed it...

After using the various incarnations of ESPN's website as my primary site for general sports news for 20 years, I kicked them to the curb in less than a week strictly due to the horrific redesign. They're the George Lucas of sports--everything they do now is an active effort to rape the fans who made them rich in the first place...and just like Lucas, I hope ESPN and their fat cat decision-makers rot in hell forever.

 

[Doctor Doom]

Rest in peace Thread View......
You were my first.....and favorite view.

 

[LowFatMilk]

Originally posted by Doctor Doom:
Rest in peace Thread View......
You were my first.....and favorite view.

You and many others (here). For many years I considered it odd that some of you preferred it (thread view)...and for some years after that I thought it was weird it was even offered on a main stream forum.

I think Rivals kinda missed a 'middle' major update that many other sites made.... ....but this is CLEARLY a chance to not only close the gap but to surpass the competition.

I remember threads with subscribers swearing they would quit this site if it was ever removed...but I think with time they will really prefer the new (aka 2004) way to post in a forum.

-------------

Anyway, even though I'm still considered an 'outsider' by you and many others...I'm excited about the forum changes.

 

[Doctor Doom]

I'm pumped about the changes too. And I'll change with the times, but I enjoy thread view far more than topic.

 

[torontoeers]

--"Private Messaging"-- Nice to have... ...plus the two guys in the Pens threads can now communicate directly.

Thank you for the kind concern

....you know you secretly like to read them LowFatMilk...don't worry, there's likely only 4 games left in the season...