The Big One

The relaunch, finally!

This place just had that “left my gloves in my hockey bag too long before I used them again” smell to it.  So we took a few lemons, some zambonis and handful of strippers and came up with this.

The place has been revamped, and the best way to go about this is just to break down what’s new. (Tip: if the place is looking really weird, you might want to refresh your browser. Hold ctrl and hit F5 or hold shift and click the refresh button. For specific instructions for your browser, click here.)

The Logo

Brand spankin' new. Hope you like it. Much more logo-like and it'd look pretty damn cool on a jersey. The old-style logo has not been tossed away. It's also been revamped. Consider it our shoulder patch.

Before you ask: yes, we will be making shirts, maybe more.

The Layout

The menu has moved from the left to the top and will drop down for easy access. This also gives us more room for content, which we have a lot of.

The new layout is designed to fit well into a 1024x768 screen resolution. However, if you're on 800x600, most pages should fit well inside that, with the extra content on the right (in other words, most pages are designed to not make you have to scroll mid-sentence to read anything on 800x600).

Quick Hits

Might as well start with this in terms of new content. Yup, it's a blog, but we're not in the mood to call it that. It'll be updated often and I'll also use it for the video updates, so subscribe away. There will be a few guest bloggers from time to time as well. I threw some of the last bigger updates into the system to give it a little something at the start. We plan on linking commenting here to the forum membership system. I'll leave comments open on many posts as long as we're not pounded with spam.

League pages

These are huge. Like a portal for each league these pages include the day's schedule, latest fight log entries, FM leaders and archives.

Snapshots

Snapshots were little bits of information we were plugging into team and player pages. We gave up on these for a while, but after a lot of feedback we've been bringing them back. We're still a little behind, but John Chandler (jayc948 in the forums) is plugging away at them. After we've caught up we'll give them their own page for those looking to absorb info quickly. All snapshots modules will now have links to the other related leagues, teams or players.

Player and team pages

The pages have been cleaned up a bit and both now have related news items. Planned: Full news and snapshots archives. Player searching is also being worked on for speed.

Schedules

The schedule page now has today's games for all leagues we cover listed along with game times. Warning: we're still converting all times to eastern, some are still local. We should have thae conversion completed within a few days. Planned: pick-a-day calendar.

Standings

Standings were neatened up, and we still separate overtime losses and shootout losses due to feedback. On the right are the playoff standings listing points and games remaining (GR).

Stats

The NHL fight stats along with player and team leaders. Planned: Stats for the other leagues we cover.

Fight log

We attempted to make this easier to read and provided relevent links on the right. The voting links now say "Vote / Details". Nothing's changed right now, but...

Fight voting / details

This is simply planned, but it's high on the priority list: voting is changing. Player ratings will be optional, so those who don't follow specific players or leagues well can just vote on the fight, and that's it. We'll also have more detailed voting results along with any other relevent info.

Games pages

More planned: our preview pages are popular, and we've definitely clearned those up, but after games are played the preview pages will flip into results pages with any fights listed and some additional information.

Videos

As I wrote above, if you subscribe to this feed I'll update it after the videos are posted, generally late night. People have enjoyed the Youtube previews, so we'll continue to do that for select clips. There's more planned, but no announcement until we iron it all out.

Forums

The forums have been tweaked to fit into the layout, which gives us some more breathing room for posts, the chat room and the arcade games. The right side will soon have some additional links and information.

News

The news system is tied into our forums system, so it might look awkward at first. We're working on reformatting and adding some more features to it.

Originals

More of them coming soon. Finally.

Searching

A search solution will be implemented soon to make finding anything on this site even easier.

Some thanks

I want to thank all the forum leaders for helping me out and the members for keeping the place the best on the web. The moderators keep the place semi-sane and the content team helps with the logs and news information here.

Some credits

First, a big shout to 45royale. They helped a great deal in keeping this place un-ugly. They're in Atlanta and actually know of the Thrashers. Bonus points.

Alejandro, for helping me with our new wicked cool logo (I lost a bet to a Boston boy and had to use the phrase "wicked cool" in my first post here).

Rudy Limeback, SQL Consultant for helping me with some of the dirty work that makes things run. Rudy is the only Canadian not obsessed with hockey, but we forgive him.

The icons were picked up from famfamfam.com.

More fight logs

To go along with this relaunch, we've made a few more older logs public. As always, if you notice anything that needs correcting, contact me. Same goes with any bugs you might run into here. Please email me so I can take care of them asap.

That's it for now. There are still a few sections we have to fill in, but we have no patience and just need to get this thing live. I'll update here when we add anything new. Enjoy.