Home Site Info New writer and a new design!

New writer and a new design!

by Matt Smith

As you will have noticed, there have been a few exciting developments here at BaseballGB this weekend.

Firstly, I’m delighted to welcome Joe Gray to the site.  As well as being an excellent writer, Joe really adds a unique perspective on the British game thanks to his role as Southern Commissioner for the Great Britain Baseball Scorers Association.  It was one of my stated aims of 2008 to increase the coverage of the British scene and, as shown in his first post, Joe will be a key part of this.  Joe will be a regular contributor to BaseballGB alongside his sterling work on the GBBSA website and personally I’m delighted that he has agreed to come on board.

Secondly, one of my other main aims for 2008 was to introduce a new design to the site.  The previous one was fine, but it was very much designed as a theme for a blog written by one person.  With additional writers joining up and more ‘not strictly blog post’ features being added to the site (with the Baseball Basics for Brits series already started and several other new features in the pipeline), we needed a design more in keeping with the next stage of BaseballGB’s life.  Backed up by a year’s worth of data that showed very few visitors view the site with a screen resolution lower than 1024 in width, we’ve put together a design that utilizes the extra space to achieve our aims.  There is still a certain amount of tinkering and tweaking to be done, but I’m very pleased with the results so far and thought the time was right to launch it now.

With a new writer and a new design in place, my attention is already turning to the next wave of new features.  In the coming months, we hope to a add a section containing substantial articles to complement the ‘bread-and-butter’ blog posts as well as an MLB British fan Wiki that I’m currently devising.

Even when I first started blogging about baseball back in March 2006, my long-term objective was always to create a site that contained quality writing about baseball by a group of British writers, as well as providing additional resources that British baseball fans (whether established or newcomers) would enjoy.  After two years of hard (but very enjoyable) work, things are starting to come together.  I’m very excited about what the future holds and I hope you will enjoy all of the new features.

Thanks for your continued support.

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2 comments

Mark Rowe April 27, 2008 - 2:27 pm

Congratulations on the new look for the site Matt, very impressive. I’m particularly enjoying your “Baseball Basics for Brits”. As a suggestion for your site, how about a guide to scoring baseball for beginners, together with some downloadable scorecards. I think this would be a good addition to your site.

Best regards,
Mark.

Reply
Matt Smith April 27, 2008 - 5:46 pm

Hi Mark.

Thanks for your compliments. I’m very glad you like the new design and my Baseball Basics series. I had hoped to have a couple more up by now but work on the new design has taken precedence over the last few weeks. I’m currently working on the next two volumes: one on MLB Front Offices (Owners, General Managers, Managers etc) and one on numbers and statistics. They’re my priority now, on top of the regular blog posts, so hopefully they’ll be finished fairly soon.

I like the idea of putting together some info on scoring baseball. As you’ve probably picked up, it’s something I really enjoy. There are so many different ways to score a ballgame, so it would be difficult (maybe impossible?) to produce a definitive guide, but I could certainly put together an introduction to the subject. Obviously, Joe would be very well placed to add some ‘official’ scoring knowledge to it as well (time permitting). Definitely something to go on my ‘to do’ list.

Thanks again.

Matt.

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