You may recall from discussions in the last couple months that SBNation, the blog network to which ClipsNation belongs, is in the process of upgrading to a new blogging platform, SBN 2.0.
The Oakland A's blog, Athletics Nation was the first to migrate, followed by all the other baseball blogs. So if you're an Angels or Dodgers fan, perhaps you're already familiar with the new layout from Halos Heaven or True Blue LA.
It is now time for the NBA blogs to migrate. The goal is to have all of the playoff teams up and running before the playoffs start. Of course, that's not really a consideration here in ClipsNation, but our window remains the same so that all of the basketball blogs will be on the new platform.
Early this morning, Golden State of Mind became the first basketball team site on the new platform. GSoM has the most traffic of our NBA sites, and many community members who push the functionality envelope, so the assumption was that if there were any bugs lurking (especially problems specific to basketball that the baseball blogs didn't uncover), they'd be the ones to find them. So far so good - the GSoM community seems pretty pleased with the new look, and they haven't even gotten too deep into the new functionality yet, which is a significant upgrade.
Rather than try to describe what's coming, I recommend that you spend some time on GSoM if you are curious. You can start with the welcome post from clockwerks, who is the lead designer of SBN 2.0. It describes most of the major changes, as well as those things that you'll need to do the first time you access the new site.
ClipsNation is scheduled to migrate next Sunday April 20. Unfortunately, as the NBA season will be complete for the Clippers, many of the new features that take advantage of NBA data (like easy access to box scores, schedules, rosters, etc.) won't be particularly evident until November. But I figure this way it's like we get two Christmases this year - new look and feel and lots of new features now, and an extra bonus of sports data features when the season starts.
As it happens, I leave for five days of canyoneering in Mexico next Monday, so I'll be around the first day of the migration, but out of touch for awhile immediately after that. Clockwerks and his team will be monitoring your feedback, so there's really no problem with me being gone. I'm just a little disappointed that I won't be around for the first week of new platform fun. There is however this new feature for scheduling posts - so if I get motivated enough to pre-write some stuff, you'll still hopefully be getting some fresh content while I'm away. And among the new features are significant enhancements for community generated content, so you can all do your duty as citizens and post some stuff also.
That's it for now. Check out the new features at GSoM or on the SBNation baseball sites. I think you're going to like what you see.