For information on the past, present, and future of this site as well as how you can help support it, click through to read after the jump.
Archive for the 'Site' Category
With my summer commitments over, it should be back to some more regular posting as the season nears. Hopefully that means a few less links posts and a little more real content.
I am also in the process of redesigning the site for the new season. There are too many things with the current layout that are driving me crazy, buggy sidebars, slow load times, etc., and it’s time for change. The new design should fix problems as well as bring some improvements.
However, I am shamefully putting out a call for help. If any of the following apply to you, please shoot me an email.
- Feedback. If you have ideas, things you like (or more importantly dislike) about the current design, cool ideas for the future, or anything else — e-mail me.
- Designers. If you are a designer that means you have a talent I don’t. I’m always looking for design help, whether it’s graphic stuff, CSS stuff, or anything else. I have thought about some kind of logo contest, but I don’t know if there is enough interest. Again, e-mail me if you can help.
- Anything else. If you think you can help, you probably can so e-mail me anyways.
Now that my first full season of blogging is history I wanted to take a step back and look at the last year and a half. Behold, the state of the blog address (I’m not very creative when it comes to headlines).
15 months ago I grew to be frustrated at the lack of a quality Michigan basketball blog. I was a big fan of the Big Ten Wonk but Gasaway had gone on to greener pastures beyond just the Big Ten. I had also become an avid reader of the Detroit Tigers Weblog and could barely make it through a Tigers game without constantly refreshing the comments page. Somehow I wanted to attempt to bring the quality analysis of the Big Ten Wonk and mix it with the community of the Detroit Tigers Weblog.
I have been making webpages for ages so the first step was easy. I jumped in head first and started blogging. The writing still has a ways to go but I feel like my biggest success has been in creating a community. I have been simply dumbfounded at how many people read and comment on my posts. Since I started the blog there have been 1,123,114 page views and 9,865 comments on 559 published posts. I make a point to try to read every comment that comes through (they get forwarded to my e-mail) and I enjoy every one of them.
My main reason for writing this post is to thank each and every one of you that have ever posted a comment, sent an encouraging e-mail, donated money, or visited the site at all over the last fifteen months.
My second reason was to talk about what comes next and make sure this isn’t your last visit between now and November. The site actually grew over the course of last summer so I’m confident you all will stick around.
For the next week or so I’m going to take a bit of a break — there will probably be mostly links posts while I recover from the grueling stretch of blogging over the last couple weeks. Starting next week I’ll be doing a “report card” review of the entire roster, something that I started last year but never finished. It’s safe to say I have a little bit more positive momentum to carry me through that process this year.
I’ll also be focusing on recruiting all summer. First I’ll recap how Michigan targets finished their high school seasons and where their recruitments seem to be right now. After that it is on to AAU season when recruiting really picks up and we can only hope that this summer is as entertaining as the last.
I started a notes page for next year’s schedule, this was a popular page last year and basically it is just a running list of any scheduling information that has leaked out. So far it is a bit bare but you have to start somewhere I suppose. I’ll also be here to cover any other breaking news surrounding the basketball team and I’m sure we can find a couple other topics to debate this summer.
I also moved the site to a new server, there shouldn’t be any problems but DNS updates can be a bit finicky. The new server is faster and should also be more reliable which should help alleviate some of the issues over the last couple months.
Thanks for sticking with me for the first fifteen months, hopefully the next year is even better.
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone.
Coverage has been a bit light this week but it’ll start picking up again heading into a big week as we near the Big Ten season.
UMHoops just passed its first birthday and I just wanted to thank all of you who have stopped by, commented, or told your friends about the site. Hopefully I can do a better job blogging in my 2nd year, we’re one year in but I would agree with KJ that the 10,000 hour rule definitely applies to blogging.
If you are dying for some hoops talk check out Sam Webb’s article in the Detroit News on ‘11 phenom Carlton Brundidge as well as Go Blue Wolverine’s take on ‘10 wing Casey Prather ($). Brundidge is a legit candidate for top dog in Michigan’s loaded class of 2011 while Prather is an intriguing wing prospect from Tennessee.
Some site updates over the long weekend…
2010 Hotboard. I finally put a 2010 hotboard together. It’s a light list for now but I’ll expand is as more targets appear. The top priorities appear to be Trey Zeigler and Will Regan at this point. Let me know if I’m missing any names or there are any other problems. I will update the future targets page and put it back up with some 2011 and 2012 names.
iPhone Version. I’ve setup an iPhone version of the site for people who view the site out on their iPhones (a whopping .4% of you). Let me know how it works, it’s simple but will make browsing and commenting on the site much faster on your phone. You access it by entering the URL normally on your phone. Leave me some feedback in the comments if you use your phone.
Chunk URLs. Long URLs in the comments used to extend out over the sidebars on the right side. These will now be shortened automatically to keep everything looking clean. Feel free to post long URLs fearlessly.
Traffic. The site went over the 500,000 hit mark last week and I just wanted to say thank you to all of you for visiting. I never would have thought there would be this much traffic this soon. I really enjoy running the blog and your comments and feedback are probably the most rewarding part.
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