See Why I Redesigned Pistols Firing (Again)

I am a tinkerer of things. I can’t help myself. I would have been the worst golfer in the history of professional golfers because  of this (also for many, many other reasons).

Anyway, I started thinking after hiring Kyle Boone recently that as the site’s content becomes more robust, the site itself probably needed to grow with it.

For so long I’ve been running a one-man operation — little more than a singular blog that gets updated as quickly and as efficiently as I can update it.[1. I’ve done this, more than once after a game, from the Best Buy on Perkins.] A magazine-style WordPress theme never really made sense until now.

I’ve tried to change the framework of the blog as little as possible. The big change viscerally is probably the photo slider at the top of the home page. I’m hoping content will live a little longer here than it used to on the old design.[1. This is something Royce Young suggested like two years ago, I’m a little slow on the uptake.]

There are two other bigger changes (the rest is font styles and littler stuff that I probably notice more than anyone). The first is that there are more ads. That’s on purpose. I want to hire more Kyle Boones in the future. I want to be able to pay this Kyle Boone more. I want the site to continue to grow and expand so that, as my family grows and expands, it makes sense to continue to run it.

And the other is, I can’t believe I’m typing this …

Forums.

Yep, Pistols Firing has forums. I swore I never would but I’ve been talked into it. There are a myriad reasons, of course, but the foremost is probably financially selfish — I have no problem admitting that.

There are two other reasons that really make sense to me, too. The first is that I expect the forums to be an incubator of sorts. You guys would be suprised at how many post ideas I get from the comments section (or maybe you wouldn’t, but I do). I hope the forums are an even better version of that.

The second is that I want the PFB forums to be a place for you to hang out. A community. Kyle Boone pointed out that it’s a great place for gameday threads (etc.) because the only other time we do stuff on here during game days is long after the pigskin has ceased being tossed around. It’s going to be fun to be able to talk during games.

I believe the brand of PFB is such that our forums will be at least ahead of the message-board curve. I genuinely do think there will be good ideas, thoughtful posts and fun batner. (Maybe I’m feeling a tad optimistic?)

How do you sign up? Well, I wrote about that right here.

A few other notes on the redesign:

• The mobile experience will be much better for you. Cleaner, tighter and hopefully easier to get around. Less patchwork code by me, too, which is always a good thing.[1. You’d probably rather have Mike Gundy trying to write code than me.]

• This is the Voice theme by Meks, by the way. Very impressive stuff. I literally bought it on Friday night and here we are.

• Pro tip: If you’re about to spend a week covering the US Open, don’t redesign a site the weekend before (IMO).

• Bear with me on a few things. I’m sure there’s plenty that I’ve missed in bringing up to date. Feel free to note as such in this forum.

• Really, go hang out in the forums! But make sure you sign up first.

I hope you enjoy the redesign as much as I’ve enjoyed bringing you OSU news over the last four and a half (!) years. It’s my hope that these changes and tweaks help push this thing forward into what should be a really fun future.