New Season, New Site: Why We Refreshed Pistols Firing

We have a new website. Unless you’re new here, you’ve noticed that things have changed a bit since you last got on. We wrestled the thing into place on Friday (I wore a singlet and sat at my desk like Gundy while everyone else did the actual work), and the fifth (sixth? seventh?) iteration of the front-facing portion of this site is now here.

This site refresh was the result of our evolution from one guy (me) pounding letters on a keyboard and splaying thoughts all over the internet to a rag-tag operation of folks contributing part time to, well, what we have now. And what we have now is a thriving business of professionals writing, podcasting and creating #content about Oklahoma State sports. We needed a better way to showcase and distribute all of that.

I’ll never forget the commenter who told me years ago we needed to organize our site better. “You don’t have a blog anymore,” he said. “You have a website.” I’d take it a step further. We have a business.

The primary thing you’ll notice when you get on is that the good stuff stays at the top longer. There are other smaller things. The reading experience is tighter, search is better, our navigation bar ribbon is more prominent and we now have a trending posts section, but our main goal was to organize all the stuff in a way that makes more sense.

With so much news and information flowing in, there needed to be a better way than just a linear look at what’s happening in Stillwater. We’re going to continue tweaking the home page — because I can’t help tweaking things (more on that below) — and the punch list of things to clean up is already longer than Yor Anei, but we think that we’re at least in the ballpark of making the user experience better. Let’s take a spin around the new PFB.

At the very top, you’ll see our featured stuff. This is where 10 Thoughts will live. This is where big breaking news will live. This is where Hill family races will live. This is the premium material for consumption. The good stuff. The stuff we’ve spent a lot of time on.

Below that we jump right into recent news. We didn’t want to push recent news too far down the page because we know a lot of you go to the home page just to see if anything has happened in the last few hours (or for some of you, few minutes).

On to two more sets of content: Featured posts (more good stuff), Bullets and my thoughts on things. Then we get to our podcasts and videos.

Finally you have the rest of our posts in order they were written.

Our goal in all of this was to increase the value of the home page for you guys, the readers. We will likely mix up what some of these content boxes hold — how cool would a throwback box be with randomly generated old posts?! — but this is generally what the site will look like going forward for the foreseeable future.

And hey if you don’t like it, we added a ribbon link to a linear page. The latest news at the top. Everything looks the same. Some of you may go ahead and bookmark that instead. That’s totally fine.

The way PFB looks and functions is incredibly important to me. I think there’s value to be had in making good content, but there’s also value to be had in the way you present it. It’s easy to forget that on the internet, but I think it matters. PFB has at various times been influenced by Deadspin, The Ringer, Grantland, 11 Warriors, MGoBlog, TexAgs, ESPN, Vox, the failing New York Times and several other sites I’m not pulling out of my head right now.

So I thought it would be fun to look back on the various iterations of what this place has been as we enter a new era so I headed to the way-back machine and grabbed shots of all the various ways PFB has looked over the years (since fall 2010 when I started stocking content).

Version 1

Version 2

Version 3

Version 4

Version 5

Version 6

With the site change, there are other things that we will roll out this fall, including a rebranding of our contributor program and some other fun features I probably shouldn’t talk about publicly yet. We will build out our navigation bar and fill out the spaces that need to be filled out with good, well-designed content and information.

I am a serial tweaker. I can’t help myself. Sometimes I think it’s a disease. Other times, the most optimistic times, I say that it’s just because I want what’s best. For myself, for our people, for you guys. Mrs. Pistols does not enjoy my tweaking because it inevitably leads to angst and frustration when things do not go the way I envisioned them in my head. I say that to say that I hope you view my tweaking and tinkering with things as me caring, deeply caring about the products we build. Will they always work properly? Nope. Will they sometimes break? Absolutely. But my intent is to never stop pushing ideas and vision into the future.

But enough about my psyche and marriage. One thing I wanted to put in front of you guys is an opportunity for feedback. Tell us what you like and hate about about the new site. Tell us what you want more of and less of. Tell us what you think or if something is broken (many of you have already done this, and it’s incredibly helpful!) Tell us in the comments. Tell us on Twitter. Tell us via email.

Because in the end, we can create all the #content we want and build all the mechanisms to distribute it we are humanly capable of, but it’s pretty meaningless unless someone (you) is on the receiving end. Thank you for reading, supporting and telling other people about Pistols Firing.

Also some thank yous …

To Kyle Boone for leading and knowing how and when to push me.
To Kyle Cox for his unending well of energy and hard work.
To Mac, our developer, for shoehorning this thing into place. It was a beast.

To the rest of our #squad for being as good (and as fun) as it gets in this world. Here’s to a great season. And then a bunch more after that.