We Updated the Home Page!
You might have noticed that we updated the main home page to reflect some of the changes we recently made on the RotoGraphs landing page and the new blog roll.
We cleaned up the design, added more photos, and reorganized our content. The left column will primarily contain editorial content, while the right column will have more evergreen site features. Our aim is to make FanGraphs more inviting and discoverable to new users, while simplifying and streamlining the experience for our current users. Almost all of the content from the old home page has been retained with the new home page. We also expanded the most popular article section (which is determined by pageviews) to include more articles and RotoGraphs content.
If you have any questions or comments, or if anything is broken, please let us know in the comments. Please include what device, browser, and operating system you are using in order to help us figure out any issues. Thank you!
I build things here.
Looks great!
The only disappointment to me is that this article’s photo of the new homepage doesn’t have this article in it, with a photo of the new homepage, with this article in it, …
came here to say this 🙂
I was hoping for Dick Allen surrounded by homepages.
RotoGraphs? More like PhotoGraphs, amirite?
Bring back NotGraphs!
Second this. #keepnotgraphs I came to this site multiple times per day to check notgraphs and chat with people there. Wanna increase traffic? Notgraphs. Wanna surround Dick Allen with allen wrenches? Notgraphs. Want Banknotes Harper to pound conference tables? Notgraphs. Want teams of Adam Dunns, Bartolo Colons, Koji Ueharas, and poor Dee P Grodons to battle it out? You get the idea.
Without Cistulli, would NotGraphs be as good?
Bring back Cistulli!
#NotGraphs is more than any one individual. #NotGraphs is a lifestyle.
Was that the pun this whole time, and I didn’t get it til just now?
Where do I find the chat schedule?
found it. Not a fan of changes for the sake of change. Would have preferred something bettering Fangraphs, like PRINT OUTs of the discussions for the impaired hearing population. Many, MANY discussions I would have liked to have read, With voice recognition software that request should be honored.
Love the update! Great job, y’all!
Pointless. And lose the photos please, they just take up space.
Soooooo AGREE. Pointless. Moving pieces from one pocket to another. Of absolutely no value added. Put effort toward something that is USEful, not just an exercise in running out the clock
I think I agree about the photos, at least on mobile. I imagine it looks better on a regular screen but on a small screen the photos take up too much real estate and make it hard to skim the recent articles.
It’s a mess on a regular screen too. I’m using a desktop with a pretty big monitor right now and I see (1) the picture for the lead article, (2), the link for the lead article, (3) the heading for “top articles”, and (4) the upper 25% of the pictures for the top articles. If you’re looking for anything other than the lead article, you have to work for it.
As someone who has a little experience re-designing web sites, I am surprises that work here would not focus first on mobile, which is how most people browse.
While I am a fan of big visuals, they should be in proportion to the degree to which the home page is static (bigger visuals) or often updated (smaller visuals).
Did you pay someone to do the re-design or did you do it in-house?
The lead picture on the front page is enormous. It’s more or less all you see when you come to the homepage, and I’m looking at this on a desktop. If all you want to do is push one article then that would make sense, but it does make it much harder to find everything else. Which is a shame.
Completely agree, I don’t like having to scroll so much to get to recent articles just to make room for a giant picture.
Agree, I enjoyed the content based approach the old layout had. Now its just useless bells and whistles. Meh
This may have been mentioned below (apologies if I’m duplicating stuff others said), but figured it was worth saying. Web page design (and redesign) is something of a science. As crazy as this is to say, professionals in this space often understand how our brains work better than we ourselves do. Yes, it may seem pointless (i.e. just moving things from one place to another), however there is evidence that human brains process a screen in certain ways that make placing, organizing, and / or designing things in a specific fashion easier for folks to find, navigate, etc. This can also save users a non-negligble amount of time / effort in terms of how long or how difficult it is for them to navigate to (or between) certain content or reduce the headaches in doing so. Upon release of a redesign (like this one) user satisfaction will almost ALWAYS go down (typically by a non-negligible amount) immediately. As you can probably guess, this is almost entirely a product of current users being used to looking in once place for something and finding it moved somewhere else which sends them on an errand to find where it now resides. Negative responses will typically subside (and overall satisfaction will typically increase) over time as users get used to the new layout and find that some of the changes have actually drastically improved the flow and navigation of the site.
TL,DR: Let’s all bear a little short-term pain for some long-term gain.
I’ll add that feedback is still eminently valuable, so I don’t want this to come off like I’m shouting people down from offering it. Absolutely provide your thoughts and recommendations and I’m sure some of it will be taken into account.
I love this for you.
I don’t think I like this redesign as much because it makes it harder to find recent articles that aren’t designated as “top articles”. Is there a way to put recent articles up along the right-hand side, near the top, instead of the tools? That would be a huge improvement.
Finding recent articles we want to go back to that have been pushed down the list was already cumbersome, this seems to make that even more so.
Recent articles are right after top articles and roto. For me, it’s one spin of the mouse wheel.
Just to reinforce this–this article is now “below the fold” because it hasn’t been designated as a “top” article. Articles are now posted in the morning and disappear below the fold later in the morning. I don’t think that is an improvement.
Update: There are now *several* articles posted today that you would miss if you didn’t scroll down.
Agreed. Personally I’d really enjoy an option to turn off top/popular articles entirely and show everything in chronological order. I’m here at least daily, and all I really want is an easy way to see what’s been posted since last time I visited. Top articles are wasted space for me because 99% of the time I’ve already read them.
I’m sure there are others who appreciate the feature, just sharing my thoughts on how I use the site and what’s useful to me.
Yes. I noted elsewhere that I want to scroll the content that I’ve missed. An on/off toggle for popular vs. chronological would be great.
https://www.fangraphs.com/blog-roll?blog=fg.
Wow, thanks for this. I changed my bookmark immediately. This is so much better for people who visit daily (hourly?)
This is exactly what I’ve needed. Thanks, S.T.!
Thanks ST. This should be a “top comment.”
It took me a while to find it, but I may switch my bookmark to the blog roll page. I can’t put the link in because it goes to moderation, but I believe David Appelman links to it below.
I kind of think this is a better page for me, but it’s pretty hard to find and I think a lot of people will just not click on additional articles rather than set a new bookmarks page.
Thanks for pointing that out. Unless there’s anything on the home page that can’t easily be reached from the blog roll, I’ll probably switch.
This is why I usually head straight for the “Blog Roll” in the “Blogs” dropdown.
Needs more Soto pics
This is not an improvement. One of the best features of Fangraphs was that it was not **updated**. Now it looks muddled and confused and clickbaity. Not a fan.
Why would a unique and useful website hobble itself in a needless attempt to mimic all the other banal sports sites out there.
I think you might have the wrong definition of clickbaity. Or I guess you’re saying that anything with pictures looks clickbaity?
I will second the notion that the landing page looks clickbaity. But I suspect there may be platforms where it does not look that way – ones that the page was debugged on?
What I see on both an iPad and on Chrome in a Windows PC is the banner menu at the top, then three large ads that take up at least half the real estate, then just the top 1/4 of an extremely large photo, with a box to the right titled “Offseason Tools” with four links that I never have used and am not sure why I would. Almost nothing functional is there on the platforms I use.
Perhaps if the photo could be seen n it’s entirety with an article link, the page could at least be argued to look good and professional. And maybe there are platforms where that can be seen – the image near the top of this article kind of looks like that (although it is missing the three large ads). But as it actually appears on the platforms I use, it looks … clickbaity. YMMV.
I will add that the banner menus at the top are split int three rows. The third of those is the plea for membership. That could easily be incorporated into the top row, which is almost entirely blank except for the Fangraphs logo on the far left, saving some real estate. And there is an inordinate amount of white space both above and below the three large ads. If you get rid of that, along with the banner ad incorporation, you get about 20% of the height of the landing page back.
I will also add that I suspect a lot of the different reactions here are because I think the user experience of a non-subscriber is a lot different than for subscribers, who I believe do not get the three large ads or the subsription plea. So subscribers see a pretty clean landing page that makes sense and at least looks professional even if it does not provide all the functionality at a fingertip. And I suppose that’s perfectly fair — non-subscribers have not paid for the privilege of having that clean experience. But I do wonder how new users react to the current landing page, and whether it incentivizes them to come back.
Looks good! I really like it when viewing on my phone.
You are a strange bird. The page displays very poorly on mobile; the photos take up so much space I have to scroll 10x as long to see a few articles.
Can we have a “no photo” option? I don’t need to see a picture of Coors on an article about Rockies prospects. I am aware the Rockies play at Coors. There is no value there for me.
Nothing loads well or refreshes well, often with black boxes blocking out parts of the pages at times (usually for just a split second). The spray charts are blank and have been for some time now, which is actually my biggest gripe. The refresh button goes ballistic without touching it, which usually triggers the partial blackouts.
I use a fully-loaded ASUS VivoBook with Windows 10 and Firefox. I thought the problem might have been related to my old computer, but the one I use now is 4 months old and the problems are still present. I even changed internet service providers. Cable, fiber-optic…same issues.
I’m not stateside, so maybe that’s part of the problem, but I didn’t have these problems before 2021.
This is amazing. Thanks to all you put in the work…
Now I can only see a single headline at a time on the page. I don’t like it.
Meh. I don’t personally care about pictures on the homepage compared to what is used within each piece to support the analysis or storytelling. I am sure the rest of it will be fine once I get used to it, but for now it is change without any immediate reward for me with some slight added discomfort by not finding thigs where I expect them to be for a net negative and since most change initially falls under either GOOD! or TERRIBLE!!! I will have to choose the latter.
No need for pictures.
I’d feel a little better about the pictures if they weren’t such generic-looking stock photos. The articles on the top of the page now didn’t have photos when they were originally published, and I don’t think they suffered for it. Adding a stock photo of a baseball to a CBA article is just style over substance. If the article itself has a bunch of photos/gifs of bad called strikes or whatever, a preview probably isn’t a bad thing. But if that forces every article to have a pointless header image, it’s not worth it to me.
It’s not even style; it’s just filling space.
I’m sure a lot of work was done on this in the background and a lot of people would feel like they wasted time/resources if it is reverted, but it should be reverted. This isn’t PitcherList or another newer fantasy baseball website, it’s Fangraphs. I like the focus on the written articles, graphs/charts, and the numbers, if an article had a video or a photo it was a plus. Please revert, or at least give an option to users.
Agreed. Fangraphs is a a data-driven site not ESPN or PitcherList or some other gimmicky nonsense.
FanGraphs won’t win the “flash” audience anyway, so shouldn’t alienate those of us who come here to learn
I would tend to agree with this that this is a step backwards. If they want to use photos, I think one photo for the lead article might be fine, maybe the size of one of the ones in the “top articles” section. But having one massive photo and three smaller ones is not a good use of space. It just buries the content.
Actually, I’m going to walk this back a bit and say I like the right side of the updated site. I think that’s a positive change that makes the website easier/better to use. But the core article function shouldn’t be so scroll-y; people are going to be missing articles and may just stop looking entirely. On my laptop, the current picture of Castillo takes up almost all space outside the banner/header. Hope y’all are open to the feedback in these comments.
In life, I am largely a traditionalist. But this change seems FANTASTIC at first sight. If Fangraphgs is to sustain itself, it needs to draw in more members, and moving out of 1990s Era website graphic design will contribute to that.
I’ve long thought this. Their SM posts get BURIED because of how boring their posts look. And if anyone is a fan of FanGraphs, encouraging more people to check out the site is a good thing, not a bad thing.
The rebuttal is that I will click an article if I see it when the page loads. Currently on mobile, one giant photo and 1 article are visible. It is less likely I am going to scroll down just in case there is another article I want to read. It’s not generally good to take away opportunities for readers to click more links.
You’re lucky to get that. When the page loads for me, I get just the top 1/3rd of a giant photo and no articles visible.
I do get 3 large ads too. I mean, I get that, Fangraphs has to pay their bills, but when your landing page is dominated by the ads, they’re taking up a bit too much of the real estate.
Weeelll. I hope Fangraphs reads the OVERwhelming negative responses. Accepts the wasted effort. Moves to correct. And be responsive to the needs, wants of the reader/fan/PAYING MEMBER. Really a disappointment ESPECIALLY that Fangraphs has plead need money, low membership drive, etc. And then wastes assets on an effort of no added value
Agreed. The changes are terrible.
At first glance, I’m not a fan. It reminds me too much of a lot of other fantasy websites that just try to pop with pictures but shuffle information and articles to the side (see: the former Rotoworld). If this is what the designers of the website want to stick with then it’s going to take some time to adjust. Let’s just say that, if I see an article title that features Luis Castillo I don’t require actually seeing what Luis Castillo looks like in such a grand fashion.
I come here for the articles and discussion, but I have no idea if that makes any sorts of money in of itself. If the owners of this website think that more ads, more pictures and more glamorous design are what get the hits and, thus, the cash flow, then what do our opinions matter?
Agreed. I’m an adult, I can read.
Love the update! Very clean and readable!
Happy with it. Hopefully brings in more subscribers.
I love the update and think it will help new users give the site a bit more time. Your social media posts always look so bland and get no traction because of the lack of photos, this is going to help.
For long-time users, this is likely just an adjustment period that will settle after a bit.
This isn’t social media, though. It’s a website people visit to read articles. Not look at pictures. Bland, generic pictures, that are just taking up space.
This is nice
This was a surprise for me this morning. I honestly got spooked for a second haha, but it looks nice, it might just take some getting used to.
The one thing I would maybe suggest is to put recent articles under the featured article. It seems like it may be easier to miss some other non “top” posts in the current format.
I like it!
I’ll just chime in and say that as with all homepage changes (which we’ve had relatively few), there is definitely going to be a mixed response, and we know that.
In addition to what Sean said in the post, this was also a rather large backend change that will facilitate faster load times. The “blog roll” https://www.fangraphs.com/blog-roll was also a big change and has a lot of new features. We believe it is a massive improvement over the previous iteration.
The homepage is not the only thing we’ve been working on and for those of you who don’t think it was a worthwhile site enhancement, hopefully we have other things in the pipeline that you will think are worthwhile.
Just in this past week we’ve had some unannounced changes such as adding WAR projections to THE BAT and ATC, and we have been looking at fine tuning some of our pitcher playing time projections. We have a lengthy to-do list and we’re able to walk and chew gum at the same time. 🙂
We will of course be keeping a close eye on the comments section and monitoring how things go in the next week to see if there are any tweaks that we feel are necessary.
Thank you David, very cool!
Is there a way to, say, reduce the size of the pictures? Maybe have one picture for the lead article? Move the recent articles to the side, at the top, so we don’t have to scroll down? It is good to see the blog roll, but I do worry that lots of content is getting buried right now.
Whenever you makes major changes to a website, there will always be a passionate and vocal group saying they prefer the old version. Then, when you make another major change, they will repeat the refrain. So it goes with site redesigns.
How reductive and ahistorical, Jasper! Hard to beat that combo.
I’m with Jasper on this one. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about developing software, it’s that everyone likes to be the expert on UI/UX. Not because they are, but because it’s the one thing that they feel like they have some sort of control over.
PRO TIP: Next time you do a site re-design, add something in that’s really obviously bad. Like a font size that’s ridiculously small on a headline, or a color that’s totally garish. Then, when everyone yells about it, you can change it and say, “Thank you for your amazing wisdom, crowd. We would have been lost without you”
I mean, his comment is right. Of course, that doesn’t mean that every change is good. With the blog roll that David mentions, though, I don’t see the reason to complain about this one.
Thank you. I’ll only be looking at the blog roll, then, since the giant photos detract from the efficiency of scrolling your homepage.
I’m glad you seem to have a balanced perspective regarding the negative feedback.
Most design/UI changes (including the ones that will be eventually accepted as good) are initially seen as negative by the existing userbase.
Or at least, the feedback from the existing users would mostly be negative.
Of course, this is a select subset of the users as the ones who are mostly okay or even think it is good are less incentivized to provide feedback.
So better to take these with a grain of salt and give people some time to get used to the new design.
Also, just because it is worse for the current users does not necessarily mean it is worse for Fangraphs.
While I had no problems with the previous design, text-heavy layout likely turned off some potential new users, for better or worse.
Having said that, I personally don’t like the redesign.
But we should probably give ourselves some more time to get used to it
before figuring out which changes need to be rolled back.
Not every article needs an image. For example, the chat transcripts have huge Fangraphs logos that just waste space.
Why don’t you include the feedback and treat your new look as a Draft version. IMO Pictures don’t help navigation. They delay such amd that’s not what your customers seemingly desire. Good idea, bad execution. Smaller ( if any) pictures, and have the article in the click on picture.
This feels like moving things to different spots on the page just for the sake of moving them. I liked having recent articles on the right side of the main page to give a quick scan and see if there was something I missed/wanted to read. And the large pictures make the whole thing feel clunky to me.
Lookin good!
If you want the feedback, the home page looks absolutely terrible for me. I will try to give you specific feedback.
I’ve got a large monitor set on 125% because I’ve got poor vision, so maybe my experience is atypical. The top 1.5 inches is a Fangraphs banner and menu. Then most of the screen consists of three large advertisements. The bottom one inch is the top portion of a photo of Luis Castillo, basically no lower then the top of the sleeve of his throwing arm. I see three lines of text under Off Season Tools in the bottom right. I don’t see the headlines of any articles. If I page down once, I see the headline of the Ben Clemens article that goes with the Luis Castillo photo. I have to page down twice to see headlines for more than one article.
When I click on refresh a few times, I receive different advertisements. Maybe I get 1.25 inches of the top of Luis Castillo’s photo instead of just 1 inch if I’m lucky. It’s not a fluke.
I’ve supported Fangraphs financially for the past two years. I doubt that I will renew if you are more interested in displaying massive advertisements than in pleasing readers given the visual layout. You’ve got plenty of time to correct the situation if you desire to do so.
You did not “make FanGraphs more inviting and discoverable” to this user. You went in the exact opposite direction.
We’re definitely hearing the picture complaint, but that top ad has been there for a long long time and it didn’t change spots or get bigger with the homepage change. We actually reduced the number of ads on the homepage.
Thanks for the reply, David. I’m telling you from my perspective something changed today. I described my screen in enough detail for you to take the complaint seriously if you want to do so.
Feel free to send a screenshot to support, and I’ll take a look to see if there’s something we’re not seeing.
This is the rare FanGraphs site update I definitely noticed prior to reading about it!
I’m pretty good at scrolling, so I’m not terribly concerned about that, but the top of Luis Castillo is cut off a bit by the different photo ratio on the homepage vs. the proper display of the photo on the article page.
Can’t say I understand the emphasis on top articles. Strange that site a with a large daily following like Fangraphs would relegate most new content to not even being visible without scrolling down. Heck I’m even on a vertical monitor, on my phone new stuff is like 4 swipes down.
We actually noted this and made a change to how “popular” articles are populated. They seemed a little old to us as well. This is something we will continue to keep an eye on.
Change is terrible. Can we switch to a print version of Fangraphs that’s mailed out once a week and full of cigarette ads?
Great, now I want a Pall Mall
I fear change in life; therefore, I dislike this.
But nah, it’s actually a very well-organized home page now. Well done, FG.
Hopefully a fix coming down the pipeline is the leaderboard drop-down menus for mobile. Those have never scrolled properly. Finger scrolling moves the page down, not the menu options. (iPhone 11, all browsers) For example: clicking the Full Season split menu at Leaders > Batting, the bottom option is “Past 3 Calendar Years” and I can’t scroll to see anything below that.
I like the new right column, and I think the smaller photos under “Top Articles” look nice! My personal preference would be that no photos are bigger than those three however so it’s still easy to scan the homepage.
so much better
I hate change, particularly in activities I’ve been doing on a daily basis for the last… 15 years? So I was instantly uncomfortable when I went to the site this morning.
But I realize that’s more my problem than the site’s problem… a UI change certainly isn’t going to stop me from visiting fangraphs multiple times a day, and I’m sure I’ll get more used to the new UI pretty quickly.
I do have a couple of substantive comments though if you’re interested (Thank you Mr. Appleman for engaging with the user-base on what is probably not your most comfortable work-day ever)
1. Increasing the number of articles in the “Top Articles” and “RotoGraphs Top Fantasy Articles” sections would give an easier quick view of recent posts, that would mimic the volume we saw in the old top section (e.g. give each section 2 rows instead of 1, so they show 6 posts instead of 3)
2. Inserting section breaks between each day on the “Recent Articles” section would help me easily identify which articles are new for that day (and therefore which ones I haven’t already read… yes, I read the whole site every day)
3. I actually really like the new right side bar. It puts a lot of my most used tools (Projections, Prospects, Depth Charts, etc.) in a very easily accessible format
4. Instead of the “More Fantasy Content” and “More Fangraphs Articles” buttons at the bottom of their respective sections, just let me click the section banner at the top of the section to expand.
Tldr: I hate all change, so I hate this change, but I still love the work you do, the fact that you’re trying to improve, and the fact that you engage directly and openly with your users
Unfortunately not a fan, as this design vastly decreases the amount of information one sees on the page. This is definitely a scroll-heavy design.
As long as we’re changing things, why not put the FG prospects twitter embed somewhere on the front page? Eric et al put lots of content out through twitter which I never see because i never go to the Prospects page and don’t read Twitter. Promote his good work!
When I arrived at the homepage today, my first thought was something is different, but I didn’t initially associate it with a photo, probably because I’m used to seeing photos on other sites I visit.
I don’t have an opinion yet on the reorganization. Having worked in content creation and online portals, I know there’s always an initial negative reaction when anything changes, so I will give it a few days. I know my one consistent “want” over the years is an easy way to quickly scroll and find the newest content. Maybe not new, but articles that may have appeared and already sunseted from the homepage while I was away traveling on business or vacation. Not that I’ve actually traveled for business of vacation the last two years!
Appreciate all the work you folks do. These last two years with a pandemic and a lockout have made it challenging for all, but I do believe there’s a light at the end of the tunnel that is not an oncoming train.
The changes made the site prettier, I’ll grant you, but at the expense of usability. The fact is that the site could use some better organization to make it easier to use for regular readers, but mission not accomplished with this redesign. The consultants that you used do not understand your regular readers. The trend to putting lots of photos on landing pages might work for sites trying to appeal to teenagers surfing the ‘net, not so much for sites trying to appeal to adults who can read and regularly come to a site to consume actual intelligent content – you know, words.
Yesterday there was an article on the site about how to use the site’s Auction Calculator. I contributed several questions/suggestions/requests in the comment section. Today I came back to revisit that article to see if there were any responses by the author or other Fansgraph readers. With the redesign, I cannot even find the article, and worse yet, I do not have any idea how to even look for it – there does not appear to be any search functionality that would allow me to find it. How that is supposed to contribute to my enjoyment of the site is a mystery to me.
Were that a one-time thing, it might be no big deal. But coming back to see updates in article comments is something I do quite a lot here. It appears that finding the same articles will generally be more difficult going forward with the redesign, rather than easier. That is a shame.
I think we accidentally unpublished that article. It should be back on the homepage now.
Yes, it is back. Thanks. The overall usability comments still stand.
It looks like every other WordPress site now. It has lost that unique FanGraphs flavour.
Fangram!
The homepage looks like the pile of advertisements at the bottom of a “The Real Reason _______ Left _______” gossip articles. You know the ones that tell you “what all home owners need to know” “the gadget that’s taking Amazon by storm” “she didn’t know the cameras were rolling” “a bear got its head stuck in the toilet at a holiday inn. You’ll never believe what happened next…”
What happened with the bear tho
Honestly it’s fine and looks more modern. The old design was also fine, mostly, although a lot of the “evergreen” links weren’t really all that evergreen, a situation that seems to have improved. Mostly I’m seeing a lot of complaints about…scrolling a few extra lines.
After giving myself most of a day and visiting the site several times, I have to say I’m still not a fan of the pictures on either desktop or mobile. Aside from the issue of screen space and scrolling to find new articles, which I’ve somewhat solved by bookmarking the blog roll rather than the home page (though I miss some of the sidebar features of the home page), it’s annoying that every article now has to start with a big image that I need to scroll past to get to the content (and IMO a generic photo of a player/ballpark/whatever is not content, it’s filler). It’s a minor annoyance, but it’s an annoyance on every single article.
I’m not going to stop visiting FanGraphs over it or anything, but that’s my feedback. I’m sure I’ll get used to it, but I doubt I’ll ever prefer it over the old site. For me, the ideal site would probably be the straightforward list of articles on the blog roll, but with the useful stuff that’s on the right hand side of the main page.
I like the look. Not bad.
2004 never thought Fangraphs would stab them in the back like this.
Hello, I just joined your site. Great stuff like Emmanual Clase!
I love Fangraphs. A wise man once called it “one good place on the internet”. This change is a mixed bag for me.
The good:
*Like that all articles now have a short summary in addition to the title
*Like the concept of ‘evergreen’ site features on the right
*Love that the job postings section is buried now. It always REALLY bothered me that org’s looking to pay shit wages pushed down the original content of fangraphs. Also, David … please please tell me that clubs pay you for treating your captive baseball audience as a job board. I want fangraphs to make money.
*Looks a little more modern
The bad:
*As many have said, the main picture is way too big. It looks like a have a giant Luis Castillo poster in my room. I think the concept of a picture here for the lead story is fine, but please make it smaller.
*Images for the sake of images is not an improvement. Earlier the prospects article had a generic stadium pic and the labor negotiations article had a stock photo of a baseball in some grass. Please don’t bury content and instead serve me stock photos.
*I have to scroll for what feels like forever to see all fangraphs and rotographs articles on the homepage. I think the ‘evergreen’ material on the right needs to be cut and made more concise. I like the real estate given to Offseason Tools, Site Tools, Top Prospects, and Chat Schedule. Don’t need ZIPS Projections and Leaders sections … can navigate to these when needed and don’t need to reference often. The Podcast section is fine and I understand wanting to promote it, but please eliminate the huge pictures and just provide link to most recent episode. By slimming down on the evergreen content on the right side you could instead have two columns of articles side by side and cut down on the scroll time required to see all articles.
*Looks a little more modern (I know, I know)
Between SBNation fully switching to coral and now this, I’m not sure I ever want to follow a baseball blog ever again. Seriously, mlbtraderumors.com is way better than both in terms of functionality, and I hate that site because of the rampant unmoderated toxicity in the comments on each article they post. Where the hell am I supposed to discuss baseball stuff now?
Since this particular subject seemingly is getting a high degree of attention internally by Mr Applebaum. Not related to new new look home page but…
#1. Is there a means to provide a courtesy to your members to provide day info update if someone scheduled for a chat is a no show? Just let us know that the scheduled chat is not going to happen. They are popular and many of us schedule our day to observe, participate. Just a courtesy to aware us would be appreciated of cancellations.
#2. The site seemingly is migrating to podcasts. They are interesting, but who has the time? Why can’t you provide a written copy of these podcasts? I wear hearing aids. So do others of your membership. Tell me or us why copy of such cannot be produced?
This looks SO much better!
Like it but prefer to get a broader sampling of article titles above the fold. I get that for the purpose of trying to increase readership and revenue, this is a good decision. It broadens the appeal but adds features that niche readers won’t care for. That’s all well and good. Niche readers will find a way to access the content they want to access anyway. This opens it up to more people. My personal “meh” feeling about this change doesn’t really matter. I’ll still love, visit, and support Fangraphs. If this brings you all more revenue and readers, which it seems like this is designed to do, then I’m happy for you. You deserve it.
Not saying this to be negative, just constructive criticism, but the home page is now impossible to navigate on a phone
Love the graphs, dislike the pics on the homepage.
From a mobile phone perspective, which is the predominant device I consume Fangraphs, I’m not a fan of the new layout & addition of pictures. 4G or 5G the pics take longer to load & page rendering is less than ideal (despite the idea of responsive design/device agnostic). Perhaps there’s a way to have a pic-free mobile experience or a toggle where pics can be turned off/on. I’ve noticed some tweaks over the past couple of days and sure more will be made but ultimately I preferred a pic free homepage and the pics/gifs only in the articles.
https://www.fangraphs.com/blog-roll
The blog roll works much better; no photos means you can see 3-4 articles at a glance on mobile. Very useful. I doubt I will ever need to visit the homepage again!
Love it! Cleaner, but also more eye catching!
Are we living in the Seinfeld episode where Jerry got his new cabinets put in?
GEORGE: Well, you really did it to me this time, Seinfeld. . . . What the hell happened here?
ELAINE: Hi.
GEORGE: Hi. Look at how obtrusive this is.
ELAINE: It is obtrusive, isn’t it?
KRAMER: It is very obtrusive.
JERRY: I don’t think it’s that bad.
KRAMER: You can’t get a stool in here.
JERRY: No the stools go over there.
KRAMER: No, that’s no good. I’m leaving.
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JERRY: Could you at least get a hat for me?
GEORGE: FINE? WHAT SIZE?
JERRY: Seven and five eighths
GEORGE: SEVEN AND FIVE EIGHTHS!!
JERRY: Why are you shouting?
GEORGE: I DON’T KNOW. It’s this place. I’m very uncomfortable here!