Posts for crossing broad

No, we didn’t get a haircut. And no, we haven’t started doing Insanity workouts.

We switched hosts– from Typepad to WordPress.

When CB started over three years ago, Typepad, a simple blogging host, was the platform of choice, and though it treated us well, with reliability and ease of use, we’ve outgrown the service. A self-hosted WordPress site will mean several things:

Faster loading times: A dedicated host and more efficient code will bring CB up significantly faster on most modern browsers and mobile devices.

A MOBILE OPTIMIZED SITE: An all-new, ultra modern responsive design theme will automatically detect your browser and screen size and adjust itself accordingly, making it easier to read articles and comment, and the site – very important here – faster to load. It looks beautiful on smart phones and tablets:

Save CB to your home screen to quickly call up the site

Better navigation: The menu bar is at the top now and there are dropdowns so you can more easily find posts about specific teams…

… and on mobile:

Each post and page will have breadcrumbs so you can find your way back to where you came from:

You can also click on individual categories and tags below each post to read related stories. And clicking the banner will now take you back to the homepage (!!!), an ordinary feature that, thanks to a weird and unholy quirk in Typepad, wasn’t an option before.

We’ll be easier to find: You can find links to our (my) Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Google Plus accounts, along with a one-click email button and RSS feeds, in the upper-right corner. See:

You’ll also see Twitter, Facebook and Google Plus links for the author of each post:

Better comments: Our commenting policy will remain the same– you won’t be required to login, but you may choose to do so. And all of your comments came over, including names, handles and emails. The comment section will (look) cleaner and be easier to read, and you will now be able to reply to individual comments for better conversation and so you can tell “Candy From The Oak” where to go. It will be easier to track and weed out trolls and spam, too.

More flexibility: Thanks to WordPress’ backend, we’ll be able to do more within each post. Basically, Typepad made linking, quoting and embedding a pain. We’ll now be able to do that stuff, plus use other modern forms of storytelling and interacting, much more easily, which will make for better – and more frequent – content.

Just keep scrolling: No more clicking over to page 2 to read more. Just keep scrolling and hit “older posts.”

Easier on the eyes: Fonts, images and videos are improved. The basic layout remains the same, but the site is aesthetically more pleasing. We’ll no longer be held back by what our template can and can’t do. CB will be easier to read, faster to load, better to interact with and simpler to share. An overall better experience. A lot of work went into making the change and, quite honestly, it’s the reason for the lack of content the past few weeks. The look and functionality of the site had become stagnant, and this was a necessary improvement. Moving forward, we’ll continue to upgrade CB so it is always current and up with the latest web trends.

Your feedback is welcome and encouraged. You can email me or Tweet me (just click those links up in the right corner…) with questions and comments. When moving over 6,000 posts and 80,000 comments, there are bound to be some hiccups. We’ve made sure there are no glaring issues, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be a few quirks (for example, some old comments randomly use my profile picture in the avatar). If you spot any, or come across any major problems, please let me know.

Thanks for your continued support of the site. Let’s play ball.