IMS Up and Running Again
I want to apologize to everyone for being down the last couple of days. Quite frankly the blog has been running poorly since last Thursday. I spent hours and hours trying to figure it out to no avail. A very big thanks to SuperRookie’s friend Jeff Austin for spending his whole evening working to get IMS back up and running. I am grateful beyond words. For now IMS will appear with no special themes or sidebars but at least the content is there. Hopefully I’ll be able to add a theme and start adding bells and whistles to IMS again in the next day or so.
While we are talking about themes, I’d like to propose a question to IMS readers. I have contemplated adding a theme which might be less blog like and more newspaper/magazine like. Personally, I think the later might be more appropriate for IMS since the site really is a soccer news reporting site. I sometimes have feature articles which I would like to leave up a little longer and it would be nice to have a column for the latest pro soccer news and perhaps college or high school would be another column. I don’t know if I could actually pull this off but I would like your input for direction in the future. Since none of the plug-ins and extra features of IMS are currently working, I can’t conduct a poll, but if you would leave a comment with your thoughts it would be very appreciated.
Last, I have had a lot of people contact me to ask what is going on with the USL V TOA situation. The simple answer is nothing that I can report. The complicated answer is Wow! Stay tuned to IMS because things are going to get interesting in the next few days.
Remember, the USL’s annual general meetings commence on Thursday. Our friend Kartik Krishnaiyer who lives in Miami will be making the trip to Tampa to the AGM’s this weekend. Keep watching The Kartik Report for his his … well, Kartik reports.
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Glad to see things are up and going again. When Bruce took his most recent break from dunord I remember that being a particularly inconvenient time (for me) because there was a lot of stuff going on and I was seeking his news gathering skills and insight. The same was true in this case as I have been checking constantly for a little usl vs. toa news.
I think a more news-like sight with columns with various categories would be great.
BQ – good to see that your back up and running. As far as layout is concerned I like the the set up over at Match Fit USA. I’m not sure of the programming involved but there is a scrolling header of the past 4-5 feature stories and the rest of the news falls below. Just my two cents.
Can’t wait to here more about the developments in USL.
There are some solid multi-column blog themes for wordpress – Magazine Basic being my personal fave. You can see it implemented here
http://www.prostamerika.com/soundersfc/
for news heavy sites where the rolldown of a blog format drops stories too quickly it is a good fit, plus you can use categories (say MN High School, College, USL, TOA, MLS, Nat Teams) to provide further depth making them easy to find in one of the menu bars.
Yup, thats sort of what I was thinking Dave. I think something like that makes a lot more sense for the very reasons you state. Sometimes I’ll do a feature article like an interview and it’s gone in no time because of game reports or something. So for IMS it seems like a good fit.
News site— go for it! But still have a RSS feed.
Thanks for all the info.
I have just recently (4-5 months) started visiting your site, and I think you do a great job reporting the news. I think as a result it only makes sense to go the magazine/news route. But, like with SI keeping that opportunity for conversation should remain a key component. Great job, and I look forward to continuing to visit the website.
welcome back, bq, I’m sure these last few days with dodgy service has been very frustrating … should be an action packed next few days.
Thanks Neal and yes, it should be interesting.
I don’t have time to post it right now, but Paul Dalglish, son of the great Liverpool player Kenny Dalglish has been named coach of the Tampa Bay Mutiny.
Clint and Mark, thank you so much. I think those ideas are good. I will make sure that you can still comment on stories.
I’ve stated this before, but if there is an IMS reader who would be willing to help and devote some time to IMS when needed here and there concerning WordPress I would very much welcome them to the IMS fold. Josh has done a great job helping me but he’s a pretty busy guy with a lot of irons in the fire. I would love to have a tech guy who could kind of get in there and make stuff work while I continue to work on content.
Any takers?