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Welcome to the redesigned Ballpark Digest!

Welcome to the new and (we hope) vastly improved Ballpark Digest! We think you’ll find our new design easier to navigate, while giving us the flexibility and power to do even more for you in the future.

The new layout is the result of a lot of hard work from a lot of people. August Publications Creative Director Natalie Nowytski is responsible for the new design: she incorporated a lot of vague suggestions and goals and miraculously managed to create a coherent, unified design. Infinity Pro Sport, our publishing partner, took her designs and created an actual Website. It’s lucky our new Marketing and PR Director Erin Kangas has a lot of experience with the mechanics of serving ads; she’s the one who made sure our new ad server is working properly, and she’s also the one who designed the new weekly newsletter, which will be unveiled shortly.

Welcome to the new and (we hope) vastly improved Ballpark Digest! We think you’ll find our new design easier to navigate for you, while giving us the flexibility and power to do even more in the future.

The new layout is the result of a lot of hard work from a lot of people. August Publications Creative Director Natalie Nowytski is responsible for the new design: she incorporated a lot of vague suggestions and goals and miraculously managed to create a coherent, unified design. Infinity Pro Sports, our publishing partner, took her designs and created an actual Website. It’s lucky our new Marketing and PR Director Erin Kangas has a lot of experience with the mechanics of serving ads; she’s the one who made sure our new ad server is working properly, and she’s also the one who designed the new weekly newsletter, which will be unveiled shortly.

First, the new layout. Yes, it’s dramatically different from the old layout. Gone is the shallow, every-story-on-the-front-page approach to the site. In the new design we’re able to bring you more information in a variety of ways. As you can see in the set of menus on the top banner, we’ve organized the site into popular sections. Our news coverage will be enhanced with its own section; in the middle of every page is a crawl of recent news items, so no matter where you are on Ballpark Digest you’ll be able to keep track of what’s going on in the baseball world. Sections devoted to Ballpark Visits, Endangered Ballparks, Ballparks of the Past and League Histories made it over from the old site as well. We’ve added a Features well and gave it prominent play on the front page, while multimedia offerings (broadcast and video) have a permanent spot on the front page and within.

The biggest change, really, is the decision not to put every news story on the front page. Yes, we know it will lead some of you to send a letter of complaint, telling us we’re wrong for putting news stories on their own pages and forcing you to click through to them. But research and history tells us that a reorganization in this fashion will lead to an expansion of readers and page views. Take, for example, our similar redesign of Arena Digest, where we doubled the number of readers the very first day it went live. Today the site does four times the number of page views and has four times the number of individual readers than it did pre-redesign. For us, page views are a useful metric, but the number of users is an even more useful metric — and anything we can do to increase the number of readers is a good thing.

The changes in how we handle news items also provides multiple points of entry into the site. To see just news stories, you can bookmark this page:

http://ballparkdigest.com/news/

which contains headlines and longer teasers.

We now offer an RSS feed to the site, which is updated immediately after a news story or feature is added; check out the RSS symbol on the bottom-right of every page for access to the feed.

These alternative methods, I think, show why the redesign works: there are now multiple points of entry to the site.

We couldn’t do this without the ongoing support of our major advertisers: the ResnickAmsterdamLeshner accounting firm, HOK Sport, Pro Sports Catering, Total Sports Entertainment, and Ticket City. They are all valuable and trusted partners. Indeed, how we partner with advertisers is one of the biggest changes on the site. There is less display advertising on the new site, as we both shortened and widened the page. But we’ve expanded the number of ad spots to provide many of you with a handy way to present your goods and services to the baseball community. Our new advertorial section, Industry Resources, is designed to present your marketing message in a way that connects with readers. Please contact us for more information on pricing and specific capabilities; we think you’ll find it to be a cost-effective vehicle for your advertising needs.

This site is still very much a work in progress. We’ll be gradually moving our Ballparks Visits over while giving many of them a sorely needed update. The same with our Ballparks of the Past, and we’ll be using the move to greatly expand that section. One feature still in development: a sophisticated way to search for ballparks past and present by name, by city, or by team. Right now the Ballpark Directory function returns a list of every time a search term is found, but the new functionality should be present shortly.

Please let us know what you think. This site is, as always, a work in progress, and we take our cues from you. Feel free to drop me a note directly at kreichard@augustpublications.com: I’d love to hear from you. Or use the Contact Us form here to send a note to the entire staff.

–Kevin Reichard, Publisher