The New Bleacher Report Layout: Is It a Problem?

Having been a member of Bleacher Report for the good part of six months, I have thoroughly enjoyed my time here.

The whole aim of the site is for sports lovers of all kind to get their views across, voice their opinions and generally interact with other sports lovers.

However, recently B/R has, as we all know, changed and improved the layout of the site.

Out went the general play-by-play link, which made it easier to look out for new articles and new comments posted on existing articles.

Out went the "tagging of your own choice". Writing an article used to be an easy and simple process. You simply write your article, spell-check it, upload a convenient picture to go with it and finally, you tag it.

While that itself is still the case, there are few flaws with the new system.

Now I suppose the admin thought they had simplified the process of writing the article by limiting the tags. This meant that whatever your article was about, the relevant tags would be there for you to tick.

Now, here is my problem with all this!

One can no longer see when other B/R members publish their articles, unless that particular article makes it onto the front page, which again rarely happens.

The general play-by-play used to provide us with the opportunity to view new articles as soon as their are written.

It used to enable us to see when new comments were posted on existing articles. Now this might not be a problem for some people but for people like me, I like to read every article published in the Football section and every comment posted on every article.

With this new lay-out, I find it hard to look for articles and I generally only end up reading the ones that make it onto the front page, and I miss out on the countless number of great articles that go unnoticed.

Okay, we might still be able to see when an article is written by scrolling down to the bottom, but if you log on about ten minutes after a certain article has been published, you might just miss it.

Combine that with the flurry of articles that are being published everyday, it is virtually impossible to keep up with them, in this new layout.

A lot of great articles are simply falling aside and go unnoticed.

A great example is Simon Williams' article, "Bleacher Report and Quality Control—How Many Is Too Many?"

Simon wrote this article of great importance about a month ago and I only came across it a couple of days ago.

I also find it difficult to make my own articles reach the intended people—you!

Having said all this, it is still a real joy to be a member here, and I look forward to many debates and discussions with all of you!