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Changes released Thursday across SB Nation

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The SB Nation Product Team released some changes across the SB Nation network Thursday to help reduce the weight of the sidebar modules on site front pages and improve the scanability of those modules. Included in the release are some bug fixes and an update to the comment system on a handful of sites.

Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports

As you've no doubt noticed by now, we released the color changes that I teased in a post here last week. You should see the color changes on your favorite sites by now.

In addition to those color changes, we released some small bug fixes left over from the most recent redesign and small enhancements. Here are some of the highlights:

  • Removing the duplicate "Sections" tabs from the site navigation and fixing the link to the Sections page.
  • Properly displaying the headline for FanPosts placed on the front page.
  • Fixing the Cycling link in the network navigation.
  • Fixing the labels on FanPost detail pages so they display properly.
  • Fixing some of the oddities around dropcaps to kick off stories (only showing on letters now and only when the first paragraph is long enough).
  • Added FanPost and FanShots notifications to "My SB Nation"

We've also done a code overhaul on the commenting system. I've teased this overhaul a few times here (in the comments, some side mentions in posts). This overhaul is not designed to change or improve functionality, but should improve performance for comments across the board (mobile, browser, etc.) and adds some comment navigation for touch devices.

Right now, this new code is not live across all communities. We wanted to get a read on how it worked in production before it went live across the whole network. This also gives us a chance to find any serious usability issues with the new code vs. the old as people use in real contexts and get feedback on how the comment system from real users before it changes or disrupts your everyday commenting experience. The new comments code (and, subsequently the new touchscreen comment nav keys) is currently live here on Blog Huddle and on the following communities around the network: Land Grant Holy Land, House of Sparky, Arrowhead Pride, and Detroit Bad Boys. Check it out here or at one of those places and let us know what you think. Keep in mind that this is only designed to get the new code running in production and maintaining current functionality. Added functionality like collapsible threads and editable comments is still further down the line.

We don't have a firm date for rolling the new code out across the network, but we obviously want to improve commenting performance for everyone as quickly as possible. So, assuming there are no major changes that need to be made, we'll be rolling it out to everyone soon.