Hopefully, you have spotted that the British Softball Federation website is sporting a new design, launched just ahead of the BSF's 2021 AGM, held as a remote meeting on Saturday 27 February.
The new website has been put together over the past few months by BaseballSoftballUK Head of Operations Tim Stride, in consultation with members of the BSF Executive.
While much of the content and functionality from the old site continues on the new website, we have introduced a brighter and more image-focused look, and, crucially, the site will work much better on mobile phones and tablets.
'Under the hood', the new website was built from scratch on an up-to-date version of the old site's content management system. As well as allowing website managers more flexibility in how they can display and update the site's content, it should enable easier development of the site in future. One such development soon will be to add a new search / filtering function for content.
The league management functions on the old website (powered by Spawtz), for those teams and leagues that make use of them, remain available on the new website. Working with our friends at Spawtz, the majority of the league management area should work well within the new design on desktop and mobile.
While the new website contains all the content that players, teams and leagues will need for the 2021 season – a season that looks like it will happen in some form following recent government announcements on the road map out of Covid-19 restrictions -- additional relevant content from the previous website will continue to be transferred over the coming weeks and months.
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Tim Stride, who put the new website together on behalf of the BSF, said, “It’s difficult to fathom that even in 2011, when the preceding website was designed and launched, it was not yet a standard necessity to consider use on mobile devices, and certainly not as technically possible as it is today to achieve that. Beside that requirement, the aim was to create a lighter and clean design around the existing types of content, and to show off British softball with increased use of images across each section.”
"Thank you to the BSF's Bob Fromer and to my colleague Chris Knoblock from BSUK for their support in recent weeks to help get the site ready for launch."
BSF Administrator Bob Fromer said, “The previous BSF website had needed upgrading for some time. One of the most important features of the new site is that it will be responsive to a wide range of mobile devices, which is how most members of the community use websites these days, and that alone should increase traffic to the site.
"We are very grateful to Tim Stride for all the time he has spent to create an excellent new website for the Federation,” Bob added, “and to BSUK for allowing him to put in that time."
If you have any feedback on the new design or spot something not working right, please let the BSF know by email.