Welcome

If this is your first time here, please visit the "about" page. If you've been here before, thanks for stopping back in.

The comments are open, and your voice is welcome.

Site Design Info

If you haven’t been keeping close tabs on the transition from the old look (08/06-12/08) to the new (01/09-present), here’s a quick primer.

In October of ’08 I realized that the site had grown up enough to deserve an update. It was time to clean things up and make them both (a) more user-friendly and (b) more aesthetically pleasing. After some stops and starts, the new site was finally launched on 01/01/09.

The major changes were:

  • Cleaner, more open design and layout
  • Twitter-like “@soandso” comment replies
  • Comment quoting
  • Comment preview so you can check your thoughts before going live
  • “Endorsements” section expanded to add community participation, both on the page and in the sidebar
  • Better sidebars in general
  • New branding/tagline (“Baltimore’s Independent Sports Talk Alternative”)
  • Finally put the Comments Policy into words (not something I wanted to do, but it was necessary — most folks will never need to think about it)
  • Better anti-spam measures (assuming they work — this might have to be reverted to the old measures)

    • All of these changes were made in order to facilitate our continued growth as a community of folks who want a place to enjoy in-depth talk about all things Baltimore sports.

    If you have any thoughts on the site design in general, please leave them in the comments below. I take every suggestion into consideration.

    If you’re curious about the header, it was created in collaboration with my friend and business partner Daniel Krall. We wanted to recreate the look and feel of the mastheads of old sports magazines, such as this and this. It may get tweaked in the coming months, but I’m pretty pleased with it.

    Thanks for stopping by and for being a part of the Loss Column community.

    Edit 02/08/09: The search field in the upper left should now return results from comments in addition to main page posts. Also, the “Endorsements” sidebar is now easier to use.