A New Bright Side of the Sun Is Coming Soon!

There's a cadre of hard-working folks who invented this big ol' SBNation.com band of 300+ sister and brother blogs several years ago (probably back in the day of stone and chisel, but that's not been confirmed). Bright Side of the Sun was just a twinkle in the eye at the time, born as recently as 2006.

It's time for a facelift, across the board. After years of the old blogging style - all articles looking the same, sorted in reverse chronological order, unable to group similar storylines together or put our favorite stories at the top - we are about to enter a brand spanking new world!

Frankly, I think the upgrades are downright awesome. Jaw dropping, in fact. Our blog will become the best of all worlds: magazine style layout on top of the same quality Suns content and the best contributors and commenters on the internets!

Click to see some screenshots...

Now, we know that this is going to be a major adjustment for many of you, especially those who have been with us for years. Human beings are naturally averse to change. Take the new Suns court for example (pictures in the weekly blog, thanks to Suns R Us). Many of you have reacted negatively to lack of noticeable purple, while at the same time many others (and some of the same) have been clamoring for new uniforms for years. Change is change, and not everyone takes to it like chocolate.

But check this out, folks!

Here's a sample of the new front-page layout. When you first click to BSotS, you'll get a quick snapshot of the site's best and most relevant content.

We can show our top five articles right there in a cool format. Or three. Or two. Or one. Or whatever we want. And we can keep our favorite top-5 right there as long as we want.

In another example, I want to hype a D-League tryout for the Bakersfield Jam, but I don't want to bump the Channing story down the page. In the new SBNation, I can do just that!

And if we want to keep our season-preview series at the ready, we can group them all in something newfangled called a StoryStream and pin them to the top of the front page for a few weeks if we please. Then you just click the pic and the whole stream appears on your desktop.

We could have had a free agency StoryStream in July and kept all the updates together, with just one headline with the latest relevant picture, pinned to the top of the page.

Below the cool magazine-like header, there's still the reverse chronological order of the remaining stories. There's still fanposts, and fanshots. In fact, check out the cool new look of the fanshot!

How does all this fit together, you ask? Well, it's all on one scrolling page. Many of you have commented that good stories disappear too quickly when there's lots of news happening. In this new format, more stories stay on the longer front-page than before.

Click the pic to make it bigger.

As you can see, the fanposts, fanshots and stories all are still at the ready. But now they're topped with a "cover" that can be customized and better-controlled by me and my fellow authors.

Like I said above, I know it's going to be tough for some of you. And the new site will have it's little quirks. But those little problems will not outweigh the tremendous gains and improvements we get.

I can't wait for this to roll out, guys and gals! We are going to have so much more control over what readers see first. I hate that Jim's series on the best rotations get buried within a day or two. I hate that on game day our entire site is weighed down by a series of previews and gamethreads. Not that those are bad, but what if someone writes a really good "regular" article or fanpost? Those get buried just by the sheer volume.

Anyway, I hope you like it as much as I do. I understand if you don't, and I know there will be an adjustment period. But just remember you're still getting all the great Suns content you've always gotten, by the same writers who've been doing it all summer.

Bring on the season!

Next starts now! (or, well, likely in the next week or two)