Housekeeping: Homepage Upgrades On the Way Tonight

Happy New Year PdCers! I haven't had the wherewithall to post an "Adios 2012" message, but it was kind of a not so great year, so let's just move on.

Oh, and I realize I missed a lot of Cross in the last week, which I'll be catching up on quickly. But I did note that Belgian sports violence has reached almost intolerable levels, after Sven Nys jumped into the crowd and demanded an explanation concerning some beer-tossing, and the offender said he was sorry. Let's hope that 2013 isn't marred by such ugly incidents. Someone has to think about the children (who are our future).

OK, back to those ever-riveting internal matters. You recall that the rollout of the new SBNation United happened in September, another day when I barely had my head above water. That was... something besides fun. But now that we're all used to the new format, maybe it's gained some acceptance? Anywho, SBNation has done the right thing by giving the new makeover some time to breathe, while gathering comments on what needed fixing, and those fixes will go into effect at 7pm Eastern time today. They include:

• Local site navigation at top of blog. This change will also carry down to all pages on the blogs, including story pages, fanposts and fanshots.
• New shorter covers. New 1up and 3up covers that occupy less vertical space and help push fanposts up higher on the page.
• Fanposts and fanshots moved to right rail and given greater visual weight. The placement and size is also designed to make fanposts easier to scan
• Fanposts in the cover. We can now add fanposts to the cover, add a photo, promo headline, and promo blurb to fanposts. In the cover Fanposts will be labeled in the byline (Fanpost by ).
• Community orientation widget. A widget with an editable tagline to invite users to action, search, fanpost and fanshot links, social links (similar to the items in the right rail in the pre-United design) will be placed just below the ad.
• Redesigned river. The river has been simplified to improve scanning.
• Shorter breaker modules. The height of breaker modules has been reduced.

So stop complaining! OK, you can complain if you want. In fact, if you want to be heard by SBNation more directly, join the mega-discussion thread and get your two cents in. Or do a fanpost about how Wilier makes terrible bikes, wait for Blez to jump in, and then hit him with your site comments. That's called baiting. If you know anyone who's majorly into bike gear, you know it works.