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There's a ton of perks to having this site be part of the SBN team.  We're in easy contact with great bloggers for just about every team, there's a great commenting system that makes following a game-day thread the easiest of any I've seen, and there's all kinds of cool toys to play with (even if we don't use them as much as we should).

Well one fun new tool you're probably going to be seeing a lot of is on display above. 

Through a deal with the AP - All SBN blogs now have access to Associated Press' photos.  We've posted them before but now we can't get sued - Bonus.

There's some other really cool changes you'll be able to see around the site too.

Player Pages

These pages got a major overhaul recently.  Check out The Shooter's page for instance - there's this years stats along with a link for his full career stats, awards and honors (McClure's undying love not being one of them evidently), transactions/injuries/suspensions and a scouting report (this is a very interesting feature, note that we didn't write them so let us know if you find anything odd - my favorite so far being about Sharp - "Kills penalties with aplomb.").

There's also a list of all stories that have been tagged about Sharp across SBN, including all your fanshots/fanposts. 

Team Pages

This page has a lot of the info you'd expect on it. 

• Recent stories
• Division Standings
• Team Injuries
• As well as links to the Roster, Schedule and Stats

What does this mean for you?

I'm going to go ahead and steal this directly from PPP because they nailed it.

"Basically, all that this means for you guys is that you get to visit a much better site. Hopefully you'll enjoy this latest round of upgrades. One thing that this does allow is for anything that you guys write or post to be seen by a lot more eyeballs. In order to ensure that everyone gets the most out of these pages there are three important things that we all have to do with regard to tagging posts.

Apparently Photoshop isn't one of the upgrades....

1. If the fanpost/fanshot/post you are writing is directly related to a game, whether it's a picture that you took, a quotation from Ron Wilson berating a player, or your thoughts on the game, click 'attach event'. Once you get in there you'll see the list of all of the games divided into upcoming and completed. Select the appropriate game.
2. If you are tagging a post with a team's name then type it into the 'Teams' section and not the 'tags' line at the top.
3. Same with players' names. There is auto-complete on the names in case you aren't sure how to spell it properly. It's important that you do it this way and not in the 'tags' line because that ensures that everything gets linked to the appropriate page.

The 'tags' line can be used for past players, management, and humour but it's important that the teams and current players be tagged properly. Thanks for your help on this one."

Right on.

I'll be going through and re-tagging a lot of the old fanposts/shots so don't worry about that but your help in properly tagging them at the start is much appreciated. 

These changes are pretty new so there might be some bugs to work out - if you see any then shoot me an email - herecomethehawks@gmail.com.

I hope you all enjoy them - and a big thanks to the SBN team for their hard work.