Hello, KU fans. If you’ve made it this far, you’ve probably already noticed that the long-awaited, much-anticipated, new KUsports.com site is finally here.
I hope you’ll enjoy it as much as we do.
Getting to the new site, both from a design approach and the technical side of things, was a labor of love and took a little longer than any of us would’ve liked. But we had to do it right. And now that it’s here we are excited about everything it offers both you the readers and us as content creators.
It has better security and functionality, a fresh, clean and modern look, and it incorporates all of the things you’ve grown to love about KUsports.com. We’re pumped to move into a new era for this site.
For the most part, navigating it will be pretty easy. Those of you who view us from a mobile device — our fastest growing audience — will notice that there’s no need to use our m.kusports.com URL any longer. Our main URL of kusports.com now works for both our mobile and desktop sites.
Those of you who prefer to view us from a desktop computer will notice many improvements in terms of photo quality, design and the overall user experience.
A few things I’m most excited about include our new video feed on the homepage, which automatically pulls in videos from our KUsports YouTube channel and puts them onto the site. There’s also the real time Twitter feed and our automatically populated schedule updates.
Yes, we’ll still have a comments section. And, yeah, you’ll need to sign up again. But the comments platform we’ll now be using should make that a snap and those of you who have found it difficult to get manually verified in the past should be able to join the conversations lickety-split with the new site. Welcome!
We encourage you to give the comments a try and truly believe that your contributions and feedback are a big part of what makes this site so wonderful. I think you’ll find you like how easy it is to sign up and use.
Change can be tricky. And there will be a bit of a learning curve and some small hills to climb along the way. So, bear with us while we get the new site humming. You’ve been great about that in the past year or two and we really appreciate it.
Finally, I think it’s important to note two things before turning you loose.
First, the version of KUsports.com you see today is not the 100% finished product. We are continuing to have conversations about tweaks we can make to both the design and operation and hope to make small, subtle improvements on a regular basis as we move forward.
Second, I’d like to thank you all for sticking with us. I know there were elements of the old site that were frustrating from time to time and I know it wasn’t always the easiest site to use. But I always appreciated that most of you viewed the content we provide to be worth powering through that.
We’ve made it to the other side. All of those “any day now” emails, comments and tweets I sent out have finally become a reality. And I hope you’ll find the new and improved version of KUsports.com to be everything you liked about the old one and so much more.
Now, back to creating content. After all, there are a couple of pretty big games this weekend.
Enjoy the new site and the rest of the men’s and women’s basketball seasons. As always, we’ll be there every step of the way, this time with a fresh spin on the way we deliver the KU sports content you’ve come to expect.
— UPDATE REGARDING THE KUSPORTS.COM APP —
We’ve received a lot of questions about what’s happening with the old KUsports.com app, so here’s the story with that. The old app is currently not tied to our new site and we’re having some discussions about what to do moving forward. It may be a new app. It may be no app.
In the meantime, our new KUsports.com site is fantastic on the mobile platform and was designed with that in mind. It’s working great and we’re getting a lot of really good feedback, too! So, if you have an iPhone (or probably any smart phone or tablet) you can visit the site (www.kusports.com) in an Internet browser on your phone and then save the site to your phone’s home screen (with an icon of your choosing) and use that much in the way you have used the app in the past.
To do this (with an iPhone) , you just need to be on the site (on your phone) and then click the share button (box with an arrow pointing up out of the top of it). Scroll down and you’ll see “Add to Home Screen” Once you’ve done that, visit your phone’s main screen and you should see a new icon for the site where all of your other apps show up. Most likely at the end. I’m sure the process is very similar for Android.
It might take a couple of days to get used to, but it’s basically the same thing and I think you’ll like it.
Matt Tait
