Takes and trash talk from both ALL sides of the NHL's most obscure PATHETIC* rivalry

* Thanks, Kevin Lowe!

Monday, December 08, 2008

SUPER BIG NEWS (Let's call it SBN for short)

Yup, that's right. Some big-ass news.

Battle of California is moving to a new home. http://www.battleofcali.com/ (an SBN blog)-- though this link won't work until later today, I think. Once our new site is active, I'll add the link up above, but this does represent the final post of the blogspot site we've inhabited for some 2 1/2 years. That's right, we're selling out.

I guess the first topic to talk about is why we're moving over to SBN, and the answer is pretty much because James Mirtle asked. He's the guy who started this blog back in the day when I had no idea how to start a blog; more or less he's the reason this blog exists. Plus in the two years I've been monitoring blog traffic, roughly 10% of our traffic has come straight from his site, now at From the Rink. Mirtle has been amassing a set of team-specific bloggers to cover the 30 teams at SBN, and it's a pretty cool vision, one I'm willing to support...in spirit.


That's right. I went there.

You see, this is actually where we are letting Mirtle down, as he was originally hoping we could fill his Ducks and Kings vacancies. But I was pretty insistent on keeping our multi-team multi-author Voltron unit together -- as a blogger, I'm way too in love with the BoC dynamic. I'm very interested in the takes of Sharks and Kings fans, it turns out I enjoy writing for both Ducks haters and Ducks fans, and I'm also too lazy to carry a blog on my own.

We've arranged things to hopefully stay exactly as they are -- PJ will still be at Sharkspage, Mike Chen will still be at Kukla's Korner, James O'Brien will still cross-post at Cycle like the Sedins, and I'll still try to do a weekly cartoon at NHL FanHouse -- the way we interacted with BoC yesterday will hopefully be the way we interact with BoC tomorrow.

I'll apologize now for new bookmarks, new hyperlinks, new RSS feeds, new logins, and any other technical nonsense we'll run into because of this (which will all be entirely my fault -- the tech dudes at SBN have been kick-ass), but hopefully it's not too much a pain for anybody. There's some cool new functionality at SBN -- you can post your own FanPost or FanShot content, for one -- plus with the aforementioned kick-ass tech team, I think we'll find some benefit in the move. I do want to say though -- after two and a half years, I don't have anything bad to say about blogspot. They hosted our shit for free for years, and we'll keep this site as-is for as long as they continue that service. We are also in the process of migrating our archives over to SBN, though (one of the reasons we're not live just yet), just in case blogspot turns into a back-stabbing whore.


The last two years of blogspot traffic.

I'll update this post when the new site is fully active, but for now, while we're still just talking about it, it feels appropriate to give a little thanks. Thanks first and foremost to the commenters and fellow bloggers that gave our little website some legs -- you guys are awesome, and hopefully will continue to interact with our SBN posts with the same wit and insight as before. Also, thanks to the Ducks, Kings, Sharks, and Stars for never taking our asses to court. I don't think we've done anything terrible towards our teams, but with NHL politics, you never can quite tell. And finally, thanks to the NHL media's east coast bias -- without it, we may have never found anything in common to develop a collective perspective.

So, that's BoC's Super Big News (SBN). Feel free to react in the comments here or comments at SBN once we're up and active. Betrayed? Excited? Worried? Confused? Good, so are we.

Go BoC.

22 comments:

JP said...

Super sweet.

Dirk Hoag said...

Congrats on the new digs, but can I ask one favor? Add one last post here once the new links are live, so it'll come through people's RSS readers at a time when they can act on it and click through to update feeds.

Earl Sleek said...

can I ask one favor? Add one last post here once the new links are live

Will do, Forechecker. Thanks for the web-savvy advice (we're pretty seat-of-our-pants here).

Gray said...

Congrats!

Anonymous said...

Wooo-Hooooo! Glad it's finally out in the open.

SK eleven said...

Congratulations...very exciting! I'll be checking in!

Earl Sleek said...

Yeah, this should turn out pretty cool, I think.

Right now I think we are just waiting for two more authors to join the new blog (so the techies can link up archives to each author), so we're getting close!

Ang said...

Ugh! Just like a guy to make me do extra work!!

Anonymous said...

Congrats on the move, gents!

This is the third blog or blogger I regularly read move to SBN, though - Mirtle, Mr. Plank jumping to Fear the Fin, and now BoC. I don't know whether to be pleased to have one place to go to for most of my hockey blog reading, or scared that SBN and Mirtle are assimilating so many of my favorite reading spots in Borg-like fashion.

Chris Kontos said...

Great news and congrats! Now that you are closer to being a part of the MSM, can you do something about getting rid of Calder?

Earl Sleek said...

Yeah, and there's been lots of movements from a lot of eastern blogs also -- Japers' Rink (WSH), In Lou We Trust (NJD), The Litter Box (FLA), Eyes on the Prize (MTL), and I don't even think the announcements have all been made yet.

In one way or another, we're all disciples of Mirtle-Borg.

Whale4ever said...

Awesome, guys! That's a big addition to SBN. Stoked!

Joe said...

:-(

Dammit

I didn't like it when Mirtle moved, cause it went from something simple and easy to this big ugly thing that no longer looked or felt as simple, started requiring registrations, etc. etc. It was like he moved from some sort of hockey blogging underground out into the open world. Now you guys too.

I haven't commented on Mirtle's new digs, because I didn't want to bother making a registration and the whole thing just made me kinda sad. I comment here regularly though, so now I'll probably have to do that. Damn you, Earl Sleek!

As long as everything here, from content to language to state-rape stays the same when you guys become pseudo-professional, I guess I'm ok with it. It's just kinda sad.

Grats guys.

Earl Sleek said...

Damn you, Earl Sleek!

:) I wish I could promise this would be the last time you'd say that.

As long as everything here, from content to language to state-rape stays the same when you guys become pseudo-professional, I guess I'm ok with it.

So far as I know, the only censor we have to deal with at the new site is Mirtle himself, and we don't plan on changing focus at all.

Mirtle just lured us on board so you'd finally get through that new login process :)

James Mirtle said...

Resistance is futile.

Sarah said...

Awesome! Great new home.

Anonymous said...

First of all, congrats! That's what you get for running an A+ blog.

I have to agree with Joe a bit, though. I stopped my (infrequent) commenting at Mirtle's blog when it moved to SBN and I'll have to see if I'll follow BoC there. I'll be reading both, sure, but I don't know if I want to register anywhere. That's a great thing about blogspot...

Mr. Plank said...

Looks like Christmas came a little early this year gents.

Earl Sleek said...

I stopped my (infrequent) commenting at Mirtle's blog when it moved to SBN and I'll have to see if I'll follow BoC there. I'll be reading both, sure, but I don't know if I want to register anywhere.

Yeah, I know logins and registration are pains in the ass, but if you make an SBN login once, you do get the benefit of using it across a quickly-increasing number of team blogs. Also it will do some cool things like keep track of stories and comments you've already read and highlight new items you haven't yet.

I don't want to pressure anyone, though. If you feel led, sign up, but you can still read anything you want anonymously.

The archives appear to be loaded now, the site should be set to go live pretty darn soon (knock on wood).

Anonymous said...

Bring on the advertising!

Lola said...

Congrats to ya'll!!!

I too don't care much for registern' except when I'm already registered. But I will likely do this so that I may continue to see Sleek's custom 'toons. They bring a little extra sunshine on those days! I think these are usually better than what Fanhouse gets.

Oh, yeah, and that ya'll cover my Stars with your BoC. That too.

Good Kyle said...

tight I wish you the best of luck while I still here on blogspot.