The New Marlin Maniac (Complete with Forums!)

For those of you who have been with me for a while on Marlin Maniac, you may have noticed that MM went through a promised redesign earlier this week. Along with the slick new design comes some cool new features. Not only is it now much easier to promote the blog through the various social networking sites, but the redesign now allows for something I’ve always wanted for Marlin Maniac: forums!

Now that MM has forums, the readers will have an even stronger voice in what we do and the content we provide. As of now, everyone is allowed to read the forums as a guest, but to post and participate in the community, you must register with Marlin Maniac. If you have not already, it’s really simple: click on this link and register a username and password, and you are set to start posting on the Marlin Maniac forums.

What do you get out of registering for the forums? One thing I always liked about SBNation’s blogs was that FanShots and FanPosts allowed for the readers of sites to get their opinions heard and featured. I think that the forums on FanSided will also provide a similar service for you FanSided readers. Now, instead of being able to post your opinions only on whatever John or I find topical (that is, whatever we post about), you can post about anything that comes to your mind, whether we write about it or not. It will also give you a chance to voice your opinion for other readers to comment on; blogs often have an atmosphere of a dialogue between the blogger and the readers, but I hope the forums will provide more of a community discussion feeling.

One thing I always wanted to do that the forums should allow for is the usage of open game threads. I never wanted to do this on the front page, because I did not think an open game thread was blog-post material, but I did want to provide a place for Marlin Maniac readers to post their thoughts as the game goes on live. The open game threads group is perfect for that. For every game, I will post up a live open game thread, usually within an hour or so of first pitch. The information will be extremely basic, mostly the pitching matchup and potentially the lineups for the day. The key is what occurs afterwards, which is the live discussion of the game. It probably won’t work as smoothly as FishStripes’ live game threads, but it will hopefully host a lively discussion (or at least some angry ranting) of the happenings of the game. Whenever I’m available to watch a game, I’ll be “live-blogging” the event, posting quick-hit thoughts and answering/reacting to your thoughts.

I hope that the forum works out well for Marlin Maniac and its readers. We’re going to begin open game threads at earliest tomorrow afternoon, though I may just start off fresh with the three-game set against the Chicago Cubs. I insist that all of you drop by and have your voice be heard on Marlin Maniac. Just register following this link and begin posting today! And do comment on the rest of the awesome redesign of the site. Tell me what you think in the comments!