New Think Muscle Site

Totentanz

Totentanz

Super Moderator
Staff member
Anyone visit the front page on thinkmuscle.com? Looks like they totally revamped the site. I see articles posted up from Lyle, Bryan and Charles Staley - nice stuff. If you haven't checked it out, you should. There is a lot of good information there. I've started sharing some of the articles on my facebook to get some more traffic in and because I thought they were good articles.

What do you all think of the new look?
 
Thanks for posting this. I usually just come straight to the forum so I probably would have missed it for some time.

I made a comment on one of the blogs. There didn’t seem to be a way to link it to my forum username, was I missing something?
 
Yeah, I couldn't see any way to do that either. Also linking to my facebook account wouldn't work either. Hopefully they work out those kinks soon.
 
Well spotted! I very rarely check the main site now. The new front-end is looking good.

It's definitely a work in progress: there are placeholders at the footer of the home page and several links take you back to the old site articles.

Hope this keeps people coming to the forum. It's got to be one of the best sources of training-related info on the web.
 
Yeah I was impressed that they had new articles from Bryan and Lyle, both of whom I always like to hear from. I don't really know much about Charles Staley. They are posting links to the articles on facebook so hopefully that attracts more people as well. It would be nice to get more flow here.
 
There is a lot of work to go on thinkmuscle site + forum but this is a start.

Would you like to see "facebook comments" system for the site? Messages posted in the comments section for each article will cross-post to your facebook profile and vice versa...

There used to be a plugin where article comments would cross-post to vbulletin forum but apparently this only works with older versions of wordpress and vbulletin.
 
Yeah it definitely looks like it is still a work in progress but I think the progress so far is impressive. I think it's great that the site is being revamped, the only thing it needs after that is more traffic flow. Hopefully amongst us members, we can get enough word of mouth out there to bring more in. I don't know if you guys have something in mind to advertise or anything like that. I would think the articles would be a decent draw.

A facebook comments system, I think, would be great but I don't know how many people here are on facebook?
 
I've always thought that Facebook comments rapidly degenerate into nonsense and profanity. I've got a FB page, but I keep having to 'unfriend' folks because of crude remarks.
 
It's a good question - how many people here use facebook? And would you like comments posted on thinkmuscle articles to appear on your facebook?
 
TunnelRat said:
I've always thought that Facebook comments rapidly degenerate into nonsense and profanity. I've got a FB page, but I keep having to 'unfriend' folks because of crude remarks.
Click to expand...

I want to keep an "open" comments area for the articles even though it may entail a little extra work. The choice I'm looking at is between disqus and facebook comments systems. Facebook *should* keep discussion from degenerating as theoretically it eliminates anonymous posting. Disqus still allows somewhat anonymous posting.

There are a lot of issues:

http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/09/facebook-comments-isnt-right/
http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/01/pros-cons-facebook-comments/
 
I would like it if my comments on articles would show up on my profile, then people who are looking at my profile are more likely to follow the link and see what the article is.

It would be nice if it integrated with the forums a little too. But I don't know how easy that is or if there is forum integration for this type of forum with the software you are using. Usually integration can be kind of cumbersome.
 
The goal is to better integrate main site with forum although the integration will focus on seamlessly integrating the visual appearance of the site rather than integrating databases. We use two different apps - vbulletin for the forum and wordpress for main site.

Vbulletin is trying to be an all-inclusive content management system but imo its strength remains its forums.
 
FYI, you can still cross-post comments to facebook profile using the disqus commenting system but only in the thinkmuscle.com --> facebook direction ... The facebook comments does bi-directional cross-posting but requires users to have a facebook account.
 
Whatever you all finally come up with the work is appreciated. There’s a lot of great information and realistic help available here that I think a lot of people miss out on. I think the new site will help generate a lot more interest with the new articles.
 
Thanks - that's primarily my role here: to make all this great content more accessible to everyone. I hope to unpack it all over the next few months in a much more organized fashion.
 
Totentanz said:
Anyone visit the front page on thinkmuscle.com? Looks like they totally revamped the site. I see articles posted up from Lyle, Bryan and Charles Staley - nice stuff. If you haven't checked it out, you should. There is a lot of good information there. I've started sharing some of the articles on my facebook to get some more traffic in and because I thought they were good articles.

What do you all think of the new look?
Click to expand...

I have some concern that the front page includes recent posts. Often we get very new people visiting here, so some posts may include erroneous information, or misunderstandings of how HST is supposed to work. It's not a problem to answer newby questions (and this site is most gracious to us noobs), but I question whether such posts ought to appear on the main page as representative of HST.
 
Totentanz said:
Yeah I was impressed that they had new articles from Bryan and Lyle, both of whom I always like to hear from. I don't really know much about Charles Staley. They are posting links to the articles on facebook so hopefully that attracts more people as well. It would be nice to get more flow here.
Click to expand...

I posted something about the new Thinkmuscle site on lyle's board, and this was his response.

Lyle McDonald said:
There's nothing NEW by me there.
Click to expand...

If so, putting recent dates on old content would seem fairly misleading and maybe even fraudulent.
 
The site is new not the content - at least not yet. I'm not sure why you think it's fraudulent. The articles have been buried on the sites for years with few reads. I hope making them accessible to more people will be welcome. I expect they will be "new" to 99 out of 100 visitors to the site. Those who have followed Lyle, Bryan and Charles writings for the past 15 years on thinkmuscle/meso may recognize some familiar content. Lyle knows about it as I've corresponded with him about what we're doing as a way to promote his ebooks.

Basically, we're moving content from a static website to a dynamic database. This is a lot of work when it involves hundreds of articles. One article a day seems to be a reasonable goal given my time constraints. I hope it is appreciated.
 
I think it is fraudulent to represent those as Lyle McDonald's thoughts in 2011 if they were written half a decade to a decade ago. I think somehow you need to take the datestamp of the old articles at the very least. There is always some chance that the author changed his opinion in the many years since they were written.
 
Millard, it really is appreciated. Thank you! I have rediscovered several articles and thoroughly enjoyed going through them again.

I take the point that djc raises. Would it be possible to add a line to each article stating the original date of publication? Maybe something for a rainy day. :)

Thanks again for pouring some much needed love into this site. It really does deserve a new foundation on which to build future content, rather than just a lick of paint.
 
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