Cageside Seats site changes and updates to SB Nation United

It's been a full week since SB Nation launched its "United" project, a total network redesign that brought us into the new age of the Internet. And while a few of you resisted the change, I think we've retained a great deal of our audience and I'm happy to see so many of the regulars we know and love consistently commenting on the site.

Now let's update a few things that have happened since the switch.

Different sites have used different formulas with how they run their Cover and River. Here at Cageside Seats, we're still using the same strategy we have been since we kicked this thing off.

The Cover resets at 7 a.m. CT with fresh stories like the Raw Reactions, a Tournament match, and This Date in History, and they stay there until 7 a.m. the next day when they refresh with another lead story and another Tournament match and another This Date in History post.

The River, then, is designated as the place where you can find the latest news, in the same reverse chronological order the old format used to use.

Some have argued that leaving the Cover the same all day each day isn't a smart strategy because it's dull, or makes it look as though the site isn't being updated. I disagree. I think the way we treat the Cover breeds familiarity, something we have all been looking for since the switch was made to the United design.

Yes, you're going to see a couple of the same logos each day (Tournament Bracket design and This Date in History logo, both by our lovely June M. Williams), but you'll know they are different matches or stories and I think it's nice to know what you're getting each time you come back.

Plus, it makes it easy to just scroll down to the River where you can find the latest news. No, there still isn't a timestamp but rest assured, you'll always be able to simply scroll down until you see a story you've read and everything above that is new.

Simple and clean, just the way we like it.

Beyond that, though, there have been some bugs with the site since the new layout took affect. I'm happy to report, straight from our tech team, that they've been burning the midnight oil to get some things fixed up.

Here's what they've done so far (with more to come):

This morning we released several big changes:

1) Streamlined the mobile web layout to be easier to quickly scan. I encourage everyone to load it up and check it out. We'll continue to make tweaks, but this was a big step forward and these changes were based directly on community feedback we received. We removed a lot of clutter and put an emphasis on the stories in the river: bigger headlines, added blurbs and added timestamps. We also cleaned up the fonts on mobile to be easier to read.

2) More decreases to the size of mobile web pages in order to improve performance.

3) Turned off auto-updating comments on mobile by default so that it doesn't inadvertently drain mobile battery life.

4) Fixed the issue with not properly showing the number of new comments for logged in users on the homepage.

5) Fixed the issue with missing content in the iOS and Android apps.

6) Added the Recommend button to articles.

7) Several other fixes to link type FanShots, Video links, Login/Signup links in the footer, issues w/ Facebook shared links, headline fonts too big in the cover and more!

What we have up next:

- Fix the issue with Shift-A not always working to clear unread comments for logged in users
- More mobile improvements
- IE 8 visual tweaks
- Many small things

Really, really happy to report this to you Cagesiders and again, thanks for sticking around and hanging with us.

If you're still having issues with certain things and it's bugging you enough, please feel free to email something to support@sbnation.com and they will be able to help sort stuff out. Community feedback has been instrumental in making these fixes and will continue to be so.

Thank you to everyone who sent something in and helped with the process and thanks to the tech team for working so hard to make this site we all love so great.

CSS! CSS! CSS!