Site Announcements: Featured Stories, Mock Draft Resources, Recommended Fan Posts

A week ago, we announced to first of the offseason site changes, with the initiation of kmb8488's new weekly mailbag. You can email your questions to him here. Now, we bring you a couple of administrative site changes, which will hopefully make things a little easier to carry on in-depth discussions on the site.

The first is the Featured Stories list. If you look on the left side of the front page, I have moved the Featured Stories from half way down the right column to the left side, where it is high, a little bigger, and easier to find. The stories that show up there are the major ones posted by our authors, and then, if you guys start a serious discussion, with many comments, or your "rec" a story (click the rec link at the bottom of the story), I will add it to the featured stories list as well. This will help keep some of the bigger stories on the Front Page just a little longer.

Before we go on to the next site announcement, I would also like to make sure you guys know you can change the number of stories you see on the front page. If you go into your profile (click your screen name in the upper left corner of the screen), then hit "Edit Account & Settings" (upper right of the page), you can select from the dropdown the number of posts to display on the front page. You can also change the number of Fan Posts and Fan Shots you see on the front page as well.

The second announcement comes right under the Featured Stories list. If you scroll down a little more, you will see a list of all of the mock draft posts the contributing authors have made so far. This list will continue to grow as more are put on the site, and, since the mocks are so popular, it will give you a simple place to go click to see each mock.

The final announcement for today is the recs required for Fan Posts. As we have grown, the number of Recs needed to show up on the "Recommended" list has stayed at six. Meanwhile, posts are getting 15-20 recs easily. In order to try to keep the recommended Fan Posts to the best ones that you guys vote up there, I have changed the number of posts needed to make the list. Instead of six, the number is now ten. It's not a big jump, but it should help keep some of the better written posts, and the ones you guys want to discuss, up on the front page a little longer.

That's all for today. Look for more site announcements later in the week.