Hello and welcome to the new MinorLeagueBall. I'm turning you over to Trei, our resident computer genius, who has written this useful guide to the process of getting up to speed on the new platform. So without further ado, here is Trei. - John

Hey Minor League Ball,

Today is the big day. We've switched your community over to the new SB Nation sports blog platform. My name is Trei and I'm one of the guys who helped build this new home for you. I'm here to help you get adjusted and give you a quick tour of what is new and what has changed. Also, if you have questions or trouble with the new system, post a comment in this thread and myself or one the team (lovitt, sixfoot6 or odacrem) will point you in the right direction and answer your questions.

Before we get started, I want to let you know that you're only the sixth blog in the SB Nation family to make this transition. We still consider this a beta platform so don't be surprised if you find a few bugs or if everything isn't exactly right yet. In fact, we hope you'll take the time to report any problems you encounter. All you need to do is email bugreport@sbnation.com.

Please take a few minutes to read this summary of what is new and what has changed with your Minor League Ball and then let us know what you think in the comments. If you can't wait and you're ready to jump in right away, here are some quick things to check out:

1. Sign up for your SB Nation account and claim your old account
2. Once you're logged in again, click 'z' in a thread with new comments.
3. Explore your dashboard and setup your profile
4. Read the guide to the new FanPost editor
5. Install the FanShot bookmarklet and post videos to Minor League Ball from YouTube or images from Flickr

What Has Changed

SB Nation network accounts (the big change)

Many readers across all of our blogs told us they wanted one account that they could use on every SB Nation blog. We agreed and have created one SB Nation network account so that you only have to login once to gain access to all blogs. We want to make it as easy as possible for you to participate on all of our blogs. However, we didn't want to encourage everyone to start visiting rival team blogs and initiating flame wars. To maintain the friendly confines of our communities we ask that you explicitly join each blog you want to actively participate on. It's an easy two-click process, but it means accepting the different community guidelines that each blog sets out for itself. Just as you join each blog individually, you can be banned on each blog individually.

To make this work, we're requiring that everyone create a new SB Nation network account. Don't worry - you won't lose all of your old comments and diaries. We have created a simple process for you to claim your old blog account. In most cases you should be able to keep your old username, but a few of you may have to choose something new. The reason is that every other community in SB Nation will be going through this same transition and a member on another blog might have the same username that you do. We tried to be as fair as possible about deciding who gets to keep which name using a formula that takes into account length of membership, amount of activity and how recently you've been active. The important thing is that whatever name you have will be retroactively put on all of your old comments and diaries. Some of you already have multiple accounts on different SB Nation blogs; we've got you covered because you can claim more than one old blog account.

Now that I've explained all that - let's get you started:

Click Here to claim your old blog accounts and create a new SB Nation network account.

FanPosts (the section formerly known as Diaries)

We changed their name. Why? Because we took this major upgrade as an opportunity to leave behind some vocabulary we inherited that never made much sense for a sports blog. SB Nation is the network of, by and for fans and these are the blog posts we make. So we called them FanPosts. Next time you're at the bar and you're telling someone to go check out your sports opinion online, you don't have to suggest they read your diaries.

But the changes go deeper than the new name. FanPosts are displayed differently on the homepage - they now include an avatar so you get more credit for the time you invest in writing great posts. We also built a new editor that has a WYSIWYG view for easy formatting and auto-saving of drafts so you don't have to worry about losing your work when you write on the web. And in addition to adding basic tags, you can now associate teams, players and games with our special auto-complete tools. These will put your FanPosts on our new team, player and game pages - across the entire network.

The new system does not work like the old diary editor. For example, if you're writing in HTML mode we do not auto-detect paragraphs from two line breaks. Look for the blinking help button on the right side of the FanPost editor for quick tips, or take a look at our full guide to writing FanPosts on the new platform.

IMPORTANT - if you write your posts in Microsoft Word or some other off-line editor, you will get the most reliable behavior if you cut & paste your post into the HTML view of the FanPost editor. And if you do that, remember that you have to put the <p></p> tags around each paragraph you want so your text doesn't run together.

Visual Redesign

This one is probably the most obvious change of all. Like other major websites working to improve readability for their audience, we've adopted a fixed width layout optimized for the 1024 x 768 resolution that a majority of you at Minor League Ball and the SB Nation network use. We introduced a navigation bar with quick links into old and new sections of the site. We also polished a few edges, made some things larger, others smaller and moved a few boxes here and there.

Search

We completely replaced the old search engine with a new one. We're excited about how that will improve finding old posts and comments, but we've only taken our first pass on the tools we give you to do that. Just know that we're aware search is missing key features and we're working on it. Search will definitely get better in the near future, with the goal of making it even better than what you had before.

What Is New

Recommending FanPosts

Some writing needs more attention and more conversation. If you want to bump a FanPost up to the top and keep it there for awhile, just click the 'Rec' link under the body of the post. If a FanPost receives enough recommendations it will make the recommended list.

Auto-refreshing Comments

You no longer need to refresh the page to see new comments. If you're logged in, new comments will automatically appear on the page every few seconds. When you post a comment, the page will not refresh either. If you want to quickly cycle through all the new comments, you can press the 'c' key on your keyboard. Unmark a new comment after you've read it with the 'x' key. And use the 'z' key if you want to umark comments as you're cycling through them. As you use the keyboard shortcuts to cycle through comments you can just press the 'r' key to reply. All these helpful keyboard shortcuts are listed at the top of each comments section for reference.

Recommending Comments

Now you can reward those folks who take the time to look up stats and make smart arguments in the comments. Next to each comment there is an 'actions' link that you can click to find the recommend and flag options.

Flagging Comments

To help the moderators on a site, we've built-in tools that let you flag comments that are spam, trolling or just plain inappropriate. No one else can see those flaggings, but the moderators can.

FanShots

Many members of the community just want to post that one link, video, photo or quote and you don't need to write a full FanPost. We've got you covered and we made these quick hits really easy. Now you have a tool that is designed for sharing YouTube videos, Flickr or PhotoBucket photos, quotes from articles, portions of chat transcripts, top 5 lists and simple links. If it's a video or image we'll put a thumbnail on the homepage when you post it.

For those of you who are experienced internet hunter-gatherers of prospects material, install the bookmarklet to share FanShots with the community from wherever on the web you find that killer quote or photo.

Archives

It's much easier to go find that post about a certain deadline trade or prospect retro feature. You can browse by year and month.

Avatars

When you upload an image as your avatar we'll use it on your profile, your FanPosts and all your comments.

Network profiles

Now that we have unified SB Nation network accounts, your profile will be your central hub for all of your activity on any blogs where you are a member.

Network bar

The bar up at the top will stay with you on all SB Nation blogs. It's a quick way to login and logout. When you're logged in, you'll see your avatar and screen name. Click that and you'll find your profile. There is a button next to that for jumping to your dashboard with links for editing your settings, profile, account and any FanPosts or FanShots you've published. Once we add more blogs to the new SB Nation network, the My Blogs menu will be a handy way of navigating between the blogs you're a member of.

Schedule, Scores, Stats and Rosters

We've integrated sports data directly into the blog so now we have special pages that will aggregate all the blog posts written about games, players and teams. This is a little more difficult to present on Minor League Ball than our other team-specific blogs, but we'll be finding ways to make it useful for your community.

There are plenty more small changes and additions we've made so take a careful look around and explore this new system. If you're ready to get started

We appreciate your patience as we jump into this beta together and know you'll help us get this new platform ready for all the other SB Nation blogs.

And in case you missed it, you'll want to start with this:

Click Here to claim your old blog accounts and create a new SB Nation network account.