For more than ten years, The Roar has been the place for passionate and informed fans to meet and engage with the sports they love.
Today, we’re bloody stoked to be able to launch a completely refreshed, refined and redesigned Roar.
I’ve been lucky enough to work behind the scenes at The Roar for almost five years. In that time I’ve seen the community around the site grow and been privileged to meet (and have a beer with) many of the Roarers who make us unlike any other sports site, not just in Australia but anywhere on the internet.
In that same time, while the content and community has taken big leaps, the site itself has only seen minor, incremental improvements.
That changes today, thanks to some great work from our developers Michal and Robb, our UX guru Richard, our designers Elise and James, and The Roar’s editors Daniel and Ben.
This launch will be the biggest change Roarers have seen for a while – the site has been rebuilt, rewritten and redesigned from the ground up. But don’t worry – The Roar you know is only going to get better.
We’ve still got lots to do, and we’ve got some more exciting changes in store soon, so keep an eye on our Community Updates page for those.
For the new Roar, we wanted to put the community front and centre across the site, and every decision was made with this in mind. Immediately, you’ll notice a focus on user avatars across the site.
Another big goal of ours was to give a place to everything that makes The Roar great: Opinion articles, Club Roar videos, long-form reads, sports highlights, live blogs. We hope that it is now easier than ever to find what you’re after, no matter what brings you to The Roar.
For now, please explore the new site. And let us know your feedback.
Ryman White
Editor
I see your like there Simon.
Ben of Phnom Penh
Roar Guru
There are too many categories for sports, which risks some sports becoming dead zones unless other content or a general blog is incorporated. A good example is hockey, which I often read if I see it in the general sports section however am not so interested as to go hunting for articles. Cycling is another where I am much keener, enjoying the Vuelta at the moment, however become frustrated having to click in to check the site to see if any article is written (which isn't). As a result I am visiting The Roar far less as I go to other sites for such sports and when the Tour Down Under etc comes around I will probably stick with those sites.
Ryman White
Editor
Looks like links in comments aren't displaying! You should be able to click on 'Roaring Debate' there to see the image.
Ryman White
Editor
Hi Mister Football, are referring to this unit Roaring Debate, or to the rolling ticker that was titled 'The Pulse'?
nickbrisbane
Guest
A great improvement!
Mister Football
Roar Guru
I like the new look, well done to all concerned. I agree with others about the indenting of comments and ability to edit comments. The only other thing I noticed I'm missing is being able to see the five latest comments. That used to give you an immediate sense of where the action was, and often offered a quick precis of the latest comments coming in.
Atawhai Drive
Roar Guru
Looks good on the iPhone too.
Downsey
Roar Pro
Any chance of being able to click on a comment from your profile page and when the article pops up it scrolls to the exact spot of your comment?
Downsey
Roar Pro
I liked the section where you could see latest comments for articles (used to be a box off to the right) - it was an easy way to track a conversation with 50+ comments. Also, liked different colours rookie, pro, guru etc.
Saurebh Gandle
Roar Guru
From the top view the restructuring looks fine. Hope it's user friendly.
Rabbitz
Roar Guru
I also meant to add that the indent needs to be fixed and some paragraph formatting would be nice :)
Rabbitz
Roar Guru
Not a huge fan of the chosen typography. The bold san serif everywhere is very harsh and uninviting. The balance of whitespace feels odd. It's all a bit beige. These things will normalise over time I suppose. I really HATE the stupid "mouse over drop-downs" from the menu bar. All they do is obscure what you are looking for as the mouse moves around. They are particularly awful for small form factor devices.
Maggie
Guest
Yes, but still far too much white space between lines.
the_bear
Roar Rookie
Change the font size down with the font size changer, top of article next to the date published, there are Three A's. Tap the smallest. Larger fonts are everywhere online now because Google actually rewards larger fonts in search results. Plus.. old people with worn out eyes read this site too.
Seano
Roar Rookie
Ok no delay just me being silly. Font is a worry though.
Seano
Roar Rookie
I missed this and commented on anoth article. Why is the font so big? I have to scroll 10 times to read an article! Also why the delay now? It used to post straight away? That was the best thing, it was live no delay.
Daniel Jeffrey
Editor
Hi Atawhai Drive, That was an editing error on our part - comments were accidentally disabled on ‘Can the NRC live up to its potential?’. That's now been fixed.
Christo the Daddyo
Roar Rookie
One suggestion... Perhaps make the user handle more prominent - maybe bolded and/or bump up in font size? It's getting a bit lost now with the category (?) - Roar Rookie/Editor/etc being coloured now.
Atawhai Drive
Roar Guru
I use Firefox on the laptop, which is where the paragraphing snafu occurred. Haven't yet tried The Roar on the iPad, where the browser is Safari.
Atawhai Drive
Roar Guru
The one headed 'Can the NRC live up to its potential?'.