The team formerly behind BluesWeb is proud to launch our new website which aims to provide an Ipswich Town website rich on features.
This new site allows our users to interact with the website in many ways to embrace modern internet technology and the social networking age to offer a wealth of user generated content.
How We Aim to Do this:
We display the latest user posted Ipswich Town Videos from Youtube on the front page giving access to a wide range of Video content.
We take show a gallery of latest Ipswich Town related images from popular photo sharing site flickr for a unique view of photos taken by ITFC fans.
We interact with our users via popular social networking sites twitter and facebook, and offer the latest Town news via both mediums through the front page.
We allow our users to comment on news articles posted by our team, to allow discussion on topical issues without registration.
Our external news service checks the latest news from various media sites every 10 minutes, to offer a round-up of Town news from around the web to run alongside our own content.
We offer fully featured discussion forums powered by vBulletin with user profiles, private messaging, signature and avatar features
Each page allows you to quickly post a link to the article on popular social networking sites such as twitter, facebook, digg, delicious and stumbleupon meaning you can share information easy with like minded supporters.
In addition to our standard web medium, we offer both a PDA and a mobile phone version of our website, alongside an RSS feed to give Town supporters the greatest choice of accessing information from us
What makes us different? We are also mindful that users are put off by extensive advertising on websites and lack of interactive features. From an early planning stage the website developed with greater visitor interaction and offering a superior user experience, free of intrusive advertising.
This is reflected in our use of a standard page template across the majority of the site, meaning that you are always see both the latest posts on our forums, and the latest news headlines, wherever you are on the site, ensuring you are always up to date.
Why did we leave Footymad? Several weeks ago the team had concerns about the direction that Footymad was heading over the course of the last few months, following the change of ownership of the network late last year, where the parent company, Entertainment and Sports Agency sold the content side of their business to Opta Sportsdata and the Footymad side of the business to Digital Sports Group.
Our primary concerns with the over-reliance on advertising on the sites at the expense of content and generally the lack of investment and improvements seen in the network that we would have expected under previous ownership. This view was shared by many editors on the network and not just our own.
Why was there no notice? Early this week, we informed our named contact in Footymad of our desire to leave the network after previously discussing our future with footymad in some detail. We were then informed the same day, that we would not be allowed to keep the domain BluesWeb.co.uk as DSG considered it their property. We moved into Footymad in 2002.
This morning we received an email from our named contact in Footymad confirming he had been asked to terminate our access to the Footymad administration system and would be looking for a new editor for BluesWeb.co.uk.
We have contacted Digital Sports Group to discuss the current situation but to this moment no discussions have taken place between the two sides despite the fact we have always maintained we wished to discuss the matter.
Who is running the BluesWeb.co.uk site? Digital Sports Group are now responsible for the BluesWeb.co.uk website and any content that is published on such website. We no longer control the moderation, the news or any of the features on the website.
What happens now? Blues-Online.co.uk is run by the team previously behind Bluesweb.co.uk and we understand that BluesWeb.co.uk will be appointing a new editor shortly, who will have no connection with the previous team.
Is this the end of the matter? We once again stress that we are still open to discussion and constructive talks with the owners of the Digital Sports Group about the current situation to resolve it for the good of both parties.
I would like more information, who can I contact? Simply email us at editor@blues-online.co.uk and we will get back to you as soon as possible. Please be aware however due to any possible third party involvement in this issue there are some topics we cannot comment on at present.
Update: as of late afternoon and very soon after this article being posted DSG have finally contacted us and we will be speaking to them shortly. We will update everyone when this is complete.
