Well howdy do Nation Citizen! Perhaps you have noticed that the site you have visited today has an entirely new look. Don’t panic – this is the same Nation Network site you have come to love/hate – just with a sexy new look and functionality.
Perhaps you are wondering “What does this mean? What happens next? Is this thing gonna steal my credit card number because I will cut you.” All good Sir/Madam/Robot – it’s just a new platform and a new era beginning for our company.
“It’s all good baby baby” – Notorious BIG voice
NATION NETWORK HISTORY LESSON
We started up OilersNation back in 2007, yours truly, @thesquir3, @bingofuel and @jdsiegel. Back then a dollar cost a dollar, phones were mostly for placing calls and the cash me ouside girl was only a twinkle in her parents eyes as they were in and out of juvenile detention.
We had originally started a website protesting the trade of Ryan Smyth to the Islanders. Nowadays you would simply tweet, facebook and snap your rage and get on with your life. But back then you had to make a blog and demand people read it via strongly worded telegrams you sent around the world. And that is what we did.
When that site was a few months old we realized a few things:
- The internet is fun and holds a lot of opportunities
- We didn’t know much about the internet beyond it’s theoretical opportunities
- Mainstream Sports Media wasn’t talking to us as sports fans the way we wanted to hear it.
And so we took BringRyanHome.com (who knows where that link will take you haha) and spun it into OilersNation.com and set about learning how to make an internet company. It was our intention to make a website that covered the Oilers every bit as good as any other, with real reporters and real articles featuring real words. With an absence of bloggers willing to join us on our journey (every single one we approached ignored our begging pleas) your ol’ pal Wanye began cranking out articles while looking much much higher up the food chain to get real writers to join our site.
Miraculously Robin Brownlee and Jason Gregor agreed to join up and started writing for the site in 2009. We were able to assemble a team of other writers around their core, leveraging the talents of Jonathan Willis, the venerable Lowetide and many more and to this day we are incredibly appreciative they have stuck with us. We hope that today they believe most of the hype we pitched them so long ago has now come true and we have been good to our word.
Once OilersNation had established itself as “something” we began trying to expand on that model. We linked up with Kent Wilson down in Calgary who was instrumental in starting FlamesNation and CanucksArmy and assuring writers that we were in fact “mostly legit” despite being Oilers fans from Edmonton. His help connecting with writers across North America was the only reason that we didn’t continue to get turned down by every single writer on the internet and he was the cornerstone in building our writing corps to over 80 people today.
Every one of those writers’ labours – collectively writing dozens and dozens of articles every single day is truly amazing. Despite journalism jobs being rarer than Oilers playoff runs 2006-2016 (bazing!) our team continues to crank out content for largely part time wages and often better than the full time media who consider our collective work “blogs PFFT” They fight the trolls, look at the stats, invent new stats and pour their heart and soul into their articles and we tremendously appreciate everything they do.
THE NATION NETWORK TEAM = MUCH AWESOME
One of the key goals of the Nation Network has been to pay as many writers as much as we are able while keeping our content free. When @thesquir3 and I would have “strategy talks” – largely over 10000 vodka sodas at the Pint Downtown in Edmonton – we agreed that sports journalist jobs would eventually come back and it would be our job to “keep the kids writing” until the industry turned around and would raid our cadre of writers for talent.
10 years later we have lost more writers to NHL teams than media outlets and the industry continues its search for a viable monetization model. The slowdown of hiring journalism grads slowed even further in the years in between and even big name writers have been given compensation packages and headed off to other things as the newspaper industry continues to consolidate and jobs are eliminated.
Nonetheless, in the face of difficult industry conditions the Nation Network has continued to push forward. With a trio of acquisitions (NHLNumbers in 2010, DailyFaceOff in 2012 and HockeyFights.com in 2014) and launching 5 more sites we have been able to build a profitable business that should see 70 million visitors to our sites in the next 12 months.
We have built out other revenue streams – NationGear, podcasts, free and pay to play fantasy games – in an attempt to increase revenues. We used the Nation Platform to hype our investments in sports bars and restaurants and I have come to enjoy using OilersNation as my personal diary much to the dismay of a portion of our readers. These initiatives have worked out well and we look forward to continuing to work on new products, websites and ideas in the years to come.
We are immensely grateful to our advertisers – many of whom took a chance on two guys bursting into their offices with Microsoft Word advertising proposals and screaming about all manner of things. These amateur attempts have been replaced with our professional sales team of @noopsybrown and @mandeeeeez who do a way better job than we ever did.
And back at homebase our stalwart squad led by @jsbmbaggedmilk, @TheNationChris, @theNationKyla continue to do the thankless work – sending out the stickers and gear, planning parties, attending parties. They keep the trains running on time so that the rest of the team looks good. Thank you so much for all your efforts.
Finally a big shout out to our intrepid investors – who always take our panicked calls with good humour and have believed in the story since day one. Seriously, thanks.
THE NATION WILL CONTINUE FORWARD
Moving to a new platform was a gigantic task for our 11 FT staff as well as our contractors in Toronto. But it is a commitment by our company to be around for the next 10 years and beyond continuing to provide rabid sports fans with the content that they need 365 days a year.
We will continue redoing our other sites in the months to come and are looking to purchase several other sites and launch some new ones as well.
These sites come with the addition of a professional CEO who joined our company back in the fall. It took us a long time and we had to grind many a day to be able to have a company cool enough to attract someone of his skill set and we collectively look forward to watching the business continue to grow under his stewardship.
AND NOW FOR SOME OPRAH SHIT
For anyone thinking about starting their own business, changing jobs or doing something new and scary we hope the Nation Network stands as a testament to perseverance and following your dreams. As a kid who desperately wanted to play hockey but lacked the physical coordination, means and skill to play – the Nation Network allowing me to participate in the game has been a dream come true.
I truly love the Edmonton Oilers more than I could love a human baby and being able to come into work every day and intensely follow the team I love has been a life dream come true. Yelling in caps lock isn’t work – it is the greatest fun I have ever known and I will continue until dying on impact travelling to Mars in 2068.
The Nation Network should show you that you don’t need to be Elon Musk to start your own business. You will undoubtedly make mistakes – we have made basically every error you can make and yet remain in business – but you can overcome them with determination and team work. If we can do this, anyone can do anything and don’t let anyone tell you who you can be or what you can do. Just cook up a plan and start and keep pushing until you get where you want to go wherever that may take you.
Finally, a big big big big big thank you to everyone who comes to our sites, reads our articles, buys our gear, plays our games, watches our videos and starts wars in the comments sections. I don’t want to get all Garth Brooks on you and say “ITS ALL YOU” but baby it’s all you.
Until then enjoy our new look and functionality. Change sucks and it might take a few wrinkles being ironed out and fires extinguished but in the end we will continue on indefinitely.
And to all the people who laughed at us Oilers fans ranting and raving on blogs and online * looks at Connor McDavid *
WHO IS LAUGHING NOW?
Love and kisses
Wanye von Gretz IV, DDS, OBGYN
c/o the Nation Network Squad
But we loved you just the way you were……seriously, I’m not apposed to change but here’s some constructive criticism. One of the beauty things about ON was it’s simplicity. The new site is a little too busy for me. Just like when my wife cuts here hair short and I don’t like it, I will keep coming back. But please grown out your hair again…
I agree. I have no issue with the new site so far, but I loooooved the simplicity of the old site. I do not, however, miss having a new tab opened every time I went to a different nation. Oh man, that’s a welcome change. This isn’t drastic enough to keep me away. not even close. Congrats nation crew!
Thank you for getting my daily [ and then some] Oiler fix.Nice job on regigging the site.Good luck with the rest of the journey. If it doesn’t work, blame on the CEO.
I don’t know how to trash or cheer and it’s making me angry. BOOOOOOOOOOOOO WAYNE BOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Turn off adblock! (this is the temporary fix until we solve the issue) 🙂
YOU’RE NOT MY SUPERVISOR!
Ha! Classic!
That’s how your computer gets an STI…
the new site makes me puke. I like to puke.
I will miss the old style a bit but it was time. Reminds me of the Sportsnet site a little.
True. The primary difference being that this site is good, and sportsnet is, sportsnet.
Nice job man! Building a new site is the most frustrating and most fun thing you can do but also the most rewarding when you finally go live. Personally I’d appreciate a Wanye soapbox/blog section as it’s not often you get to read the thoughts of a successful YEG entrepreneur. *Thumbs up*
Looks great! Love hearing that you guys have a long term vision for the business.
But on a serious note, how do we Trash and Cheer?
Wait. Hold on just a minute…FOR THE LOVE OF GOD BRING BACK THE EDIT FUNCTION IT WAS THE ONLY THING THAT KEPT ME FROM LOOKING LIKE A MORONNNNNN.
MOAR WANYE ?????. Seriously though congrats on your success.
Change sucks but this new site is awesome like a possum… To the next decade of Oilersnation and Connor bringing all the cuts to Edmonton.
Congrats. Very cool success story.
I never understood why the cluttered messy looking homepage is so popular with websites nowadays. But change is inevitable, I will embrace it. On a side note, I want to say this now, Eberle is going to come alive big time in the playoffs. I know it. He’ll have the second most points on the team.
Connor McDavid, Rogers Place and now this?
I guess we can have nice things.
Love it, but please don’t ever post those plastic surgery pics again! I was about to have lunch, dammit! 😛
Well, it’s different. I guess, it’s like trying to improve on donairs. Can’t get better than perfect. Still, it’s the STRUGGLE that makes us human. Nice job, Wanye.
I was in “WTF!” mode this morning when I first checked in but the new layout looks good. I have but one simple request though… How about updating the player thumbnail images? Seeing some of our guys sporting anything but Oilers colors is as disturbing as the post-surgical Donatella image…. Well, maybe not but you get the idea.
It’s on my list of things to do! Fear not, I’ll get there.
The site looks great. Well done, everyone.
*sniff* I love you all.
I’m a fan of positive change and even though it’s not perfect yet, I like where this is going (much like the 2016-17 Oilers). That said, I agree that it’s a bit “busy” to start, and seriously, why is all the text BOLD? The Nation readers can’t ALL be that blind, can they?!?
I trust it will get refined in time. Keep up the solid work!
It looks very clean. Love the White Background, but I can’t figure how to upvote and trash comments!
Increase your ZOOM % on the page until trashes & cheers apears…
We’re fixing that but if you want to vote you’ll have to turn your ad blocker off.
It also be nice if you brought the comment filter back, like top rated comments, worst, and newest 🙂
Thanks for the background info and history on the ‘Nation, Wanye. Good job and congrats to you and your team!
Do I smell an HBO series?
congrats on the upgrade, I’m sure the backend is much more user friendly as well for the content creators (which will benefit all of us).
As someone who comes here mostly to read the comment section / discussions, wanted to share couple thoughts…
– Bring back the sort function for newest/top & bottom comments.
– Visually, the new Props/Trashes are not very intuitive. Cheers should be to the left of trashes, especially considering that was the format on the previous site, and all your users are trained to view them that way. Think of keeping score for the home team… do you say you are 0 – 3 or 3 – 0 when you are up by 3?
– Further on props/trashes… bolding both doesn’t make sense to me. Few options – write a script to bold the current leading category (props or trashes), and perhaps add a fainted traffic light color (green for props, red for trashes) that isn’t distracting but quickly visually distinguishes the categories.
My 2c, and very excited about the threaded comments!
and bring back edits… and on google chrome, cheers & trash buttons don’t show up.
Working on bringing back edits!
PHEW!
Congrats on the upgrades. I wish you continued success as you move forward. I think Oilersnation is the best hockey site—bar none. Looking forward to reading more articles.
Sell the farm. Boobaggedmilk. #wheresjeanshorts?
Well done chap! New look made me create an account.
In honour of the new site Wayne goes back in time and pulls out Ghost Ride the Whip after the game to celebrate the Oilers reaching 80 points for only the third time in the history of Oilersnation. – THIS GUY KNOWS WHAT’S UP
Neat.
Can you reply to your own comment?
Can you reply to your own reply to your own comment?
Neat.
Can we still comment on polls?
So almost a week in. You say the back end stuff is much improved. Great I’ll take your word on that. I think I prefer the old look though. This site looks like one of those pages where you have to click next to get the rest of the what ever hook they used to get you in.aybe you can hybrid the old look with the new code? Idk
Reminds me of the Copper n Blue website….
So I clicked load more comments then it brought me to the top of the page and I had to scroll through the whole article to read comments. This was on android. Kind of annoying
The page loads slow for me. I am using netscape navigator 4 with a 2400 baud modem. I hate change!
Holy cow… And I can cheer and/or trash a single comment as much as I like! WaaaaHoooooooooo!
Crap… Wanted to stop at 99 (one of my favorite numbers) but overshot the landing strip. Damned Guinness…
Hmmmm…. My trash counter was up to 100 then reset back to 1. Bummer. Never mind.
Wanye lives!!