Welcome friends new and old! We did it…we finally did it! We have a new home. Welcome to Fossa Dei Leoni 1899.
This has been a long time coming. We actually wanted to change sites this past summer to celebrate Milan’s first Scudetto since the 2010-11 season and the official ending of the banter era. Work, family, obligation, basically life has prevented us from embarking on the pain-staking journey of building our own website and finally getting off of Tumblr.
As to the site itself, well, you can tell we definitely went with a…theme…a red and black theme. Not only are they Milan’s colors but we think they look bad ass. I personally always liked reading the posts on the old site in the Reader mode, which is the black background with white text. Everything just felt more chic and streamlined. The drawback to that view was you couldn’t go down to the comment section and interact, so we made sure all of that was possible with the new site’s look and feel.
Another thing you’ll notice is the lack of ads. I know Tumblr didn’t have a bunch of ads (aside from some in the Disqus section…oh and that god forsaken pop-up asking you to join Tumblr or log in), but it’s something that becomes very evident when you check out other blogs. That is not how this site is going to operate. We will do all we can to never have to resort to that process should we ever need to raise any revenue. Should we ever change course we will be sure to let you know when and why.
As to the site itself, we definitely want you all to explore and see what we built out, something you may have already done before clicking on this post to read. You’ll see upcoming games, the Serie A league table, Milan’s official Twitter feed, and more. For all you newbies, be sure to check out our About section, as there’s a nice brief history of the Fossa as well as contributor information.
In the end, the content on this site, both the blog posts and the team and league content, are all here for your convenience. We don’t want you to have to open a bunch of windows or go to a bunch of different sites to get things we often reference or want to look up. For example, we’re not the biggest fans of mercato rumors, so on top of not posting a lot about it during the silly season (seasons?) we decided to embed Milan’s official Twitter feed here so you could see what the team has to say, or perhaps more importantly in many cases, not say. Our focus is on Milan, at all times, for all things.
The comment section…where we all come to interact and share in the joy and frustration that is any sports fandom…took some deliberation when deciding what to do and what comment system to use. I know we all aren’t the biggest fans of Disqus but we ended ended up sticking with them mostly for 2 reasons: (1) everyone already has a user profile with them and won’t have to create a new one on a different system, and (2) we’re optimistic most of the issues with Disqus at the previous site was due to Tumblr and not Disqus itself. Ironically, after we decided to stay with Disqus, Disqus went and had a redesign and it’s definitely better than it was before in both appearance and function. As with all things, we are open to making changes in the future should performance not be up to par. Thankfully, with our own site we’ll have more much autonomy should a change be needed and many more options to choose from.
Finally, regarding content, we’ll have many of our usual features and posts: matchday, post match ratings, Nonno Crunching Some Numbers, opinion pieces, and of course AviA’s WAGS. Don’t be surprised to see some new stuff as well. Oh, one of the best new features that comes with the new site and something we’re excited about: a subscription button! It’s at the bottom of the home page but I’ll post it below here as well. Finally, you won’t have to drop in to see if there’s anything new and can get contacted about it instead. Or, perhaps more importantly, you won’t be off talking to yourself in the previous post when we’ve all moved on to the new one…we won’t name any names but you know who you are…
We’re very much looking forward to the next chapter here at the FDL 1899 and we hope you are too.
Forza Milan per sempre
Lisi, TR, AviA, and gillis