It has been what they call in the trade “a while”. We’ve been a bit silent on the blogging front of late because we’ve had a few things to take care of at the back end. Why, even right now we’re broadcasting from the bowels of the British Library trying to get our Ricky Marshalls straight from our Brian Marshalls; our Peter Gittings from our Martin Gittings.
And, quite frankly, we’ve read enough issues of The Comet and The Stevenage Gazette (no disrespect guys) to last us a ruddy lifetime. But it’s been a fascinating story all the same and we have some snippets that we hope to share with you as soon as we get the chance.
Of course, we’re still striving to complete all the gaps in our knowledge while at the same time making sure the new-look site doesn’t cause you any grief. That’s why we thought we’d give you a little insight into what we’ve been up to the past few weeks… and then ask a favour of you.
Statistics-wise, we’ve been trying to make our comprehensive archive even more comprehensive. We’ve located a good few of the match line-ups that we hadn’t before hand. And that means when you go to look at a match page from any given season, the chances of finding who played in that game is much higher. Not only that, but we believe we now have a record of EVERY Boro’ goalscorer since 1980.
We’ve changed some stuff in the back end of the site with regards to how we tally the rollcalls, and this might explain why we haven’t (yet) got the rollcalls back online. A slight issue regarding our (lack of) MySQL knowledge means we haven’t got the right formula to add up all that information. And, as with any data entry process, we’ve found one or two anomalies that need ironing out. That said, some things never change. Martin Gittings still heads the all-time goalscoring charts and we’re still confident Mark Smith has made the most appearances.
If you visit a player profile, the appearances data is compiled from the number of instances we have them listed as playing in a game. That’s why, for example, you might find some of the 1980s lads have scored a ton of goals, but in not all that many appearances. We’re not quite there yet.
Design-wise, we’ve tried to make the site more user-friendly for those of you on mobiles. Last time, you pretty much got the desktop site and had to zoom in. That’s now changed. We are aware that there might be an issue with older versions of Internet Explorer, but – seriously – it’s time to move on from IE.
And now onto our favour. You might have seen that A Load Of Old Toffee is looking for some love at the Football Blogging Awards. Well, so are we. We thought we might have a stab at the Club category and now ask you if you can either vote via Facebook, Twitter or the FBA website for us. You just need to tweet “I’m voting for @boroguide in the #club category @TheFBAs” or visit this link. We’re not sure how it works on Facebook…
Voting closes very soon. Too soon for you to ask questions, in fact.
We promise we’ll be back in the swing of things on the match preview and general blogging front very soon. But we’ve put the site’s construction top of the priorities list, and we’re sure that you can appreciate our passion for getting Boro’ info up online for you to read ahead of our otherwise marvellous match previews. Plus, it’s only Luton this weekend – it isn’t exactly the sort of occasion one considers all that important…
