The Times They Are A-Changin'

Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.

Indeed, this Thursday morning Black Shoe Diaries as you know it will come to an end. But we're not closing up shop here at BSD. We're going to be upgrading to the new SBNation platform. Call it BSD 2.0 if you will.

What is not going to change

1. The BSD URL will still be www.blackshoediaries.com
2. BSD will still be a Penn State blog.
3. The logo and blog colors.
4. I'll still be here putting together these crappy posts, though my new network name will be BSD. Can you believe the user name "Mike" was already taken?
5. Like a moth to the flame you'll still come here to waste valuable minutes of your life to read said crappy posts.

That's about it.

What is going to change

Holy crap. Where to start?

1. Fanposts - The Diaries will now be called Fanposts. They're basically the same thing with a 1000% cooler name. Only now we give you tools to really express yourself. You can highlight text in bold or italic. You can strike through text or put a box around a quotation. You can create bullet points and lists. You can create links to interesting articles. And you can do it all without having to dig out your complicated html cheat sheet as BSD 2.0 will provide you with all of these features at the click of a button.
2. Fanshots - Want to share a funny picture or video you think other BSD readers would enjoy? Or maybe you just want to point out an article without having to give a 300 character essay on it. Learn to use the Fanshots. Fanshots are quick posts that just say "Hey, check this out" without having to write a book to do it or fill in 300 characters of garbage.
3. Network Wide Access - You can go visit other sports blogs from time to time. I swear I won't get too jealous. The beauty of SBN 2.0 is that now you can cruise among all the SBN blogs without having to remember 20 different user names and passwords. One user name and one password will give you access to all of the sites. All you have to do is click the "Join" button on a blog to instantly take part in the community discussion after you are logged into another site.
4. More Information - With the click of a button you will have access to stats, scores, rosters, and schedules for Nittany Lion football and mens basketball.
5. Auto-Refreshing Comments - The comments section will automatically refresh every few seconds almost giving a chat room feel to them. Game day threads as we know them will never be the same.
6. Power To The People - SBN 2.0 will give the blog reader unprecedented power to customize their settings and interact with the online community. You will have an SBN profile page where you can list the blogs you frequent, customize the look of the front page to your liking, and attach an avatar to all of your comments, Fanposts, and Fanshots. Reward readers that offer intelligent views by recommending their posts and comments to others while flagging spammers and inappropriate comments to draw the attention of the blog administrator.

And these are just the highlights. There are dozens of other features and details that will make your BSD experience out of this world.

What You Should Do

If you want to get a head start on the new platform you can visit any number of SBN blogs that have already made the transition and sign up for an account. Once you do that follow the directions to claim your old accounts on the SBNation blogs you visit. That way you will get credit for all of your old comments.

Then if you want to you can visit one of the migrated blogs (BON is a good one) and start familiarizing yourself with the different features. Or if you just want to wait it out until Thursday and learn it on the fly that's fine too.