Posted 8 years ago

All right, it’s finally out! Took a lot longer than expected, partly due to difficult personal circumstances this summer.

This update to the Badminton Bible contains several big improvements:

New videos, in a different style

We’ve released several new videos, which are the first batch of our new style of content.

The main change is that we’re trying to keep individual videos shorter and tightly focused on a topic. To that end, they are tightly scripted and thoroughly prepared. A great deal of thought goes into what I’m going to say and how we’ll present it.

This doesn’t mean that all the videos will be basic or superficial. I’ve always been a details person, and that’s not changing. But I want to split content into digestible pieces, and I want to avoid rambling or repeating myself all the time.

In other words, the new content thoroughly respects the viewer’s time and gets straight to the point.

Unifying articles and videos

In the past, the website made you choose between reading articles and watching videos. This was a bit clunky. Ultimately this happened because of history: I started out writing articles, and the videos got added on much later.

From now on, we are reversing that idea. All content is now video first – at least when it makes sense to have a video.

This doesn’t mean we’re getting rid of the free text content in order to sell more video subscriptions. We’re just trying to make the best content we can, working to the strengths of both video and text.

All videos now have accompanying text explanations. The old article content is still there, but will gradually be phased out as it gets replaced by newer video-and-text content.

Technical improvements to the videos

We have a new camera, new microphones, and a new venue.

The better-looking video is nice to have, but the audio improvement is dramatic. Often in the old videos it was hard to hear what I was saying; that should be a thing of the past.

A better video player

We’re now using Vimeo, which means the videos will play better and will work on just about any device.

In the past, our videos didn’t work on phones or tablets. Now they should play seamlessly anywhere.

Easier navigation of the content

The content is now much better organised, so it should be easy to find what you’re looking for.

If you knew how much work I put into this, it might seem overkill. I’ve done it this way because I want to add a lot more content. The new structure will accommodate a large amount of content while still remaining organised.

On a related note, it’s now much easier for me to publish new content. You wouldn’t believe how hard it used to be. This will help me get into a more regular routine of adding new content.

I hope you like it!

Let me know what you think. Up until now, this new version has only been seen by me and very few others.