It was five months ago that I first announced the next version of Bill James Online.  At the time, I thought we'd be rollng out the new site in April.  Boy, was I wrong.

The good news is that we're NOW almost ready to roll out the new site, and it's going to be even better than I initially thought.  We'll still have most of the features you see today, with a few extra items for good fun.  And the public/non-subscriber part of the site will be much more robust than what we offer people right now.

Here's what the new public home page will look like:

You can see a lot of the changes from this page (besides the graphics and new color scheme).  For instance, non-subscribers will be able to see all of Bill's articles (though they'll only be able to read a few of them).  We'll have RSS feeds for our articles and also for Hey Bill.  In fact, the 25 most recent Hey Bill's will be available to the public, as well as some "Hot Lists" and a glimpse of our stats. In all, I think this will be a big upgrade and it will hopefully make the site more appealing to those who haven't subscribed.

But you subscribers will see a lot more changes.  Our bulletin board will be much more robust, featuring VBulletin software.  The bulletin board has been one of the big holdups to our rollout, because it's hard to integrate it into a subscription site like ours.  I'm sure there will be a few hiccups along the way.  But it will have many new features, such as using HTML (and formatting tables) in posts, and should address many of the complaints we've had about the Reader Posts.

We'll also be adding Games to the site.  For instance, our first game--called Peter Piper for obvious reasons--will give you a chance to pick a winning pitcher from each day's pitching matchups.  The catch is that you will only be given five choices: those starters with the five worst ERA's of the season.  You'll be able to track your results over time and compare yourself to other players. It's an easy way to have some fun while you're following the season.

Our "ratings" will be more robust.  For instance, you'll be able to view longer lists of hot batters and hot teams. Eventually, I hope you'll be able to see how hot teams and batters were over time. That won't be initially available, however.

We will still have daily, updated stats, but there will be less of them.  We will have batting and pitching profiles as well as detailed stats from John Dewan's fielding system. Unfortunately,due to the underlying economics, we've decided to remove many of our other stat tables.

We're hoping that you'll be partly mollified by a new statistics feature, a Stats Depository, in which Bill and all of you can share databases, spreadsheets and data PDF's that you've created.  Over time, this should become a very robust set of data, created Bill and his readers.

I'm happy to say that it will also be easier for you (and me) to manage the site.  Our e-alerts will work for all members (emails announcing new articles) and other account management features will also be available to you (and will work, too!).

Transitioning to the new site will be difficult.  Your credit card information is encrypted, so we can't transfer it to the new site.  You'll receive an email when it is time to re-register and you'll be asked to enter your credit card info in the new site at that time.  Rest assured that security will be even tighter on the new site, however.  In fact, most everything "behind the scenes" will be better and more secure.  Our hosting company used to host the White House's website.

And the timing?  I'm hoping for July 25 (though I've been wrong before).  As we approach the rollout, we will have to put a holiday on new articles, Reader Posts and Hey Bill's.  But once we do that, we will put the new site up as quickly as possible.

So, please hang in there with us as we begin a new chapter in the Bill James Online saga.  I think you'll like the results.