Our Upcoming Move

Most of you know this by now but we are leaving the SBNation network of blogs soon. This was due to the discontinuation of support for MLS blogs such as The Mane Land after recent cuts by Vox Media, which owns SBNation.

March is the last month for which we had that support and we are taking The Mane Land independent. We have our new domain host paid up for the next couple of years (thanks to the generous support of those who took part in our startup launch campaign at GoFundMe. Our new site has been built, although we have a few minor things still left to do to make it move-in ready for you. That said, it will be a work in progress for an undetermined amount of time when it comes to having our old stories accessible. We’ve been more or less “double posting” for the last week, so there will be content at the new place, but the old stories need to be uploaded, tested, and then there may be some time spent fixing some broken links, adding artwork, replacing missing embedded items, etc. Those who never look back at older stories won’t even notice but we’ll be working hard behind the scenes.

We expect to have our domain turned over to us some time this Friday. This means that we will try to switch the domain (www.themaneland.com) to our new website in just a couple of days. That will likely be Friday or Saturday if all goes well. My hope is that this will be a seamless transition, whereby you go to themaneland.com and boom, you’re seeing the new site in all its glory.

There are some cool things at the new place that we don’t have here but there will also be some features that might not be ready to roll right away over there. There will be a place at the bottom of each story where you can leave comments, although it may be less robust and look a bit different. We may upgrade that department later or add a full forum. Polls will look a little different. However, we love the look and feel of the new site and we believe you will too. We can’t wait for you to see it.

We ask for your patience this weekend if things go wonky for a bit. We’ll get things up and running ASAP and hopefully the transition goes smoothly and (as I said above) seamlessly. The Mane Land PawedCast has already transitioned away from SBN and we feel that went well. (That is our hope, anyway, the first show after leaving SBN drops later this morning!)

We also ask that when you get to the new site, you let us know if anything seems like it’s not working properly or if you notice an issue. We’ve been building and testing this thing as we go and we feel like it’s working properly, but you may stumble across something we didn’t notice. The quicker we find out about a glitch, the faster we can find the solution.

Additionally, we welcome your suggestions. We expect to add cool features as we go and as time allows. Our primary goal was to quickly get you all into a new site that works, looks nice, and has all the stuff you’re already used to having. Plus, there are multiple ways to quickly access the information you’re looking for. We will add an easier way to access old stories once our archives are fully integrated to the site and completely under control in terms of the look, feel, and functionality we want them to have (I already dread fixing all the old photo galleries, for example).

Our GoFundMe campaign will be turned off on Friday. We vastly underestimated our community when we put up our initial goal of $1,000 to take care of a myriad of little things, such as setting up the LLC, buying a site template, website hosting fees, podcast hosting fees, design and consulting, etc. Had we raised only that initial goal, we could have operated for a couple of years, but some of us would still have lost a good deal of money over the next year with the end of the added modest income from SBN. The stipends we got weren’t huge, but any loss of income can put a strain on a budget. But you guys were so overwhelmingly amazing! As of this writing, the crowdsourcing has raised $6,900 (nice!), which is beyond our pie-in-the-sky, best-case scenario goal. Some of you have already taken advantage of some of the benefits we offered for becoming Founders and we really can’t wait to see what you think of our Founders area of the new website, where your place of honor is there for good.

We have a new web shop ready to launch, and we’ll be expanding our offerings in that area — not just merchandise with our logo on it, but also with different designs that may be more widely appealing. We’ll be adding some affiliate links to our new site’s shop page, which will allow you to access online shopping you might normally do (say, Fanatics, for example) and while you won’t notice any difference in your shopping experience if you visit them via our links, and you won’t pay any more money for your items than if you went directly to that site, any purchase you make will help with a small percentage of the profit going to us.

We are also planning a subscription premium tier for those who want it. Those who don’t will still get all the normal coverage they’re getting now. But many of the folks we heard from expressed interest in a premium level for additional items. Once we figure out what we’re capable of delivering, we’ll finalize that and get it going.

We’re also resurrecting our YouTube page and have already started adding new content there for the first time in years. We encourage you to subscribe.

How Your Donations Have Helped

• LLC setup/management
• domain registration
• website hosting
• plug-in costs
• podcast hosting (and in exciting news, we plan to give the Pride their own dedicated podcast)
• business, technical, and legal consulting
• some design work that needed to be farmed out

Haven’t Received Any of Your Founder Benefits?

If you donated and haven’t received any email from us it’s because WE DON’T HAVE YOUR EMAIL! GoFundMe is discreet and does not share your information with us, so if you didn’t email us, we don’t have any way to reach you to get you your benefits.

How Else Can You Help?

• Buy merchandise from our shop when it launches — we hope you like our stuff).
• Use our affiliate links when you shop online — coming soon at the new site.
• Become a Patreon/Buy Me a Coffee subscriber — added benefits to you that aren’t available anywhere else (we are finalizing details and selecting which service to use).
• Advertise your business or recommend an advertiser — This can be a web banner with clickthrough link, an ad read or produced ad on the podcast(s), title sponsorship of the podcast(s), or something we haven’t even thought of yet. Email us to let us know of your interest and to find out more.

TML’s History and Future

For more than eight years, a small group of writers (some local, some remote) and fans of the club, like you, have told the story of the soccer club with our unique voices. You’ve made us one of the most popular SBNation team-specific sites among MLS/NWSL teams. We thank you for that and we will continue informing and entertaining you to the best of our abilities at the new site.

The staff of The Mane Land thanks you for your support over the past eight-plus years! We also thank those who have generously become Founders of the new, independent version of TML.