Welcome to our new Pitt app!
Or Penn State app! Or another school! Or scores!
For the first time since we've been offering apps, the bottom bar on the home page can be customized. Meaning that, beyond the permanent home button on the left, the other five buttons -- and yeah, we've also expanded to a total of six -- can be whatever you want.
The choices:
• Steelers
• Penguins
• Pirates
• Pitt
• Penn State
• Duquesne
• Robert Morris
• NFL scores
• NHL scores
• MLB scores
Rotate them in and out based on preference, based on the season at hand ... whatever. And I should point out that Podcasts remain an option for this bar, but we've additionally carved out a special new button for those in the top bar, right next to the main menu icon.
We wanted to have these ready in time for college football and, sure enough, it went live the day before Pitt and Penn State both opened their respective seasons Thursday. It's a custom project commissioned through Adam Bertram and our BoomPress developers, so it's not something that'll be found anywhere else. (At least not that I'm aware.)
The instructions couldn't be simpler. Go to your profile page -- that's your icon on the top left of the app/site -- thumb down to find 'Customize app,' then tap 'Edit.' From there, make the choices until there are six total, then tap DONE at the bottom. That's it!
Readers have asked for colleges to be part of the bottom bar in some form or another for a while, but we weren't going to push that until we were confident that we'd have the coverage to match. We've got that now, as everyone's hopefully seen, with Corey Crisan on Pitt, Cory Giger on Penn State.
Let us know what you think!
NEXT: FULL-BLOWN SCORES!
Tapping on the new NFL-shield logo on that bar will take you to a list of NFL scores for a given day ... and that's it for now.
You might recall that, over the summer, we'd begun looking into a far more advanced statistical package, in hopes of having it ready for the Steelers' season. Well, that was pursued to a point, but then BoomPress came up with a plan, and we'll stick with them to take us to the next level.
This'll come with a lot of layers -- upgraded standings, boxes, live components, stats, even fantasy stuff -- but the immediate impact will be that the NFL scores will be more than just the actual score. You'll be able to tap each one and open all the same info you currently can on the Steelers' boxes. From there, we'll do the same for the NHL and, by next spring, for MLB.
MILITARY COUNT: 273 ALREADY!
Our annual Military Drive, which has a goal of funding 2,022 free subscriptions for our veterans, took off in the opening week with 273 purchases, including enough to trigger longtime reader Todd Singleton's challenge to match the first 100!
To contribute one or more at $20 each, email me directly: DK@DKPittsburghSports.com
INSIDE THE WORKS
• Chris Halicke, Dale Lolley and I will all be bound for Cincinnati next weekend to cover the Steelers' opener. (In a fortunate scheduling twist, Chris will be able to stay there three additional days to cover Pirates-Reds.) We'll be triple-teaming as a staff all the way through. And that's to say nothing of added written coverage this year by both Ramon Foster and Matt Williamson.
• We need to conduct more tests on the new talk show I'll be doing in the afternoons. Aiming for late in the coming week, but I'm not as optimistic as I'd been on that front. My Milwaukee baseball trip cost us some time there.
• College football opened in full force Thursday with dramatic, last-minute victories for both Pitt and Penn State, and the response from the readership here to both the live files and the coverage was ... encouraging. We can do a lot better as a community, if I'm free to speak my mind on this. Pass the word. This is unlike any college coverage we've ever done, full-throttle, full-travel, the whole deal.
BACK TO BUSINESS
• Our page views for the past week were 414,244, with our goal being 500,000. Our most-read original piece was my Steelers-Lions game column from Acrisure Stadium, at 11,594. Broken down by team traffic, articles on the Steelers brought 29.5% of our readership, the Pirates 17.4%, the Penguins 5.3%, Penn State 2.7%, and Pitt 2.6%.
• On the multimedia front, our podcast downloads for the past week were 182,229, with our goal being 200,000, and our YouTube video views for the past week were 151,693, with our goal being 100,000.
• Our company social media accounts are at 46,875 followers on Twitter, 37,773 on Facebook, 14,597 on Instagram, 16,159 on YouTube.
• We make mistakes. If you see one, email: Typos@DKPittsburghSports.com
• Anything you need, including lost/forgotten passwords, email: Help@DKPittsburghSports.com