The New Winchester Family Business – Getting to Know all the Latest Features

Another year, another resdesign…

Yes, just two years after our last major site change, and you’re probably wondering, “Why in the world did you need to totally screw with the look again Alice?”  Well, there’s a couple of reasons.  For one, our server and CMS system were woefully outdated.  Technology changes so fast and if we don’t keep up, things like the Sony disaster can happen.  If you think Sony was a rare exception, think again.  Although, I concede, while we’ve had our own problems with hackers, thankfully we don’t have to a cancel a movie as a result!  

But we didn’t refurbish the whole site just to keep up with the times.  Sometimes we just feel like doing something different.  Earlier this year I got this really cool template for TV For The Rest of Us, and it was so good I just imagined what would happen if I used it for The Winchester Family Business?  What if we went back to our roots of the red/black/grey colors that were once our trademark?  The result is what you see today.  We hope it’s something you’re enjoying, because we’re thrilled with it.   

This new template offers a lot.  The latest Winchester Family Business site now loads very well on all types of smart phones and tablets as well as laptops and desktops.  Our responsive design means user friendly displays on a wide variety of devices and browsers. The site loads efficiently as well.  Mobile capabilities especially has been a limitation for us, so I’m very excited to see how we’re able to expand into that realm.  

We like trying new things at The Winchester Family Business because honestly this fandom keeps constantly changing.  Sure, we still like doing what we do best, writing thoughtful articles about Supernatural and letting fans give their outspoken opinions on the subjects, but fandom can be fun too.  It’s not all deep thought and constructive criticism.  Sometimes fans like the fannish side and want to celebrate their love of Supernatural.  Sometimes the show is bothering fans enough that they need to vent their frustrations to the high heavens, or at least to an online board, and that’s where we come in.  There are happy fans, there are miserable fans, there are complacent fans, but in the end we’re all fans. 

The Winchester Family Business welcomes all fans, and we always strive to offer ways for every fan to enjoy the TV show that’s had some sort of impact on our lives.  We think that it’s our dedication to the fans of Supernatural that allowed us to hit a big milestone on Twitter recently, 25,000 followers.  Thank you followers on Twitter, we are very honored.  

We have some new features that we’ve been slowly implementing over the last few months, but never officially introduced to you.  Now that our radical upgrade is complete, the time has come to rollout the new site!  Here are some of the new ways we can make your fandom experience more enjoyable:

• The Discussion Page.  This is our newest forum.  It easily allows anyone to open new topics and get a discussion started.  That way, the conversation topic doesn’t rely on the article subject matter, which has always been a limitation of our article threads.  If you’d like to start a new topic, go to the Discussion Page and select “Start a New Topic.”  Type in  your discussion points and submit.  All topics are subject to Moderator approval if you’re not a registered user, but we’re not too picky.  We’re just trying to keep the spammers out.  

https://www.thewinchesterfamilybusiness.com/lets-discuss

• User Profile.  If you’ve noticed, we haven’t had custom avatars for your comment profiles for a while.  We’ve had cute little monsters.  While it’s been fun, we always intended for people to maintain their own profiles and load their own avatars.  Now it can be done again!  Here’s how to access your profile to load your new avatar.  

          1.  Login.  This can be done on the Login prompt at the bottom of the main page or by selecting the lock symbol in the Discussion page on the right hand side.  

          2.  Once logged in, a mechanical wheel symbol replaces the lock symbol.  Select that and you’ll get the profile options.  Select “Edit My Profile.”  

          3.  The first tab is “Avatar.”  You can load your avatar here.  Once the avatar is loaded, it will show not only in the Discussion Page, but comments in the articles as well.  

          4.  Since you’re updating that tab, check out the others as well.  Fill out a full profile.  This will be visible to others through the Discussion page.  Say as little or as much as you want.  We’re not picky!  

Here’s a sample on how to access the Profile Page once you’re logged in. 

 

• The Introduce Yourself Thread.  On the Discussion Page, we have a new “Introductions” thread.  This can be for anyone.  You can be a new user or someone who’s been here forever (like me).  We all need a chance to get to know one another!

https://www.thewinchesterfamilybusiness.com/archive-lets-discuss/fandom/lets-discuss%20%281%29/24-the-wfb-introduce-yourself-thread.htm

• Video Page.  Yes, we have a full fledged video page!  Our archive is constantly growing and we welcome all suggestions.  If you’d like a video on the page, enter the link in the comments.  We will have a way soon where anyone can submit videos and they’ll show up on the page.  I’ll have that implemented soon, along with instructions on how to do that.  

Video Page

• Supernatural Quotes.  We have a set of quotes from various episodes that will be rotating with every refresh of the Main Page.  This used to be on the site until about 2012.  Well, they’re back!  Got a suggestion of your favorite quotes or piece of dialogue?  Just send a message through “Contact Us”, or perhaps share your favorite quote on the Discussion page and we’ll get it worked in.  

• Coming in the near future, the Fan Fiction Page.  We did run a test page a few months back and we do fully intend to bring it back soon (it needed some tweaks).  We can provide links to existing fics posted anywhere, or if you’d like to have your fic posted on our site and maintained in our archive, that will be possible too.  There will be more on that in the future, but wouldn’t the Discussions Page be a great place to get some Fanfiction recommendations going in the meantime?   

Here’s also a refresher on our existing pages:

• • Text Size.  Need the text of the article pages to be bigger?  At the top of every article on the left is the “Text Size” option.  Just hit the plus or minus sign to adjust the text to your desired size. 

• • Polls:  After each episode and other times at random, we’ll have a poll.  The latest poll is on the main page, and the others can be found on the Polls Page. They are good for 30 days.  Currently you can only vote in a poll once, but if you prefer to vote in a poll daily, let me know and I’ll look into that.  We love doing polls, because the outcomes of those polls often don’t reflect what’s in our article comments.  We have a ton of lurkers on this site (statistically we can prove it!) and polls seem to best reflect overall opinion.  

• • Photo and Video Galleries:  Did you know we have a set of high quality screencaps for every single Supernatural episode?  We don’t have a vast selection, but enough to show the key moments of an episode.  If you’re looking for complete galleries (like 1100+ photos per episode), we HIGHLY suggest Home of The Nutty.  They outshine anything we could offer in terms of volume.  But we do have a great sampling!  

• • One thing we’re very well known for is our WFB Motivational Posters.  They are also kept in our Photo Gallery, and we’ve accumulated quite a collection over the last few years.  Don’t know what they are? Then you MUST check out this gallery.  They are hysterical!  A few will make you tear up as well.  

• • Episode Guides  –   The Episode Guides are meant to not only list every Supernatural episode by season, but to also show every article that we’ve done on this site related to a particular episode.  You see, we pride ourselves on having the best episode reviews and discussions!  These pages provide easy access to those articles and discussions. 

• CBOX – Did you know that The Winchester Family Business has a chat room?  This is our CBOX.  This is very popular with several regulars on our site, but really it’s for anyone.  It’s always active.  So, if you feel like chatting with other SPN fans, give it a try.

If you’d also indulge me in a shameless plug too, The Winchester Family Business has a sister site.  It is TV For The Rest of Us. It’s a site dedicated to sci-fi and genre shows.  We do a lot of reviews and other commentaries there, just like at The Winchester Family Business.  We just spread the love over multiple shows.  If you’re a particular fan of another CW show or something like “The Walking Dead,” “Grimm,” “Person of Interest,” or a variety of other shows, please check it out.  (Disclaimer, I’m also the founder and editor-in-chief of that site).  

Enjoy our latest iteration of The Winchester Family Business and most importantly, make yourself at home.  Our entire staff feels most honored that you are taking the time to check out our material and see what the site has to offer.  We’re forever grateful.  If you run into an technical issue or have a suggestion, please go to the on the Discussion Page and enter your issue on the “Having a Technical Problem on The Winchester Family Business?” thread or feel free to send us a message through the “Contact Us” section.

Have very Happy Holidays and we’ll make sure to keep things entertaining until Supernatural returns on January 20th.  After all, it’s a family business and families stick together.