Gary Weiner

Gary Weiner, aka Gary from The East End, is the head programmer and tech guru here at BBI. He rewrote the code for the entire Corner Forum from scratch as well as the blog software for The Front Page. If something isn’t working right, it’s probably his fault. Feel free to bug him at [email protected] with any problems, bug reports, or complaints about the mechanical operation of the site. Gary is the owner of Arribus Web Development since 1997, and has serviced such prestigious clients as: Giants Hall of Famer Harry Carson, top Long Island ad agency Austin & Williams, and Habitat for Humanity of Suffolk County. If you are interested in using Arribus’s services, please contact him directly at [email protected].

Apr 232017
 
Forrest Lamp, Western Kentucky Hilltoppers (October 15, 2015)

Forrest Lamp – © USA TODAY Sports Images

BigBlueInteractive.com (BBI) Podcast of April 21, 2017: With one week to go before the 2017 NFL Draft, BBI’s Mike Siegel chats with veteran draft scout, Dave Te Thomas, of The NFL Draft Report, to talk about the Giants, the draft, and some of his thoughts, observations and tidbits as the clock is ticking down to the draft. Since 1968, Dave Te Thomas has been producing scouting reports on draft prospects for professional football teams, writing articles about the draft and NFL preseason, and appearing on local and national broadcasts across the country.

Sep 102013
 

Jeff Feagles chatted with Gary, BBI’s webmaster, on September 10, 2013. Jeff and Gary discussed the Sunday night Giants-Dallas game including the Steve Weatherford non-call and the punt turnover, as well as issues and opportunities for the New York Giants in the 2013 season and prospects for the upcoming Denver game. The video chat was streamed live via Google+ Hangout on Air on BBI’s front page and is now available on YouTube.

Follow Jeff Feagles on twitter at @jfeagles

Jeff Feagles is being made available to Big Blue Interactive courtesy of Thuzio.Com.

 

Aug 272013
 

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Hello Giants fans. The New BBI Front Page went live nearly two months ago. Since that time, we’ve had a lot of feedback, both positive and negative. We’ve made some changes based on that feedback with more tweaks and adjustments coming in the future.

However, it’s become clear to me that some people are still not quite sure how the new front page works and how to find the stuff they want to find. To that end, I’ve prepared this little primer to go over the various elements of the new BBI and how they work.

Broadly, the site consists of two areas, the main area and the sidebars. The main area is the large section on the left side with all the pictures and text. The sidebars are the long, skinny areas on the right with the ads and such. First, we’ll discuss the various sections of the main area, starting from top to bottom.

The Slider

The first section, the one with changing pictures at the very top of the site, is called The Slider. The Slider rotates through the last six items posted to BBI, including Articles and News & Notes. You’ll see a picture and the title. If you’re interested in reading it, just click on the picture. Below the pictures are the controls. You can use these controls to pause The Slider, go back and forward or go to a specific slide.

News & Notes

BBI’s old reliable News & Notes can be found just under The Slider. This section contains links to the last four News & Notes posts. The four titles of the News & Notes are on the right while the picture associated with each title is on the left. Mouse over the title to see the picture that goes with that post. Click on the title to go to the post.

Latest Articles

In this section are the last four articles posted to BBI that aren’t News & Notes. Here you’ll find things like Game Previews and Reviews, Roster Articles, Salary Cap discussions and other writings. Scroll down to this section to get a quick overview of what’s been going on in the last few days on BBI. Click on the article title or read more button to see the whole thing.

Featured Content

Bored at work? This is the section for you. The Featured Content area has the three most recent articles in each of six content categories. Those categories will change throughout the year. A draft section will show up around draft time and go away when training camp starts. Game Previews/Reviews will show up before the first pre-season game and go away some time after the last game is played. And so on.

If you missed something on BBI in the past couple weeks or are just looking for some good Giants stuff to kill your productivity, this is the place to find it. Click on the title of the article to see that article or click on the See All Posts button to read all the posts in that category.

Sidebars

The sidebars are mostly self-explanatory, but I’ll briefly go over the content-oriented elements.

First, of course, we have the ads. Ads make BBI go. We have made a concerted effort to eliminate malware from our ad networks and curate the ads so that their impact on you is minimized. Please exclude BBI from your ad blocking software, if you have any. Look at the ads and click on them if anything interests you. This has been a paid announcement.

Under the top ad is the Corner Forum Highlights. This is a small selection of the most important, interesting or relevant Corner Forum threads as selected by the BBI admins. If you live on the Corner Forum, you’ve probably seen these. But if you’re only an occasional Corner Forum visitor, you might want to peek at this box when you visit the site and see if anything piques your interest.

Further down is the Content Sections dropdown. This is just a quick list of all the content areas on BBI with post counts for each one. Click on a content area to be taken to a page with just that content on it.

And way down at the bottom of the sidebar is the Posts By Month dropdown which lists month and year and the number of posts in that month. Select one to be taken to a page with posts from just that month. This is a great way to explore BBI and Giants history in a time machine fashion. Did you know that Dorsey Levens was once impressive vs the Eagles? True story.

Can I Have The Old BBI Back?

If none of this makes you happy and you just want your old, News & Notes and nothing else, BBI back, there is a partial solution. Bookmark this link, http://www.bigblueinteractive.com/category/news-and-notes/. This page mostly replicates the functionality of the old BBI, showing you the full News & Notes posts and nothing else.

Any questions? You can ask them in this Corner Forum Thread

Jul 082013
 

I’ve been a member and reader of BBI for over 15 years and its webmaster and programmer for nearly six. If there’s one thing that I know that BBIers don’t like, it’s change. In fact, one of my main objectives when I took over this gig was to change as little as possible.

Well, here it is, change. I’d like to talk a little bit about the the reasons for the change and what it’s going to mean to you, now and down the road.

First, from a technical standpoint, the update was well overdue. The template on which the 2007 design of the BBI front page was based hasn’t been updated in over four years. This really limited our ability to use the latest features of WordPress, the software that runs this site’s back end, and made staying up to date with the latest security patches a bit of an adventure. Not to mention that I worried someone would find a security hole in that old code and I would wake up one day to find BBI serving up trojans and malware from some place deep behind the former iron curtain.

From a design standpoint, the look of 2007 BBI could be most charitably described as “dated”. In my opinion, the new design preserves some of the funky, old school vibe that is BBI’s hallmark with a slicker, more modern layout.

But maybe the most important reason for the change is content. Except for the News & Notes posts, most of BBI’s great content was buried two or three clicks deep in the bowels of the page structure. Even on Mondays after game days, the percentage of front page viewers who would bother to click though for a game review or other article was shockingly low. In the past few weeks we’ve tried to remedy this by posting content directly on the front page. But this was a half measure at best. The new design brings the content bubbling up to the front where people can see it.

I’ll have a new post up later in the day explaining the layout, the new content sections and how everything works. Right now it’s three in the morning and the bed is calling to me. If you have a question about the new design, e-mail me at webguy (at) bigblueinteractive.com and I’ll answer either by e-mail or in my next post.

Goodnight all.

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?