Yesterday, our tech developers at SB Nation released some new features for us main page writers and for you, our community contributors.

Here is the rundown:

Share on Twitter

When you publish a FanPost or FanShot let your friends (or followers as they're called) know via Twitter. We've built an easy tool into the FanPost and FanShot editors that automatically creates a short URL back to your post and lets you send that to your Twitter stream along with a quick message. You can set this all up from your account settings screen, or right within the FanPost and FanShot editors. See more detailed instructions below.

Redesigned FanPost Editor

We've made a few changes to the layout and features of the FanPost editor:

1) Bigger textarea - more space to explain why ranking systems can't be objective or your GM should be fired immediately

2) Spellchecker - this isn't a spelling bee, it's a sports blog network

3) Draggable jump bar - we combined the intro and extended entry sections of a post and made it easy to decide where to split them

4) Sidebar inserts palette - tools to insert images, videos and quick, relevant, timely links in your post

5) Easy status + save - we made the auto-save message more obvious, combined it with the post status and made the whole thing a big button you can click to save as often as you want (without reloading the whole page)

6) Autotagger - adding player, team and game tags to your post helps everyone find your opinion on those subjects; we just made it super easy: write your post, click that 'run autotagger' button and we'll tag your post the most relevant players and teams + link them up as well. if you don't feel like clicking that button, we'll run that process for you when you publish.

A help box that explains all of this in more detail will open up the first time you try out the new FanPost editor. Now go fire it up on your favorite blog and try it out!

Twitter Instructions

1) LINK YOUR TWITTER ACCOUNT: Login to SB Nation, click your screen name in the network bar up at the top of the page, then click 'Edit Account'. From there click the 'Associate a Twitter stream with your account' link and follow the instructions to hook it up.

2) SHARE FANPOSTS + FANSHOTS ON TWITTER: Now when you click 'New FanPost' or 'New FanShot', you'll notice a checkbox at the bottom of the screen that you can click to reveal a text area to write your tweet. We take care of generating the short URL. All you have to do is click the 'Publish' button. BTW, if you skipped step 1 you can link your Twitter account directly from the FanPost and FanShot editors. And we make sure you won't lose your work in the process.

We hope you enjoy many of these new features!

I'm sure many of you longtime Stampede Blue (and SB Nation) readers have some questions about what the partnership with Yahoo means for this blog. Well, first off, let me state clearly that Yahoo did not "buy" SB Nation. I am not a Yahoo employee. Though Yahoo is one of the few companies I actually like (no, I am not kissing ass; it's true), I am still an SB Nation employee. Yahoo does not control this site's content. They don't edit it. They don't critique it. They don't phone me from their mother ship and tell me to stop bashing Peter King.

To best explain what this partnership is about, I shall quote the great Russ from Puruple Row (via Mile High Report):

Yahoo has no control over how any site runs or looks. They just get the most relevant content possible for each team instead of having to build there own network. We, as a network, gain credibility.

Yahoo wanted to get into the business of building a great, community-based blogging network, but rather than spend a ton of money building the network from scratch and hiring bloggers, they decided to partner with us. This means that my content (and the stuff written by shake n bake, mgrex03, and others) rolls up on Yahoo Sports' pages. Our articles are seen on their Colts page. Our articles will roll-up on box score pages. Yahoo readers can now log into SB Nation blogs using their Yahoo ID. 

This also means that SB Nation blogs are "Yahoo-Affiliated." This will hopefully break down a few barriers with leagues like the NFL, allowing us more access to players, coaches, and events (like the NFL Draft).

The one catch in all this is a small one: No cursing, foul language, or demeaning statements in the titles of articles. So, I have been asked (politely) not to write titles like "Mike Florio is a douchebag." What is said in the article body, or in the comments section, is still same as normal. They just want us SB Nation bloggers to clean up our article titles, making them more concise and easier to hook readers with; a very small price to pay for Yahoo affiliation.

If you have questions about the partnership, feel from to comment, or shoot me an email: sbnationcolts@yahoo.com.

If you want another indication of where SB Nation is going, check out this Washington Post write-up on one of our company leaders (Jim Bankoff) and the future of SB Nation.

Also, SB Nation is one of the Top 25 Most Valuable Blogs. I permit you to bow before our awesomeness.