It seems like it’s been ages since I’ve had a chance to communicate directly with you, the readers, about the latest happenings at EPL Talk, so I want to bring you up-to-speed on some exciting developments.

First, I’ve made some changes “under the hood” at EPL Talk during the past few weeks so that the pages now load much faster as well as the site being more reliable. Part of that was moving the EPL Talk site (and its sister sites) to a dedicated server. The bottom line is a more enjoyable and reliable experience for you.

Second, I updated the latest version of the software that runs EPL Talk. Most of the changes were behind the scenes but one important change is that you now have the ability to reply to specific comments to create a thread — so it’s not simply each user posting at the bottom of the latest comments like it was before. Whenever you want to reply to a specific comment that a user made, just hit the ‘Reply’ link under that specific comment (see screenshot below).

Third, and most importantly, I plan on writing more quality posts on EPL Talk on a frequent basis. I sense that the quality has slipped in a few places (but that I’ve been helped by the generous and enthusiastic writing skills by the other writers on EPL Talk). So rather than rush stories, I plan on taking a little more time and getting back into the swing of writing more remarkable posts from my own perspective. After writing every day for practically 3.5 years, it’s sometimes quite challenging to develop a new and interesting slant or story idea. But I plan on digging deeper to bring that to you beginning in the next week.

Fourth, while I haven’t been writing as much for EPL Talk as in the past, the best place to catch me and to stay on top of the latest breaking Premier League news is on Twitter. Follow EPL Talk to hear directly from me on a daily basis.

Just a few last tidbits of information for you before I go and try to dart out of Starbucks to avoid the daily Florida summer afternoon thunderstorms:

  • You can now follow EPL Talk on Facebook via a more user-friendly URL: http:\/\/www.facebook.com/epltalk
  • Thanks to the hard work of the EPL Talk bloggers as well as your loyalty and support, traffic to EPL Talk during the past few months has more than doubled. We were definitely helped by the very popular EPL Awards and the finale to the Premier League season, as well as the Champions League Final and FA Cup Final coverage,
  • If you’re a regular reader to EPL Talk, be sure to sign up to register your free avatar at http:\/\/en.gravatar.com/ so that everytime you post a comment on EPL Talk, your avatar (i.e. picture) appears next to your comment,
  • Don’t forget that the fixtures for the 2009/2010 Premier League season will be revealed this Wednesday.

Last but not least, many soccer/football supporters from around the world will be watching the Confederations Cup which kicks off tomorrow from South Africa. While there’s no team from the United Kingdom participating, you can follow the coverage from the important tournament daily via our sister site Major League Soccer Talk.

P.S. If you want to win one of the EPL Talk T-shirts pictured above, be one of the first two people to send a tweet to EPL Talk with the words “EPL Talk Tshirt”.