(Note: I’m writing here on my own, not on behalf of ESPN or Disney Internet. I did work on this project, so I’m just excited and want to share that with my friends.)

I’m happy to say that MyESPN.com beta is finally available to the general public. It should be an excellent new application for sports fans to set up all of the teams, sports, and news they want in one place site. Instead of visiting a small handful of sites, you can now add the different parts of ESPN.com along with headlines and news from sites around the Internet to your MyESPN page. One stop and you’ve got all your sports and news from more sites in less time. Hopefully, MyESPN will make it easier for you to keep up with your favorite team, win at fantasy, and keep up with the other sites you love.

Savvy users who have used other similar products will hopefully find MyESPN easy to adapt to. I think that MyESPN brings the best sports content and breaks it out into very consumables pieces. You can see a screenshot of my page below sporting the Eagles theme. Click the image to see it full size.

Here’s a quick explanation of what you see. Each little box is called a module or capsule. You can drag them around, rearrange them, get rid of stuff you don’t like, or minimize sports that are out of season.

The great thing about MyESPN is that the modules are richer than many other sites. The top story module, for example, contains the image and all of the links that appear in the Top Story position on ESPN.com. After all, the photography on ESPN.com is one of our strengths. With MyESPN, you can personalize everything and still get the ESPN experience.

The rest of this post will be about using the site. Continue reading if you’re interested in some tips and hints.

There are two types of content right now you can add to your page:

1. ESPN Modules featuring content from ESPN.com, including headlines, scores, and photos from your favorite sports, leagues, and teams.
2. Headlines from your favorite non-ESPN sites around the web.

It’s easy to add both types of modules. Just keep on reading to find out how.

Adding ESPN Modules to your page

How to add ESPN modules to MyESPN

  Fig. 1: Click this to add new modules

There’s a link on the left side of the page right under the tab that says Front Page. If you click that link, the Add module appears. You can see a screenshot of the link and the top of the Add module to the right. The module is quite long, because there’s just a ton of different types of modules. Click on, for example, NFL, and you’ll get a list of modules for the NFL. You can add a lot of teams, headlines, or even photo modules so you can get the latest photos for each team or league.

Don’t miss out!

There are a LOT of modules, so click around to make sure you find everything you want. I suggest adding a photo module. It’s simple, but nice. I also highly recommend adding some of the fantasy modules if you’re playing fantasy as ESPN.com. I love, love, love having my player news and scores all right there in one easy to scan box.

You can also rearrange the modules or add tabs. For example, I have a Tech News tab that just has RSS feeds from Engadget, Digg, Slashdot, and other tech sites.

Adding your favorite web site or RSS feed to MyESPN

How to add web sites to MyESPN

  Fig. 2: Add external headlines

MyESPN allows you to add headlines from other sites as modules. This includes everything from big sites like CNN.com or NYTimes.com to blogs like Eschaton or Baseball Musings to your best friend’s personal blog. As long as they expose a feed, you can add it to MyESPN. Just open the Add module by following the instructions above (see Fig. 1) and find the box shown in Fig. 2.

Just type the site address into the box and click Add. If it has a feed, a module will appear with the headlines from the feed. For the geeks out there, we support Atom 1.0, 0.3, and most flavors of RSS. Some sites may not have a feed set up. In these cases, a module will appear and let you know that the site doesn’t have a feed. MyESPN will do the best it can to try to find feeds, but sometimes it can’t.

If MyESPN can’t find the feed, you can help us improve the service by checking the site to see if it has a feed. If it does have a feed, you can leave feedback using the Feedback links on the page. Indicate what site you tried that you think has a feed and the team can check it out.

So, how do you tell if a site has a feed?

RSS Indicators in Safari and Firefox

  Fig. 3: Safari Indicator


  Fig. 4: Firefox Indicator


  Fig. 5: Other feed icons

I’m happy you asked. The easiest way is to use Firefox or Safari as your web browser. Go to the site you’re interested in adding. When you get there, look for the feed indicator to the right of where you typed in the URL. Here are some screen shots to help. If you see the indicator, you can go to the Add link on MyESPN and type in the URL in the location bar to the

If you’re using Internet Explorer 6, there really isn’t an easy way to find out if a site has a feed. IE 7 has an indicator that looks just like the Firefox image at right, but it changes color rather than disappearing. If it’s orange, the site has a feed.

If you don’t see the indicator light up, there’s still a possibility that the site has a feed. Look for the icons in Fig. 5 and try clicking on them. Unfortunately, you can’t just add the address for the site to MyESPN, you actually need to add the feed address. The instructions for this method are complicated, so I won’t go into it now. I’ll do that in a separate post.

Thanks (and leave feedback!)

I hope this was helpful. The team at ESPN.com has been working very hard on this, trying to bring good content and good functionality to the MyESPN site. Based on early feedback, people are happy but a lot of folks have suggestions. Leave feedback. I guarantee that the team is paying attention. Your feedback will shape what we do next and how we make this product even better. Thanks!