Category Archives: Uncategorized

I must admit it went smoother than I anticipated, but I have just overhauled the look and feel of the main site to match the store and am pretty happy with the results. 🙂

There are still innumerable minor tweaks and corrections that need to be made here and there, but overall – I think that the end result is a cleaner, easier to read and navigate main site and store.

While before we had a top, bottom, left hand side and right hand side navigation columns, I have streamlined it so that you can find pretty much anything you need to a single column down one side.

It is also easier to navigate back to SBG from the forum or this blog – just look for the big red SBG logo (like the one pictured right) and it will take you back to the homepage.

Furthermore, especially for the main site, previous issues with sizing of graphics has been fixed – as when SBG started back in 2005, all the images were 490 pixels wide and gradually became wider – but we now have a site that is streamlined enough to find that happy medium, allowing space to expand into the future and speed up page loading times.

I am not exactly going to rest on my laurels, and will be especially busy in the lead up to Christmas making sure all the small details are as good as they can possibly be  – but I will certainly say that the process was a lot less painless than I expected it to be and I especially hope that YOU will like it and find it easier to use too.

A solid foundation has been set for my work in 2017 – once again building on and inspired by what came before. And there is a lot planned, but I will save that (and share with you some sneak previews) in another post.

Talk to you all again soon.

– Paul

It has been a looong 24 hours with few breaks, but the blog AND store overhaul stage one is finally complete!

The Blog overhaul was the quickest and easiest – we just updated a few pages, reorganized the blog navigation to make it a bit cleaner, added a new themed header and made links back to the main site easier and more prominent. This has all been done in such a way to allow the blog to expand both its scope and its content over the coming months.

The Store overhaul was a little more complicated, but I am quite pleased with the results so far.

Page load time has improved dramatically, consistency across product lines while not yet quite ‘perfect’ is considerably better, categories have been cleaned up a bit and the whole thing just feels fresher and better than ever before. Plus there are many more links to the blog. 🙂

Overall, I am pretty happy with the way things are shaping up. So time to get back into the regular swing of things for a bit, update the Hot Specials Page with the latest offering from Hanwei – and take a short rest before the final overhaul of the main site.

Talk to you all again soon!

– Paul

I would think that by now with just over a week to go until Christmas, most of you who were planning to order a sword for Christmas have already done so by now. Or at least, I certainly hope you have – as we wrote in our Christmas Sword Buyers Guide special article – the later you leave it the greater the chances that your gift will be lost, banged up or delayed as couriers and delivery services are always near the breaking point right around now.

And requesting overnight delivery, or otherwise trying to rush things is honestly NOT a good idea. Much better to simply buy a gift certificate if you are leaving it to the last minute and let your loved one calmly select a sword of their choice at a more leisurely pace. SBG Sword Store Gift Certificates never expire and can be purchased in $10 increments from as little as $10 to as much as $500..

This actually brings me neatly to my next point – I just noticed that the Gift Certificate page is a completely different format than the rest of the store. Our last store overhaul was in December 2015 and since then I have noticed lots of annoying little glitches and things that just don’t display the way I want them to..

So despite paying professionals, it seems that the only way to get something done right is to do it yourself – so in the lead up to Christmas I will be burning the midnight oil to tweak and overhaul the blog, the store and the main site to finally give it a completely consistent look and feel that no professional would bother to do.. (or at least, not a price that I could afford..!).

The change should not be TOO jarring or dramatic, and the basic theme will remain the same – for example, just cleaner, more consistent and faster loading across the board.

I am kind of looking forward to it as those small inconsistencies have been bugging the heck out of my OCD. But it is going to be a mammoth task – so please bear with me if I am a little slow to reply to emails or if you stumble upon the site(s) looking a little bit funny. The store security will not be compromised at any time during this process – so no need to worry about that. But it MAY (especially if you pop in during the wee hours when I hope not too many people are looking) appear completely weird looking at times if some of the cosmetic changes don’t work as planned (which always happens)..

The first overhaul is the blog, which will take place in the next few hours – then the store and finally the main site. After which, I will be exhausted at just the right time – so please note that I will be taking a break from the 25th of December to the 1st of January and we will resume business as usual from Monday the 2nd of January 2017.

Time to roll up my sleeves and get into it. I will update you all here as we go as I do plan to expand the scope and the frequency of posting on the blog. So see you all on the other side. 🙂

– Paul

It has been several months since we have had them available, but pretty much the full range of Cold Steel Swords have just been restocked at SBG and with limited quantities and Christmas just around the corner, there has never been a better time to get one..

From Katana to English Backswords, Cinqueda to Tactical Machetes under $50, they have something for everyone at pretty much every price point, including one of my favorites – the Italian Long Sword!

Click here to see every sword we stock

A few days ago we added the comprehensive review and test cutting results of two Forge Direct Custom Katana I had made for myself a few months ago. Check it out here if you have not seen it already.

Anyway, these swords were not just for the purpose of sharing the nitty gritty on the Forge Direct Custom Katana, but they were also prototypes to see if we could expand the options available on this line. Such as adding bo-hi, new hamon types and new fittings..

These two swords built upon the already tried and tested foundations, and now ALL the various customizations are available for you to pick and choose from.

And the best part? The price stays the same – at least for the time being.. (How long we can hold it at this price remains to be seen however. Our margins are as tight as they can go on these swords and even the smallest price increase at the forge will mean we will need to also increase our prices).

Check out the available options here