Embrace Change

Let me put it this way: Was Bohdi a better person after he learned to surf? Yeah he was. I even hear he surfs every day now.

There. That is my preemptive strike to those that are not sure of what they are seeing. Yes, Crankfire is now very different, but I assure you, give it a chance you will become a true believer. You see, change can be a good thing. I believe, in this case, it has potential to be a great thing.

What happened here?

Succinctly put: Complete rewrite motherf-ers! I started off with a clean slate and rewrote 99% of this site. It needed to be done. The prior versions were limiting what could be done. Yeah, yeah, ok ok, I will not bore you will all the mega-sweet technical details about the new Crankfire... instead, I will get right to a primer to what's new and what you need to know.

Preface

Stuff was never that easy to find on the old Crankfire. At the same time, stuff was not necessarily easy to add to the old Crankfire. Whether it be uploading photos or adding trail reports, I never felt we reached a high level of usability. I really wanted to change that.

What it is (the shorter version)

It is as easy as reading our System Overview page.

What it is (the uncut extended version)

• We streamlined: After a complete database restructuring, our data is organized all lean and mean! All of our data is still here with the exception of the online bike shops, gps units listing and racer portfolios. We dropped those because they either were never used and detracted from our overall goals.

• We focused on usability: Things now should be easier to find. For example, the search box in the menu bar should suggest records as you type. Furthermore, a steamlined header gets you to the good stuff quick, while an expanded footer helps you find the rest. Throughout the site we went f-in ballistic with icons, we hope most are self explanatory, but you might want to check out our icon overview just to be sure.

• We found some flow: Your data upload and/or data entering experience should be a lot more intuative and streamlined. In the meantime, browsing through data should be a happier experience.

• We re-enforced the community data collection idealogy: I am not even sure if I know what that means. Something along the lines of indivdual reviews of trails and local bike shops being much easier to provide and read. We also tried to get that whole data associations streamlined and introduced the concept of "tags" to most everything.

• More focus on that whole "geo" thing: We tried to make everything as map-centric as possible. We not only want to know where everything is, but we want to provide it back to you in as many formats and delivery methods as possible. We got all sorts of data formats you can download as, but we also have fancy fully customizable "roll your own" data feeds. This is some real nerdy serious stuff.

• We have a new mapper: I abandoned my homebrew mapper in favor of the Google Maps API. As much as I hate depending on a third party for such an important part of this website, I think it turned out very nicely. Badass even. I will expand upon all the fun stuff you can do with it later, but play around with it, zoom in and out, click shit. It's all good.

What else?

Well, your user information, avatar and login should still be here and happy.

We also got new hosting. I think we outgrew our last host. You may have noticed it crashing weekly? Unfortunately, it costs almost 3x as much, so feel free to do whatever you can to help me not lose money!

Conclusion

Over the next few weeks or so, I hope to write a series of editorials detailing the key features of this website and what the hell is going on here in general.

In the meantime, go play around. Feel free to add to our collection. Add any data we are missing. Fill in data where it needs it. If (when) you find anything broken, drop me a line or log into the bugs forum and let me know!

Stay tuned!