Second Edition News for April 5, 2002

Coming soon to a browser near you:
the 'new' Cyclingnews.com

By Gerard Knapp, publisher

For some time now the Cyclingnews.com team has been undertaking a massive task: re-organising the huge amount of content on Cyclingnews.com, which currently stands at well over 50,000 separate documents. That work will culminate this weekend with the introduction of a new home page - here's a sneak preview.

Improved navigation

A major part of the work was building special index pages to the main categories of content on the site - these include Road, MTB, Track, Cyclocross, Tech, Travel, Photos and so on. In all, there are eight main categories and direct links to each of these is now provided on every page of Cyclingnews along the horizontal nav bar.

The only exception is the new home page, where these links will be arranged down the left hand side of the page. However, they will still point to the same directory page for each category.

Overall, it is a more accurate reflection of the vast array of cycling news, results and features we provide. What will not change is the direction of our content. We are now covering even more racing around the world. There is representation in three continents and as always, we are indebted to the many independent contributors from all parts of globe who help make Cyclingnews.com the resource it is.

'In development'

As for the design, it has been some time in the making. After this company acquired Cyclingnews in September 1999 from Professor Bill Mitchell, the economics professor who started the site in 1995, we worked to provide more content, more results, news, features and images. It's grown a little since then.

What we didn't dramatically change was the look and feel of the site. Sure, it was basic, but perfectly functional. I also believed we needed to pay our dues as custodian of this resource - who are we to mess with such things? As we were the 'new guys' I was wary of tampering with success.

Since that time, we have seen new competition join the field, then get dropped, or move to a domestic competition. Pardon the analogy with a bike race, but every day is a race to bring you the latest news and results from the world of cycling. We've also seen the 'tech wreck' and dot-com crash, but we've continued on and the site is now stronger than ever.

The design

There were several versions of the new home page design - we haven't rushed into this. The final version was actually developed well over a year ago. We would look at the new home page regularly, think it was OK, and then go back to work on content. It stood the test of time, at least in our eyes.

The new design is part of an ongoing evolution for Cyclingnews. It has become "The World Centre of Cycling" through our efforts to cover cycle racing around the world. It has also become a good way for some of the major players in cycling to reach their customers. Without those advertisers there would be no Cyclingnews and from all reports, you show considerable interest in what they have to offer - we are very grateful for their and your support.

There is a very long list of people who work on Cyclingnews and you see their names appear on stories and photos, but for the re-design work in particular, we need to thank Jeff Jones, John Stevenson, Paul Mirtschin, Tim Maloney, Adrian Butterworth, David Butterworth, Grant Camphuisen, Michelle Gati and Leo Jauncey.

As usual, we welcome feedback - please fire them off to cyclingnews@cyclingnews.com.