Tracking madness – March 2010
EditorialsAuthor: James Disney
Hello loyal readers,
Welcome to that part of my brain that seems to wander off on little tangents and get me into 20 different kinds of trouble. This is a good and bad thing all at once. Why? Well, let’s start at the beginning. (And when I get to the end, I’ll probably just continue on like a fool…)
Step 1: Starting 10 years ago now, we spat out a little nugget of love onto the interbutts; Westcoaster was born. A site that began as the Southern California Coaster Club. We started small with the concept of a regional coaster club to rival things like ACE Hardware American Coaster Enthusiasts. It was a noble concept really, but one we were ill equipped to carry out. Now with new groups popping up like Club TPR and others, what had originally been a concept we’d considered is being carried out by others who have decided the hegemonic atmosphere of theme park and coaster clubs has had its time. Now is their time to shake things up a little and offer alternatives! Something I’ve been very excited to see. Alas, this was never the direction I think Westcoaster/SCCC was meant to take… and I’m okay with that.
Step 2: Westcoaster begins. Soon after the beginning of the SCCC, I’d began tossing around other ideas. One thing you’ll notice with me, and I’m sure this would be echoed by those who’ve been along for the journey, is that I’m never fully satisfied with nearly anything. The second I finish one project I’ll have a week of bliss, then I turn around and start thinking of why it’s not good enough. 10 years and several versions of Westcoaster later (including a couple so awful I don’t even have a screen shot of them), we’re still meddling and tweaking things left and right.
Step 3: ???
Step 4: Profit? HAH! What a concept. You’s a funny man, Charlie Brown!
Sneaky peeky 1
Step 5: Okay, back to being serious. One major issue I’ve had with the current version of the website is actually the front page. Dan and I have always had an issue with it… not that it’s bad, there’s just always been something about it that drove us nuts. The result of our 2 years of discussions was that we needed to tweak things a little. After all, there’s a lot about the current incarnation that we really like. The logo for instance is one good part. Then there’s the message boards. Many aspects of the system we use are nice and make for a fun environment for everyone to participate, but there’s a lot of things that’ve been promised over the years that’ve never really been 100% on delivery. As you might imagine this has been very frustrating for those of us who want to offer different things for all of you to enjoy. Re-launches of things like galleries and blogs have been put off time and again because I’m waiting on developers to get off their butts and implement systems they promised.
Sneaky peeky 2
So here we are now… doing incremental upgrades to systems only to have skins and functions break, all the while, these same systems became bigger and bigger resource hogs. For the money we pay, you’d think things would work a little better and would be slightly more user friendly. So what started as an incremental fix to the front page has turned into a tweak of slightly… well, it’s a little bigger than that. The look and feel of the site might see a bit of a tweak for the better. But a lot of the functionality will remain, and we’ll be returning other functions that have disappeared over the last few years as well.
Sneaky peeky 3
So what now? Well these few images are only the beginning. They represent the roughest possible point in the process of development. But if I was to give you a hint as to where things are going… think back to version 6 (the yellow/orange/grey) Westcoaster mixed with the best parts of the current version. It’ll be easier to read, and if we’re able to carry out one concept… you (the readers) will actually have a say in how the site looks. This is a fun one!
So why am I doing this? Well, a few reasons really. I need to write more (as to the rest of us on the site, but that’s a story for another version of Tracking Madness), and we’ve always been so silly about keeping things hidden for various reasons. But at the end of the day, I don’t think there’s any logical reason why people need to be kept in the dark about what’s coming for the site. We’re 10 years into this now… hopefully the best days are still ahead of us, and I’m pretty sure they are! Thanks for reading…
-JD
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