Major Race Website Changes Are Here!

The first part of a major update to how race web pages are displayed is now released. You can see an example on the right. Yes, all races were updated on Monday August 31.

There is one ACTION ITEM FOR RACE DIRECTORS! We automatically applied an image to your new webpage from a variety of images we will have as options. You can either live with what we apply, or you can select a different one (we will have about 20 options), or you can upload your own 1200 X 400 pixel image (we will include an image editor like Facebook uses for your Cover Image in a future release). Here are a few more detailed blogs:

• Changing the Cover Photo and Colors.
• Custom content, custom pages and customizing your menu.
• Adding a Single Image as a Web Link.
• Menu Items that Link to Other Websites.

What you see will not be the end of the story. We have about 2 months of additional work that will improve each and every page on the site. For example, the initial release will not include the new Store/Add-On page, which will look like the one on the right, or a new Team or Donation or Fundraising page, or a new wave race sign up process we have planned. Those will roll out incrementally so you will have the benefits of them as soon as they are ready.

The new design brings a number of benefits:

• Facebook Header Look. We evaluated a number of options and settled on a familiar look – the Facebook header style with a nice cover photo and the logo. We will have similar upload capabilities to what so many users are used to on Facebook, which should make things easier for our race directors. We are using a number of the tricks Facebook and others use in terms of progressive shading on the bottom part of the cover photo so that text and call to action buttons will appear.
• Call to Action “SignUp” and “Donate”. These are right at the top and really stand out to encourage runners to signup or donate to your race.
• Create Your Own Pages. We will give you the ability to change a Custom Section that has traditionally appeared on the Race Info page to be a separate page.
• Customize the Menu. You will be able change the order of the menu items. In addition, you will be able to make your Custom Sections become pages and they can either be top tier menu items or be under another menu item.
• Mobile Optimizations. Your race page will be mobile optimized in a number of ways. We are taking advantage of the latest responsive framework, Twitter’s Bootstrap 3, which makes for smooth transitions for any size phone. In addition we are doing clever tricks to minimize the amount of content (like image size) on mobile devices to optimize performance.
• Color Choice. We are providing several options for color styling in the initial release. These will be expanded as we make progress over the next couple of months. We want to try to keep people out of trouble selecting poor color combinations. Here are two examples of the same page:

Here is a quick video tutorial: