The Not-So-Brief History of World Short Track
Four years ago, after watching the first day of Olympic short track coverage, Torrie and I decided it would be fun to create a website about something we could really be interested in.
Short track was even more unknown then so getting the domain worldshorttrack.com was relatively easy. I didn't do anything with the domain until 2 months later after we went to the World Team Championships. I don't remember much of that event except for the relay final where Jiajun Li caught up half a lap and won the relay by a blade. It was then that I decided short track was just the coolest sport and worth my time as a fan.
So I started designing World Short Track in hopes of launching it before the 2002-2003 season started. We had planned to launch in September but the Armando for the Short Track Italia site started linking to us in August. Europe goes on vacation in August and Armando was unreachable. So it was either launch the site early or leave a "Coming Soon" page which is a big no-no for a new site. We launched early.
World Short Track got fairly good reception from the start. I think it was a combination of being a good site and having no competition. At the time, most of the sites were Apolo Ohno fansites. There were dozens and dozens of those, but only Packstyle covered short track in general.
Unfortunately, the owner of Packstyle was busy becoming a judge and didn't have time to update the site anymore. World Short Track took over where Packstyle left off, gearing towards both the general public and the skaters. We launched the site unfinished with several sections missing. There weren't any Coming Soon pages. We just didn't link to those sections. It wasn't until November that World Short Track finally got completed with all the content we originally wanted.
The next significant event in World Short Track history was our first World Cup event. It at World Cup 4 in Bormio, that we met some short track fans that have not only become our friends but people who went on to making a lasting impression in the short track community. We met Noelle from Ohnozone, Denise from American Short Track and Susan who ran a fansite for Fabio Carta.
Bormio is magical. Nestled in the Italian Alps, the rink is within walking distance of everything. The people were wonderful. The event was exceptionally well organized. Of all the places we've visited for short track, Bormio is our favorite.
It was there that I took short track photos for the first time and learned the basics on shooting short track. We met Fabio and many of the skaters for the first time. We saw Amelie Goulet-Nadon from Canada do just some amazing skating and that's why we still have her picture rotating on the WST homepage.
It was after Bormio that we formed World Short Track as an LLC. Torrie and I knew we would be doing this for a while. At the end of the 2004 season, I decided that World Short Track needed a serious redesign.
Redesigning a site just of have a redesign is silly. I redesigned World Short Track out of necessity. After being up for two years, our site was running to usablity issues. First and foremost, the site was increasingly hard to navigate. As the site grew with more content, it took more clicks to get to content. It was difficult to navigate between the members of the same team. It was difficult to navigation between events. Using the site was becoming a pain.
We also knew that future content didn't fit into the current navigation scheme. Redesigning the site had to fix problems I knew the user would be running into in the future.
Also, I wanted the site to look more interesting. Short track was beginning to grow in popularity in the USA between 2002 and 2004. World Short Track originally used a 3-column layout. It's the most basic and most common layout in all of web design. By 2004, everyone was using that layout for short track sites and World Short Track was starting to look like every other site that launched. Lastly, Google had just made an update to their search algorithm. I wanted the new code to be more Google friendly. Design and coding started in February of 2004.
We launched the new design in January 2005.
Short track was even more unknown then so getting the domain worldshorttrack.com was relatively easy. I didn't do anything with the domain until 2 months later after we went to the World Team Championships. I don't remember much of that event except for the relay final where Jiajun Li caught up half a lap and won the relay by a blade. It was then that I decided short track was just the coolest sport and worth my time as a fan.
So I started designing World Short Track in hopes of launching it before the 2002-2003 season started. We had planned to launch in September but the Armando for the Short Track Italia site started linking to us in August. Europe goes on vacation in August and Armando was unreachable. So it was either launch the site early or leave a "Coming Soon" page which is a big no-no for a new site. We launched early.
World Short Track got fairly good reception from the start. I think it was a combination of being a good site and having no competition. At the time, most of the sites were Apolo Ohno fansites. There were dozens and dozens of those, but only Packstyle covered short track in general.
Unfortunately, the owner of Packstyle was busy becoming a judge and didn't have time to update the site anymore. World Short Track took over where Packstyle left off, gearing towards both the general public and the skaters. We launched the site unfinished with several sections missing. There weren't any Coming Soon pages. We just didn't link to those sections. It wasn't until November that World Short Track finally got completed with all the content we originally wanted.
The next significant event in World Short Track history was our first World Cup event. It at World Cup 4 in Bormio, that we met some short track fans that have not only become our friends but people who went on to making a lasting impression in the short track community. We met Noelle from Ohnozone, Denise from American Short Track and Susan who ran a fansite for Fabio Carta.
Bormio is magical. Nestled in the Italian Alps, the rink is within walking distance of everything. The people were wonderful. The event was exceptionally well organized. Of all the places we've visited for short track, Bormio is our favorite.
It was there that I took short track photos for the first time and learned the basics on shooting short track. We met Fabio and many of the skaters for the first time. We saw Amelie Goulet-Nadon from Canada do just some amazing skating and that's why we still have her picture rotating on the WST homepage.
It was after Bormio that we formed World Short Track as an LLC. Torrie and I knew we would be doing this for a while. At the end of the 2004 season, I decided that World Short Track needed a serious redesign.
Redesigning a site just of have a redesign is silly. I redesigned World Short Track out of necessity. After being up for two years, our site was running to usablity issues. First and foremost, the site was increasingly hard to navigate. As the site grew with more content, it took more clicks to get to content. It was difficult to navigate between the members of the same team. It was difficult to navigation between events. Using the site was becoming a pain.
We also knew that future content didn't fit into the current navigation scheme. Redesigning the site had to fix problems I knew the user would be running into in the future.
Also, I wanted the site to look more interesting. Short track was beginning to grow in popularity in the USA between 2002 and 2004. World Short Track originally used a 3-column layout. It's the most basic and most common layout in all of web design. By 2004, everyone was using that layout for short track sites and World Short Track was starting to look like every other site that launched. Lastly, Google had just made an update to their search algorithm. I wanted the new code to be more Google friendly. Design and coding started in February of 2004.
We launched the new design in January 2005.
Comments
noelle said...
That was fun to read and re-live. I discovered WST through that link Armando had posted back in the day and emailed you and Torrie from there. It was so great to discover you were both planning to go to that Bormio World Cup, as was I... and then to have Denise and Susan along. That first World Cup remains the single most magical experience I've had in ST in the past 4 years! We made some great friendships there.
Hope to see you three in Minneapolis.
2/3/2006