Welcome to the New iRunFar.com!
January 18, 2010 by Bryon Powell · 14 Comments
Welcome to the new iRunFar.com! While the fact that there is a new iRunFar.com is self-evident, we wanted to officially welcome you to our new home and take the time point out the most important aspects of the move.
In addition, we’ll seize this opportunity to call for you comments – good, bad, and ugly – regarding any aspect of the new website. We’d love to know what you think of the new layout, color scheme, navigation, fonts, etc. If something looks broken anywhere on the site, please let us know! Feel free to leave your feedback in a comment or, if you would prefer to share your thoughts more privately, you can contact us directly.
The Highlights
- Change of Address: iRunFar is now at www.iRunFar.com! Don’t worry, almost any link, subscription, and bookmark you have to iRunFar should work exactly as it always has. Please note, if you bookmarked or subscribed to iRunFar before August 2008, you should update the address or subscription. [If you've yet to subscribe to iRunFar, you can do so via RSS or via email.] Why are we making this change? Well, we wish iRunFar had always been at iRunFar.com. However, when we moved from our blogspot address a few years back, our web host required a subdomain. Hence, iRunFar has been found at blog.irunfar.com. No more!
- Better Layout: In contemplating a new design for iRunFar, we began our search with sexy, magazine-like themes that had huge images and sliding content features. After we eventually chose one of the simpler magazine themes, we kept stripping unnecessary features until we arrived at the simple design you see today. While simple, we think the new homepage layout allows for easy access to much more of your favorite content than the old homepage did.
- Better Navigation: Our favorite part of the new iRunFar is its easy navigation. The same options remain in the upper righthand corner, but now there are dropdown menus in the upper left, dropdown category and archive options in the sidebar, and a way to get to the homepage from any footer just by clicking on “home.”
- More Control: Not only did we change our address and design, but we changed our website platform. You may not have known it, but we’ve had a (heavily customized) Blogger-based website until now. The current iRunFar is based on a “self-hosted” WordPress installation. What this means is that we have much greater ability to control the look of iRunFar, to make features available to iRunFar readers, and to tweak things behind the scenes to make iRunFar.com load more quickly. Regarding speed, we’ve honestly spent countess hours trying to make the new iRunFar as zippy as possible. Please let us know if you have problems with page load time (or if you think the load speed is great).
- More Mobile: No, we’re not planning to move iRF again any time soon. (Trust us, once was enough!) Rather, there’s now an automatic mobile version of iRunFar.com. Want to read iRunFar far while you’re on the go? Just pull up iRunFar.com on your as you normally would and – presto! – there’s iRF content that’s optimized for the smaller screen of your web-enabled mobile device.
- No More Adsense: For a long time… actually for nearly all of iRunFar’s existence, there’s been a small, text Adsense ad at the bottom of every page. Most folks probably never noticed it, but we did. We originally installed Adsense as a traffic-metering device and kept it installed even after installing more sophisticated traffic monitors, because it was our only complete measure of iRunFar’s traffic. With the new website, it was time to say enough is enough. Good bye Adsense, you won’t be missed.
Call for Comments
Here we’ll reiterate our call for comments! Please share your thoughts on any aspect of the new iRunFar.com! We’ll be updating the current version with ideas we already have in mind and will certainly make more changes based on what iRunFar readers have to say.
With that in mind, please share your thoughts on:
- Layout;
- Navigation;
- Aesthetics;
- Readability;
- Anything that confuses you;
- Anything you think works really well (someone might suggest otherwise and it could be removed);
- Things you miss from the old iRunFar;
- Things you’d like to see added to the navigation menus, to the main portion of the homepage (what categories should the small boxes be?), to the sidebar, or to the footer; or
- Anything thing else that comes to mind, big or small.
If you much preferred the old version, let us know that, too. Of course, if you prefer the new version, we wouldn’t mind a little reassurance!
Related articles:
- Thanks for Supporting iRunFar! Thank you for helping support iRunFar iRunFar! Happy Trails, -The iRunFar Team...
- The iRunFar Store Launches! Take a look at the iRunFar store!...
- The iRunFar Forum – You Are The Story and Answer The official launch of the iRunFar forum....
Filed under Administrative ·
Bryon Powell is the Editor-in-Chief of iRunFar.com, which he founded five years ago. Also the author of Relentless Forward Progress: A Guide to Running Ultramarathons and a contributing editor at Trail Runner magazine, he's quickly approaching 10 years as an ultrarunner and 20 years as a trail runner. These days he calls Park City, Utah and its trails home.
All posts by Bryon Powell
Looks sweet!
But….there always has to be a but….wordpress wouldn’t just let me post “Looks Sweet!”. They told me “Your comment was a bit too short. Please go back and try again.” So, I had to come up with something else to say to get the “Looks Sweet!” comment on. :)
Looks great – keep up the great work!
Terrific changes Bryon! Great new look and functionality.
Good luck!
Well, just to offer a different perspective, I read iRunFar.com through a feed reader, so the changes don’t affect me much. As a general rule, though, I’m in favor of any tweaks that make navigation easier.
Me like! Only suggestion might be to use some graphics for your Amazon and Backcountry links on the right – if it’s a moneymaker for you, pull the eyes towards it!
I know these makeovers are tough. Congrats!
SD
Scott, that’s a great idea. I’m just so hesitant about any self-promotion… especially commercial. I guess that’s why you’re a successful business person and I’m a writer who can’t capitalize on my own hard work! ;-)
That said, there will be some commercialization on iRunFar in the very near future.
Thanks, Tony, Dylan, and James! (Yeah, even Mr. Wise Guy Portera.)
Crowther, I’m with you on the RSS bandwagon. I read your feed on RSS, too. I do apologize if you received a few redundant posts in your feed while I was making the transition. That should be over with.
Nice layout…great content. Should be a slot machine in my book.
Will
I really like the new layout – it makes the increasing volume of posts aross multiple topics so much more accessible. Well done!
Congrats on finally forking this thing over to the world! This website is alotalotalot of time, effort, and newly acquired knowledge in the making. You should be proud!
I like it! WordPress is easy to use and has tons of options, smart move.
Hey Bryon,
I’m still checking it out, but so far I really like it. No specific or intelligent suggestions here.
Just congrats!
Oh, and thank you for the sticker.
Congratulations ! Great new look and functionality.
One suggestion : more photos if it’ possible !