HillRunner.com Admin

This article was originally posted by Ryan at the original HillRunner.com Blogs.

I already covered many of the benefits of the new look of HillRunner.com when announcing it would be happening today. I won’t rehash that. You can read it there.

Right now, I just want to say it’s here as you’ve already noticed I’m sure. If you have any comments on it, positive or negative, don’t hesitate to share. I’m sure it will take some time to get used to the new look but I think we’ll find it to be more streamlined, easier to read and convenient to navigate to key areas as we get used to it.

I did my best to make sure the whole site is converted. However, it’s not impossible that you may find something I missed. If you do, you can always let me know. However, I also have built in a process to email me any time the old infrastructure is used so rest assured that I’ll know if anyone finds a page that was missed and address it as soon as possible.

I’m also working my way through a few small bugs. Nothing should make the site unusable and I suspect I’ll have everything fixed up later this morning. If you see anything that doesn’t look right, though, don’t hesitate to give me a shout if you want to make sure I don’t miss it.

I just wanted to draw attention to one other thing that I’m changing at the same time. Formerly, every page had a very basic copyright notice ( "All contents of this site ©1999-2014 HillRunner.com" ). I’m changing this notice to something that reads more complex but explicitly explains what I welcome and encourage. In short, if you want to use the work on HillRunner.com, go ahead but properly attribute myself (or the author if it’s a blog or forum post by someone else) and give a link back to HillRunner.com as the source of the content. So borrow and build upon what’s going on here! That’s a great thing! Just make sure you are giving credit where credit is due.

I hope you like the new HillRunner.com!

This article was originally posted by Ryan at the original HillRunner.com Blogs.

It’s been a very long time coming but HillRunner.com is finally going to get a new look!

For the past 15 years, HillRunner.com has pretty much always looked the same with some form of the crowded blue navigation bar on the left. It’s time to modernize the look, which will offer many benefits:

• Easier navigation – the key parts of the site will be easy to find on the top navigation bar, the rest will still be available via links at the bottom of every page.
• Easier to read on all screens – More white space, which is shown to make sites easier to read. Also, fonts will change depending on your screen size, making things easier to read on small screens such as phones. The menu bar also adjusts depending on your screen size to ensure it will be functional no matter what size screen you’re using.
• More modern look – It’s just nice to have HillRunner.com look more like it belongs in the modern era instead of being stuck in the 1990s or early 2000s.
• Easier for me to maintan and modify – This will allow me to more easily fine tune the look of HillRunner.com so it can evolve with modern web development standards and adapt to our growing knowledge about what makes sites easier to read.
• A more dynamic menu – As you can see in the sample linked to below, I can dynamically control what is in the menu, allowing it to include things like the latest blog posts and, if you’re logged in, personalized links.

This change will be rolling out on Wednesday, May 21st, starting around 9:00AM Central time. I would expect most, if not all, of the site to be updated within 2-3 hours.

What you will see Wednesday won’t be the end, though. As we all get used to the new format, I’ll continue making smaller changes to make it the best it can be. However, I want to get started because I believe what we have ready right now is a huge improvement from the current format and it’s simply time to make the move.

You can see a sample of what the new homepage will look like here.

I know this is a big change and it will take some getting used to but I think it’s a change for the better. I hope you agree.

As always, I’m very open to feedback. If you have any comments or suggestions on the new format, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment here or contact me directly. I appreciate all the feedback I can get.

This article was originally posted by Ryan at the original HillRunner.com Blogs.

I’m looking for some feedback. Off and on, I’ve posted on a few studies that have caught my eye. However, I see a lot that I don’t share. I’ve been thinking of coming up with a way of posting these more often.

As you have probably figured out by now, I usually plan one blog post a week, to appear on Monday mornings. There’s no guarantee of a post every Monday but, more often than not, there will be. I’d like to propose expanding to two posts a week. On Monday mornings, I’d like to post a recap of the most interesting studies or related content I’ve come across in the past week. I would then push back the more general running related posts that now appear on Mondays to Thursday mornings. Again, no guarantees that there would be two posts every week but I’d aim to post twice a week more often than not.

As always, I want to shape everything on the site as much as possible to what everyone who takes their time to visit will find the most useful. So I’ll open up the question now. Would you like to see this change?

This article was originally posted by Ryan at the original HillRunner.com Blogs.

I just wanted to throw out a quick update. Some system software on the server HillRunner.com runs on is getting updated. I have some time right now where I can run HillRunner.com on either the old software or the new software. I’m choosing to test out the new software now while we can roll back to the old as I troubleshoot if any issues come up.

My initial tests show everything working fine but, if you see anything that doesn’t appear to be working right, please let me know. In the short term, I can switch back to the older version while I determine what is going on. In the meantime, if everything is running well, we should see performance, security and stability improvements.

Thanks for your understanding as we go through this necessary update.

This article was originally posted by Ryan at the original HillRunner.com Blogs.

Wow, it’s hard to believe. 15 years ago today, I registered the domain HillRunner.com. I was just looking for a place to host my personal running page that had outgrown the student page I was previously using. Over the years, it has turned into much more.

Things have changed quite a bit since the beginning and things will continue to change as time goes on. It feels very appropriate actually that, just earlier this week, I was able to announce the new partnership between the Seattle Marathon and HillRunner.com and we can start a new era here as we celebrate 15 years.

I don’t have a whole lot to announce to celebrate 15 years. That said, I have been working on a project recently that I’ve been interested in doing for years. Don’t be surprised if, in the next month or two, you show up at HillRunner.com to find things looking different. I hope you will like what’s coming! In the meantime, thanks for sticking around for 15 years and I hope we have many more years of learning about running and sharing the lessons we’ve learned along the way to come.

Fittingly, I’m scheduling this to appear as I’m lining up for a race. Yes, I’m racing on HillRunner.com’s 15th "birthday". What better way to celebrate?