HillRunner.com Admin

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

Another 6 months have passed. Here’s your open invitation to ask me anything.

Within reason, nothing is off limits. Ask about training, racing, my thoughts on any news in the sport. Ask about the site, the coaching service, Club HillRunner.com or anything else that’s going on.

If you want to ask publicly, you can do so in the comments, on Facebook or you can tweet at HillRunner.com (or tweet at my personal account). If you want to ask more privately, you can use the contact form or, if you’re friends with me on Facebook or you know my email address, you can reach me through those options.

So what have you been thinking about and wanting to ask?

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

A lot of things are happening all the time at HillRunner.com. Some are big enough to warrant their own blog post to cover, such as the recent return of more widespread ads (also covered below). Others are small enough to not warrant their own blog posts.

I’d like to occasionally round up some of the recent changes that are big enough to mention but not big enough for their own blog post. Here’s my first attempt at doing so.

Training log features for Club HillRunner.com members

I’ve placed a significant focus recently on the training log. Right now, the benefits are primarily but not solely limited to Club HillRunner.com members.

The biggest changes have been the addition of some visual elements (charts) to help you visualize your training trends over days, weeks, and months. More of these are coming for Club HillRunner.com members and, in time, some will most likely make it to the general public.

Usability improvements in training log and calculators

Some changes have been made for usability, such as drop-downs in place of free form text fields when entering times.

Social links

You may have noticed more social links all around HillRunner.com. Three changes have been made in this regard.

First, currently on every page of HillRunner.com, you can find social follow and social share links. I hope you will find that this makes it easier to find HillRunner.com on a few of the most popular social networks, as well as to share the content here on those networks.

Second, I made it even easier to share blog posts by placing social share links immediately after a post. So it’s very easy once you’re done reading a post to share with your friends.

Finally, you may have noticed that there are now Facebook and Twitter links following my name on post pages and in the comments of the blogs. If you update your profile, you can have those links after you name if you wish. I hope this will allow the community here to connect on social networks more easily if you wish to do so.

Readability

I made a few changes to improve the readability to HillRunner.com. Primarily, what this means is that you’ll see more white space. It’s been shown that more space between lines of text makes the text easier to read and generally easier on the eyes. I don’t want you to have to scroll to read a single sentence but I do want to make sure your reading experience is as pleasant as possible.

There have also been some other cosmetic changes. Almost all focused on making reading HillRunner.com easier but also some just to make HillRunner.com more attractive.

Anti-spam measures

Registration may require a little more work than previously due to attempts to keep members from registering. Also, since most spam was coming through via replies to forum topics, replies will not be allowed after a topic has been quiet for 7 days.

As has been the case for some time, members will have to wait a day after registering before making a new blog post. In addition, guests are welcome and encouraged to comment on blog posts but all guest comments are moderated to prevent spam.

Ads

Finally, ads are back. I already posted about this when they made their return but I wanted to address this again because I realize it is a big deal.

I hate ads as much as you do. I probably hate ads on HillRunner.com more than you do. However, I do have to pay the bills and I think it’s unfair to ask a small number of people (those I coach and Club HillRunner.com members) to take the full burden for something that everyone benefits from. So I decided to create a three-tier structure for ads to ensure everyone helps in some way.

Tier 1: Club HillRunner.com members (which includes those I coach) will get an ad free experience. You’ve already pitched in and I’m very grateful for your support.

Tier 2: Registered and logged on members will see ads on certain pages roughly half of the time. By taking the time to register and log in, you’ve shown loyalty to HillRunner.com and I want to show my appreciation for that.

Tier 3: Anyone who is not logged on will see ads all the time on certain pages. I do truly appreciate your taking the time to visit HillRunner.com and I hope you don’t find the ads overwhelming. I just need to ask you to chip in to help pay the bills.

Note: I have overridden things to place myself in tier 3. I did this so I get constant reminders of what you see and of why I want to keep the ads to a minimum.

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

I think it’s been well established that I hate ads on HillRunner.com as much as anybody.

That said, I have to pay the bills somehow and I don’t think it’s fair to ask Club HillRunner.com members to carry the full burden. So, as much as I hate ads, I’m bringing them back.

As you may (or may not – I’ll explain below) have already noticed, ads have returned to some of the most heavily visited parts of HillRunner.com. They will return to more areas as time goes on. However, not everyone will see them with the same frequency – or at all.

Here’s the deal:

Club HillRunner.com members: Whenever you are logged in, you will continue to have a completely ad free experience. You’re already supporting HillRunner.com through your membership fee and I thank you for doing so.

Registered, logged in members: Whenever you are logged in, you will only see half as many ads as you otherwise would. I appreciate your loyalty and the time you took to sign up.

Guests: I truly appreciate everyone who visits. I’m not trying to punish you. However, I do have to pay the bills so you will see the most ads.

How to reduce or eliminate the ads:

I already laid it out above. If you want to reduce the number of ads you see, you can do so for free by registering and making sure you’re logged in.

If you want to completely eliminate the ads you see on HillRunner.com, you can do so for as little as $1 per month by joining Club HillRunner.com.

I am still committed to keeping the ads to a minimum. I will always ensure HillRunner.com will not become one of those sites where you feel like there are more ads than useful content.

I hope I’m finding a balance that everyone can appreciate and respect. If you have any questions or comments about the new ad policy, please don’t hesitate to let me know.

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

I hope it has mostly gone unnoticed to most of you but there has been a rash of attempted attacks by spammers over the past few days.

Largely, the spammers have been trying to do their thing over at the forums. There have been a few attempts on the blogs also but, as of now, those have not gotten through.

In order to combat these attacks, I made a few changes:

I’m sorry for any inconvenience this causes but something has to be done. I’m also sorry if anyone encountered the spam. Hopefully these problems are now behind us.

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

A new year is just about here. It’s time to reflect on our accomplishments, running and otherwise. As a part of doing so, I wanted to offer a quick review of what I view are the key changes to take place in 2015 and what, as of now, I would say to expect in 2016.

Looking back at 2015

2015 may outwardly not have looked like a real big year. The biggest change, both visibly and internally, would be the addition of Club HillRunner.com. This is something that I had been thinking about for some time and very early last year began planning for. It finally arrived during the summer and has been slowly growing since.

What is so special about Club HillRunner.com? Well, it allows me to give you some things I’ve wanted to for some time like video demonstrations of various aspects of running and training and some new features within the site itself. It also allows for a little more direct communication and a members only community of like minded runners. The low membership fee allows me to justify the time and investment to make these new features available, while not being so expensive that it leaves a large amount of runners on the outside looking in.

The other big news coming out of 2015 would be my RRCA coaching certification. I’m proud to say that I’m now an RRCA Certified Running Coach.

Also going on through 2015 were many changes to try to improve both the reliability and performance of HillRunner.com. Of course, the biggest change was moving to a new host with faster and more reliable servers. I’ve seen errors drop significantly since this change and overall performance has seemed to improve.

Looking forward to 2016

So where does HillRunner.com go from here? Well, every year I start the year with a long list of what I’d like to see happen. The list always exceeds my available time and energy. Plus, of course, priorities always change. Every year, something always happens during the course of the year that becomes a new top priority and pushes something else down the list. However, I will run through a few of my top priorities as of now.

1) Videos!

I actually plan to release a video to Club HillRunner.com members this weekend and it will be one of many I intend to release in 2016. My goal is to release at least one video per month on average.

2) New training log features

I have a few ideas for improving the training log and taking it from the bare bones training log it is now to a more comprehensive log for those who wish for that, while keeping it simple and easy to use for those who want that. New features will first be made available to Club HillRunner.com members but certain ones will over time be made publicly available.

What would you like?

I’m serious! I would like to know what you would like to see at HillRunner.com. Please tell me what you would like to see happen here. If you want to share in the comments, I’d be glad to hear. Otherwise, I’ll be getting a survey together some time in January where you can anonymously share your thoughts on how HillRunner.com works for you and I’ll make sure to have a place in there for you to share your thoughts on what you’d like to see going on here.

So that’s the quick review of 2015 and preview of 2016 at HillRunner.com. I hope you appreciate what has been going on, even if you’re not a member of Club HillRunner.com and haven’t seen the bulk of what has been going on around here.