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whatz with this crappy website?

 
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leol



Joined: 03 Apr 2000
Posts: 4

PostPosted: Mon Apr 17, 2000 4:04 pm    Post subject: whatz with this crappy website? Reply with quote

we former windcall members cant believe how slow, sloppy, ill-conceived, poorly designed, and junk filled this iwindsurf.com is. and were paying $ for this? what a joke. im about to turn my membership in and stick my finger in the air, at least that will show me which way the wind is blowing.
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ringe



Joined: 26 Feb 1996
Posts: 55
Location: channel @ 3rd Ave

PostPosted: Mon Apr 17, 2000 8:30 pm    Post subject: RE: whatz with this crappy website? Reply with quote

give it a chance dude. I like the change. Its growing on me.
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Keith



Joined: 07 Mar 2000
Posts: 104

PostPosted: Wed Apr 19, 2000 5:07 pm    Post subject: Tips for COTW users Reply with quote

Thanks to all of you out there helping with the creation and continued improvement of iWindsurf.com. We are a small group of windsurfers working hard to provide real-time wind information, free classifieds, forecast services and much more. As you can imagine this is a big endeavor for such a small team. Your comments are being heard and were here all day and night trying to make them a reality. So please keep feeding us any and all helpful input.

To answer some of your questions:

1) SLOWNESS: We currently use Microsoft Internet Information Servers and SQL Server database to deliver the site. All pages are dynamically generated using Cold Fusion. (For all you open source guys, we tried using Linux but after much debate it became clear that IIS and SQL server were better for our small development team and short time frame.) The site is optimized for IE 4.x+. For reasons not totally known to us, Netscape is incredibly slow in comparison. Further, Netscape 4.7 has a known bug that makes it difficult to view secure (SSL) pages. I assure you that we are doing everything possible to create a solution to this slowness. We are also working on a lite graphics version for those still having speed problems. If there are any technically savvy folks out there that can offer answers to our Netscape woes, please talk to us! In the mean time, we strongly suggest using Internet Explorer, its much faster in comparison.

2) SITE DESIGN: This site was designed by windsurfers who are not only avid users of both COTW and WHL, but also the same original designers. Legacy users of COTW and WHL may complain of confusing navigation, etc. Yes, we know, change is often tough to deal with. In designing the new site, we took a from-the-ground-up approach, although we did pay particular attention to keeping many of the familiar pieces. Further, we intend to add a number of useful features such as a gear guide with a user rating system, a travel guide, and many more features. For these reasons, we had to design the site to be scalable. Best bet is to bookmark your Region Snapshot page and then go from there to find site specific wind graphs, forecasts, local info, tides, etc. Remember when you switched from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95?....frustrating at first, but much better in the end.

3) REGIONAL SNAPSHOTS: These dynamically generated wind maps are designed to give you a quick graphical reference of the wind speed and direction in your region. Wind speeds are updated every few minutes on the West Coast, and at every wind change on the East Coast. Regions accommodate approximately 10 sensors each. We originally tried to fit the entire Bay Area on one snapshot and it was impossible....especially since we will be rolling out more new sensors in the future. Its really pretty simple to jump to another snapshot map, simply use the drop down menu on the left nav, or click one of the MapQuest style arrows to jump to the adjacent region. For those of you who can not deal with graphics, we continue to offer the beloved COTW style horizontal bar graphs. We are toying with the idea of a mondo bar graph page that lists all of our sites (nearing 200) ...hummmm.

4) FORECASTS: Thanks for all your comments. We are working on a revised system with Mike Godsey, et al. Your continued constructive feedback is super helpful as we fine-tune this feature.

5) FREE: After many renditions of the business model, we have decided to make real-time wind free for all users. We hope the general wind-enthused public can appreciate the all the free services and information we are working to provide. I assure you, none of us are getting rich. Paid service: we will be rolling out a slew of premium services for FX and WIRELESS members including wind-specific micro-forecasting, custom wind alert email service, customizable home page (my.iwindsurf.com), premium forecasting tools, onsite reports, and more as we continually develop them. The FX membership costs just $4 per month, like I said, were not getting rich here. The WIRELESS membership will provide the same great pager service with streamlined enhancements in billing and a reduced price tag.

6) PHASE OUT COTW: Yes, we will be phasing out the windcall.com site in the next few weeks. But, not until we work out all of the bugs. Again, we are relying on your constructive feedback to make the transition smooth.

Thanks again to all of you out there helping to make this a reality. By windsurfers for windsurfer, were in this together.

You can send your feedback to:

support@iwindsurf.com
feedback@iwindsurf.com

Thanks. iWindsurf Support
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