Happy Birthday BT! We're One Year Old!!!!

author : Ron

comments : 0

It has been one whole year...and look at what we have done!

It was around this time last year that Beginnertriathlete.com was first used as the new name.  I am not sure if any of you remember but a few year prior, this web started out as a few pages about my first tri experience along with some tips.  It was known then as 'Mind, Body and Soul' and was hosted on a free Tripod site with pop-ups galore.  There was also a very crude discussion board that a few used...but much to cumbersome to have any real worth. 

Anybody remember those days?  Everybody was very supportive back then too - even when only a few like my mother, Freddy and myself were writing for the site and it looked...well...very amateurish.  Mind, Body and Soul slowly grew until I was forced to get a paid account and a domain name.  Mind, Body and Soul was unavailable along with several derivatives of it.  RATS!  I kind of liked that name.  What to pick?  I wrote down a list and low-and-behold, Beginnertriathlete.com kept resurfacing.  Is it too long?  Is this what I want to focus on?  Will the name be limiting?  It IS descriptive though.  Hmmmmm....OK!  I will take it!  I redesigned the web page and published with the new name last year this time. 

Soon thereafter, I received an email from Michael Pate of When Big Boys Tri requesting to write.  SWEET!  A person with a book.  I can't thank him enough.  His articles have given BT tremendous momentum.  Since then we have gotten great contributors like Enrico, Priscilla, Gareth, Daniel Clout (our full-time triathlete), Francois, Scott, The Steves, Steve, Geoff, Malvey, Kaitlyn, the Average Joe, Owie, Dillion and J. Kelly and more.  THANX!!!!!!

We installed the new discussion forum last year too and got away from Tripod to a new hosting provider with more capability.  With Michael's and another girls great follow-up on the boards and positive vibes, we started building a great community here.  The rest is history.  Training logs, new training programs in January 2004 plus a new web. People started to ask about logo'd gear.  Michael and Malvey have been instrumental in the design of the logo's to get this rolling.  Michael came up with a great design for one of the shirts and Malvey came up with the beginnings of the new 'BT' logo that is now at the top.  Thanks Malvey and Michael!

All was going well and the stats were skyrocketing after this new year.  All until that lunchtime where I tried to get on the site and I was locked out.  "Too many users" it said. BWHAAATTT!!!!  I frantically got on the phone requesting more bandwidth.  They responded but I had about reached the limit.  Allrighty, another new host.  We moved again into a much bigger house with much room to kick our feet up.

Very soon I realized that with all the people on the board, I needed more content on a more frequent basis, better training logs, a new links database, AND HELP!!!!!  I put up a post and went to school.  When I checked back I received about 30 replies to my plea.  WOW!  This is exciting.  We recently opened up some private forums to organize ourselves on some new initiatives.  When you read this, many of those initiatives are from the help of others. 

So now what do we have cooking here in the BT labs?  Well, Ovetta (infosteward) has become the 'managing content editor.'  She is organizing other editors to collect content to publish on the site weekly.  Her enthusiasm is awesome and her willingness to get this site top-notch is unbelievable.  Lara (Lara_SD) is the 'Races, Clubs and Links' manager.  She has been very important from very early on and has helped test several versions and new features of the training logs.  She has put a lot of hours on the site and the log testing site.  We thank her a lot.  Lara stomped a lot of software bugs in the test area.  She will be managing several people to add links to our new 'directory' that will reside in the forums.  Also, what will be worked on next is to redesign the forum.  Soupaman is doing a great job so far on this task.  I have seen a few of his ideas and they look so freakin cool.  He will also be giving the training blogs a new look since we have so much data being dumped into them.  Nancy (Carpadiem) is taking the initiative to make the site more functional and to make sure the navigation is easy.  She is also working on a user questioner to let us know exactly what you like and dislike.  THANX SO MUCH TO ALL OF YOU AND EVERYONE ELSE HELPING OUT!

In another month (May 2004) we will be coming out with a logo'd product line initially featuring t-shirts and some DeSoto racing shirts.  Out of this we will re-invest for a more extensive product line by the end of the year.  Aside from this, we have some other initiatives to also get the site out of debt by the years end and start offering compensated positions.  Everyone's willingness to pitch in so far is helping is get to that point.  Only then we will be a very healthy site and will be poised and re-invigorated for 2005.

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date: September 2, 2004