Martha Hucker has been rebuilt completely from the ground up. From the site's humble beginnings as a wordpress.com blog, we're now using a fully custom-built website to get the most out of the great content we already have. And like riding bikes, the new site is all about flow. We wanted to make it easy to follow your interests around across categories and across different types of media, so you'll find links and features througout the pages that are dynamically generated to extend what you're currently viewing. And we have kept things as open as possible - for example, there are no 'DH', 'Freeride', '4x' categories. We figure you're quite capable of following your own interests around the site if we get the flow right. So, have a look around, and enjoy!

Some of the new features:

Click on a rider name, and you go to their rider profile. These are created by automatically 'tagging' content to each rider when it's added. You can see all the articles, videos, and photos that relate to that rider, and it's updated if anything new is added to the site. There's also potential to hold other rider information and links to external articles. in future riders will be able to edite their own profiles. Our biggest goal with the site is to improve media coverage of women mountain bikers and that content's accessibility on the net, and this feature does that very well.

Remember the old Martha Hucker calendar that was just a list of events? Well, that is dead and buried. The new events area actually knows what's on when and where, and can help you find what you're looking for from past event coverage or for upcooming events. Each event creates its own page by gathering anything that is uploaded and is linked to it. You can also see what events are coming up, and we'll make sure to include the event's website so you can go enter them!

We like photographers. They make pretty pictures and do good things for our sport by making us look cool... most of the time. So, the new Martha Hucker site stores all the copyright information and details of who took the photo along with the image itself. And, it displays them in nice lightboxes for your viewing pleasure. Anyone viewing the photo will know who took it, and if there's a link, can view the photographer's site. We're all about giving credit where it's due.

One of the biggest things we've been looking forward to with the new site is being able to embed videos from sites we choose, particularly Freecaster who do great World Cup coverage. Martha Hucker now has a custom video embedder that handles videos from a selection of sites. And, we can store information about these videos in our video library, where you can search them sort them, or watch them all in one place. Our own videos are now hosted on Vimeo and embedded into this site.

Content has always been Martha Hucker's strongest point, and our massive collection of articles and interviews is now more accessible thanks to the flow between different elements on the site. For example, if you're watching a video, you'll be able to see if any articles have linked to that video and check them out. And lastly, writing articles is even quicker with the custom content management system, so we'll be able to get higher quality content up on the site even faster than before. Yusss!

Next phase:

We're not done yet! Stage 2 of the redvelopment is to let YOU in. That is, if you're a chick who rides mountain bikes! Martha Hucker will have a members area with forum, and members will be able to edit their own rider profiles and add content to the site. We'll also have press passes for photographers, so if you're not a chick who rides bikes but still want to help promote the sport by sharing photos, it will be very easy and you'll get exposure for your own work by doing so.

Who did it, and how?

Martha Hucker creator Rita Langley is currently studying web development, and this site was made for an assignment on custom content management systems and OOP PHP. The entire site is hand-coded in PHP, Javascript, Jquery, Css and HTML running off a MySQL database, and uses TinyMCE as a WYSIWIG text editor with custom plugins for all the tagging and linking. The graphic design is created in Photoshop using a pen tablet for flowing lines, and the heart-sprocket is an orginal creation too, drawn in Gimp. The original logo is by Chloe Langley, who is a great graphic designer and also does some of the music in the videos we make. And of course the written content is by Rita Langley and by the riders who have taken the time to do interviews for the site - without their help there'd be nothing here, so thanks to all of you who have taken part.

Older: Results form NZ Nationals Round 4 - Rotorua

Fresher: Results for NZ National DH Round 5 - Tauranga

Published on 14/02/2010 by Martha Hucker.