Major Upgrade to Off-Road Spectator Completed
ORS Staff
The staff at Off-Road Spectator is pleased to announce a successful technology refresh of the OFFROADSPECTATOR.COM website.
This was a big deal for our volunteer team. Our primary goal was to replace some of the technologies used in the original Off-Road Spectator site with newer technologies that would continue to be supported by their authors. The secondary goal was to retain as much of the original site’s look & feel to provide familiarity to our user base, while also taking advantage of some of the new features and styling.
We think we successfully accomplished both goals in a short period of time.
Off-Road Spectator was previously in a live “soft launch” phase for technology testing purposes. Our viewership has grown dramatically without promotion while we learned valuable lessons and gained experience with the various technologies.
Challenges
Along the way we had one software author completely abandon their product, leaving us incompatible with the rest of the technologies we were using. In addition, we had another technology that broke so completely that the software author couldn’t fix it. In the end we couldn’t update any event information. None! Nada! Zip!
It was that last hiccup that accelerated our timetable and pushed the team forward. Fortunately we’d gained the skills to overcome our biggest challenge yet – How do we change the motor in the boat while floating down river? Well, we did it!
Going LIVE today doesn’t mean we’ve lifted our foot off the throttle in any way. We’ve got an extensive list of enhancements coming in the next few weeks, with a style refresh slated for later in the year. We also have plans to roll out additional racing organizations in the Midwest and East before 2018, and international events in 2019.
So, without further adieu I present you Off-Road Spectator version 1.0.
We hope you’ll find this to be the easiest website for spectators to get authoritative event details, maps, and spectator rules for off-highway desert racing, rock crawling, and rock racing events in the Western U.S.