The “new” csxinfo.net has been running for one month now and I am pretty pleased with the overall results. I have a monitor watching the site, and we’ve had 100% uptime, with no software problems. Boy, does that make a designer feel good. At times, the response is a bit slow, not often, but that is the result of our server, not the site software. Overall, it’s pretty reliable.

Looking at the traffic, I am not surprised to see that the Photo Gallery is the most popular section. Over 4000 views of our picture albums in a few short weeks. We will continue to add new photos regularly; even better is that we are starting to hear from people who want to submit their original photos for display.

Two things that are disappointing is the very low activity on the forum and the scarcity of feedback from our viewers. Not really ‘disappointing’, but I would hope to have more of both. There are dozens of visitors a day that are browsing the forum anonymously; some of you should log in and post every now and then.

Feedback from our visitors, unfortunately, is really rare. I would very much like to hear first impressions from new visitors and suggestions or critiques from our longtime users.

I’d like to know where we did a good job implementing a feature, and where we are falling short. Did we miss an important aspect of original Cobra facts and history? Are there things that we could add to make the site an even better resource? I just might create a survey module and place it on the home page for a few weeks, just to force the feedback process.

A very neat phenomenon is that I am starting to hear from owners of original cars who have discovered the site. I would really encourage more of that group to check in periodically, with information about their cars. I am toying with doing a regular feature that would be like a magazine article, featuring a specific car, with photos, details and history.

We’ve got gigabytes of free space to fill with all this fun stuff. It’s a shame that work gets in the way of spending more time improving the site.

After one month, though, this is proving to be a lot of fun for us. I hope it is for you as well.

Well, I guess it’s the right time for me to start my blog.

Welcome to the new csxinfo.net.

Last month (January 2007), Kris and I were talking. I had been banging around the idea of a new website, dedicated to the history, life and times of Shelby American and the Cobra.
I had prototyped a few sites and was soliciting help from a few enthusiasts for the content. Kris, in the same time frame, was considering revamping his site to make it more organized and ready for new content. Plus, the forum software on csxinfo.net was lacking support.

I didn’t take long for the two of us to come to an obvious conclusion…we would combine forces and design a new site to meet both our needs.

I had done some designs with a few Content Management systems and had developed some fresh ideas for presenting information… they matched a lot of what Kris had been pondering.

So…we made a wish list and began designing the framework for the ultimate information site about the Shelby Cobra.

I tend to become obsessive about new designs… so I stole time from an already pretty full schedule. Some late nights…2 a.m…. 3 a.m.

The first breakpoint was to see if we could install a new forum system and be able to save and migrate all the users, the posts and the attachments. When that worked, we were on the way..at full speed.

Kris and I made a wish list that would include all the features we both wanted in a new site. I structured the framework and brought up each feature…I’d code and debug, Kris would test and evaluate.

In 3 short (but late-nighted) weeks, we got this new site up and running. We are both pretty pleased and proud of how it came out. We wanted a site that was rich in reader information, with graphics and data… one that could continually be added to.
We are ready to throw the switch and make it the home page of csxinfo.net. In fact, by the time you read this, we will have already pushed the button.

We are both anxious to see how the site is evaluated by both our old users and new visitors as well.

This trip has just begun…we now have the fun part of loading the site with interesting and accurate information.

Oh…did I mention we still need help? Contact Kris or I if you would like to be a contributor.

Have fun.

We are in the home stretch of redesigning the csxinfo.net site. This blog will let us post our thoughts on what we are doing and why. A lot of thought went into each of the pieces of the puzzle. There is a news release we did that outlines all the new sections of the site…be sure to take a look at that.
The software has been both a challenge and fun to develop… we think we have the right framework for a content-rich site that will be a resource for many. There are a lot more nifty things that can be developed…but we had to draw the line somewhere and start filling things up with data and pictures.