We are beginning the process of developing/designing a new website for WildSnow. While we’re not necessarily looking to rock the boat, we are seeking your input as we consider new ideas, formats, and ways to organize the years of WildSnow content.
We have some thoughts, but we want your input as we move forward. One idea we are exploring is how to feature longer-form stories on the site that have a longer shelf-life than a high-turnover lightning-fast news cycle. In the Google form linked below (and here too), we ask some macro and micro-level questions related to content organization and whether or not we should include video content. With that in mind, as you answer the questions, it might be beneficial to have WildSnow pulled up on the screen to use as a reference.
A screenshot of the WildSnow site.
No matter how the website buildout ensues, we aim to create a clean and uncluttered reader experience.
Thanks for your input and for taking the time to help us out,
WildSnow
PS: we will not be collecting email addresses from those who respond.
While most of the WildSnow backcountry skiing blog posts are best attributed to a single author, some work well as done by the group.
16 comments
I would suggest starting with Bikepacking.com as a source of ideas. They seem to have a good balance of content and advertising in my opinion and their content isn’t too far from Wildsnow.com (trip reports, gear reviews, etc.).
I saw that site suggested on the survey today. It does look compelling with some great content and visuals. Thanks for the tip.
One of the felicities of Lou Dawson’s Wild Snow was the conversation of the readers in the comments. That, alas, was ditched under the new management. I still like the gear reviews which involve extended use. Quick takes on gear are usually of little value, except to disqualify obvious trash, which needs not to get reviewed at all.
Exactly, we need the wizard back!
The open comments that the earlier version of wild snow was huge when it came to long term gear reviews. I would highly encourage you to bring that back.
Bring back Lou!!!
Hi Cork and all, I’m still around, been working nearly full time on my memoir. The plan is to appear around here more often as I get into the final stages of book publishing, though that depends on how the novel is going. I can tell you it’s hard, and time consuming, so we’ll see how the blogging goes. Meanwhile, I sure appreciate the job Jason Albert has done. And good to see WildSnow is looking at some changes, since change is the way of the web. We do have a load of still relevant content here, how to keep it available is an interesting question. Please fill out the questioner, and if you’d like to track my doings, my newsletter signup is over at my website LouDawson dot com. Lou
Agreed about Bikepacking.com and more Lou! 😉
(And not closing comments so soon.)
Is the new layout finalized? What I’m seeing today is harder to use since you have to carefully look in 5 different places on the front page, scrolling around, to figure out whether there’s any new content you haven’t read yet. While that might be nice for infrequent visitors who want to scan articles from the last month or so, it makes it really hard to find what you haven’t already read that’s recently published. I appreciated the “single stream” of content in the prior layout that made it easy to find the most recent articles.
Hey KB, thanks for the feedback. This is a work in progress that we are fine tuning before the winter season kicks into full gear. Feel free to email me for any specific refinements that you think might help.
Hey Jason, I entirely agree with KB. I’m now having a real hard time figuring out if new articles have been posted and have been just scrolled to the list of recent comments figuring that someone else has found a new article. I shudder to use Outside magazine’s website as a suggestion of what to do but their landing page has “featured” articles be the first thing seen, but then it’s possible to scroll down to see the latest articles.
If I scroll down to Latest on Wildsnow I see the 7/20 article about the cookbook, a 7/8 article about Bighorns and a 6/20 water filter article. It seems that really isn’t a latest list
Agree completely with KB and John B; it was much easier to find things before.
I continue to be unable to make sense of the website redesign. Are the top scrolling images supposed to contain the most recent news or not? The other day it didn’t, but today it does. The section further down the page titled “Latest” I would think would be what I’m looking for, but it doesn’t have todays August 17th post “Backcountry Skiing Mentorship 101” listed there. And when I click on the older posts it gives me some but not all of the older posts. Is there any page that just lists the various articles in chronological order? Also, when I click on “older posts” I continue to be routed to a page that looks like the homepage and have to scroll down to see the posts. It should just go to a different page that I don’t need to scroll down again to find what I’m looking for.
I continue to just look at the most recent comments in hopes that I find the most recent posts. I know I’m not the most tech savvy person, but I hope it becomes a bit more user friendly.
I am with KB and others on this – such a needless complexity
The changes have not been good. The site really needs to be chronological. I expect you’ve seen engagement drop since.
Was trying to make sense of the site a bit and discovered the following: it appears that the site is set up to exclude things that are otherwise categorized from the “latest” list? Ex – gear reviews, trip reports, and avy news all seems to be excluded from the “latest” list. Even weirder, things that appear in the revolving banner also seem to be excluded from the “latest” list. This is immensely confusing. I’m all for organizing things into categories, but I think the “latest” list needs to just show every article that’s been recently published, in order. As of now I’m just relying on the recent comments box to see if some clever person has discovered new articles, which seems suboptimal.