TL;DR: We’re working on a new, awesome KartPulse site for you. We hope to launch it sometime in July. The forums are here to stay and will be integrated with the new site. Look for a survey soon, feel free to chime in with feedback or ask me (or my partner in KartingCrime, @DavinRS) anything about KartPulse below.
Longer version
We’ve outgrown the platform on the main www.kartpulse.com site. It started off in Jan 2014 as a “live prototype”, with some “cool” social network features and a bunch of custom code that we developed over the years. Since then, I’ve learned a ton in every way imaginable and the reality is that in terms of usability, appearance and as a publishing platform, our current one is pretty naff. We want the best for karting.
It’s time for something new and I want you to be a part of it. We’re kicking off a survey shortly and we’ll be using the results of this to guide how the new site is developed in terms of features and content.
My intent with the KartPulse project was (still is) to make a badass resource about kart racing with the following goals:
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Grow the sport of kart racing. Work to retain our existing racers and attract new ones. Get out of our own little echo chamber and ask the difficult questions, challenge conventional wisdom (read dogma), come up with solutions and act on them.
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Raise the sport’s presence on the web to a modern standard with something that’s rich, visual, engaging and actionable. Think of it as a tourism website for kart racing.
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Provide an independent, pragmatic, and objective resource for the sport even if it upsets certain folks with their own agenda.
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Rebuild our online community, strengthen the links between online and “real” worlds. Community is the core of karting: Racers, tuners, tracks, series, clubs and businesses… all of us are interconnected in this little ecosystem and it’s important that we have a place to hang out and work together if we want to stand a chance of growing the sport and drive it in a positive direction.
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A business model that’s a little different . You’ll notice that there are no disruptive banner ads on the forums or main site right now. This isn’t by accident, it’s intentional.
Think about it… when was the last time you even clicked on a banner ad?. Again, we’re building something for the future of the sport, not the past. So ads = nope.
n.b. no ads ≠ no revenue. There are a bunch of ways we can to generate revenue that can add value to the community and to the sport.
The plan is to unveil the new platform and in July this year. At that point we won’t necessarily have everything moved over from the main site (The track and business directories we have on the “old” site for example will live there for a while). But the articles will be moved over along with some new content that I think you’re going to really like. As I said above, the forums will be untouched, bar a visual re-deux to match the scheme of the new website.
Here’s the very first snippet of the new site… Like literally the very first snap, so don’t read too much into it yet.
