While the main site has appeared fairly static over the last week or two, a lot has been going on in the background. From here on out, we’re going to make our development process more open so that you know what’s going on.
What Is Going On Here?
Since we launched the site a little over a month ago, we’ve held 2 different contests, got the forums and The Classifieds up and running. While we think they’re valuable tools, and steps in the right direction, we’re just getting started. However, the integration of these tools, along with work on the GTO StatTrak made us realize how important it was going to be to have even tighter integration of all of our tools. After some serious thought, we chose to rewrite the entire site from the ground up.
Now, we didn’t make this choice just because Lonnie likes to code, but because it provides us with the best possible platform to fuel future growth of this site and make things like the StatTrak possible to implement faster in the future. This means that, once we get back to where we are now, the new tools you want will come faster.
We don’t have a definite date, yet, but since we started the process (about 1-1/2 weeks ago) we have the backend management of users, courses, and events just about wrapped up, and the frontend site starting to come together. A side benefit of this is that there will be new tools to help you find other golfers to play with and courses that interest you. You’ll be able to search for users based on location, favorite courses, and–once the StatTrak is running–based on their handicap. You’ll be able to find courses that match your interests and budgets. If you’re visiting the area from out of town, these tweaks to our current tools will help you make new friends and have a great time golfing on your vacation.
And these are just tweaks on the current features that are being implemented due to the re-code. It’s a lot of work, but we think it’s worth it, and we think the tools will help you out tremendously as you continue to golf in the ozarks.
Follow Along
If you want to stay abreast of all of the changes we’re making, there’s two things that you can do:
The first is to subscribe to the RSS feed of our Development category (this is the first post in that category). If you’re not familiar with RSS, it lets you subscribe to a website and it pulls all new articles into one place for all of the sites you visit to make staying current a simple task. If you don’t already have an RSS reader, Google’s Reader is a great choice.
The second thing you can do is to follow us on Twitter. Every time we check in a change to our development code, it’ll Tweet what’s going on so you can see that, yes, progress is actually being made.
We want your feedback!
If there are features that you would love to see–things we could do to help make your golfing hobby more productive or just plain fun–please let us know! You can use the contact form or leave a comment on any of our development posts.