Website - UK Trail Centres

Cferg

Very useful site, good job Only thing I would change is, as has been said, group them in areas/districts of the country, but its not a big hastle.

projectsome

I like the idea of finding a train station near trails

Anonymous

FYI, Swinley is now £20 for an annual permit. Still £2 for daily.

Like the linking from riding styles to location.

Some of the link colours need sorting out as they're a bit unreadable with the background colours in places.

Otherwise a good idea.

Are you planning to expand from just trail centres and mention other common MTB areas? e.g. with location and good places to park, nearby pubs & bike shops perhaps. You probably can't publish trails as a lot are unofficial or contentious with land owners, walkers, etc.

nonnac85

Thanks for all the replies.

Weescott - I didn't know about the warning message. Please can you tell me what page you were on when it happened. I'm afraid the little bit of code you put doesn't mean much to me - my site is created in google sites where you don't edit the html (much). Its a bit like using word / powerpoint.
I am going about setting the external links to open in new pages/ tabs

Pat mcgucken - Part of my updates will be to check all the links as I know some of them are now dead. Thanks for the positive feedback. I have tried contacting reviewers in the past but unfortunately most didn't reply so its easier to link to them instead.

F@RRR - I am still updating some of the site so the text colours will get sorted asap.

Cferg - Thanks for the feedback. It seems people would like to see the centres in regions. I'll look into getting some regional info added once I have done the first rounds of updates i.e. links, text colours etc.

Projectsome - Thanks :-)

Deadkenny - thanks for the info r.e. Swinley. I'll get it updated. I can't publish general trail areas that are unofficial really as I will run into the same problem that BikeHike had where they had to remove their whole database from the public domain.


Once again, thanks for all suggestions and feedback.

Going back to my question about accommodation, do people want to see near by accommodation on the site?

forgotrafe

Hey, don't forget our little trail...

http://www.mbswindon.co.uk/croft-trail/

It's on the south side of Swindon and is a great little trail. Sure you might not want to travel too far for it, but being just off the M4 (even closer if only you were allowed to nip down the embankment, must be all of 20m from the motorway in places), it's a handy place to stop off on the way to/from somewhere else.

nonnac85

Got your email. Thanks for the info. I'll get it added to my site.

weescott

The error message was on opening the front page from the link you posted. It's gone now.

The site builder software you are using explains the awful code. I strongly suggest using notepad and learning to code it yourself. Packages like Dreamweaver are better for WYSIWYG editing but they are not perfect.

Use this to fix the code:

http://validator.w3.org/

Having proper code makes a massive difference on how search engines find and rate your site. It really is worth fixing it. It will make it easier to edit in the future too.

Anonymous

nonnac85 wrote:

Going back to my question about accommodation, do people want to see near by accommodation on the site?

Could be useful. Question is how far do you take it? I mean do people want to see 5 star luxury hotels , or just campsites, youth hostels and cheap B&Bs and the like?

If you could query for MTB friendly accommodation and campsites perhaps.


As for coding errors, this can be a nightmare to sort out from a generated site. The ideal is to start from scratch and code for a "strict" HTML standard, and use CSS for all the layout and style. If you've got a package that will enforce these then that's a good start, or otherwise hand code it all but that's a bit of a learning curve.

Or if you can run server side software, consider using a package that does everything for you. A blog style system like wordpress perhaps or any general content management system. Minimal coding then, just create articles in the system.

If you get it to meet the standards you'll have a good chance of making the site work in most browsers.

forgotrafe

http://www.mbswindon.co.uk is a wordpress site. Great because it allows you to concentrate on the content, not the techie stuff. And loads and loads of plugins too so you can add polls, articles, forums etc. to the site if you wish

nonnac85

Re accommodation, I'm thinking just add one or 2 local b+b / campsites that are bike friendly.

On the subject of coding, if I had time to learn I'd like to but I used google as it got round the problem of finding time to learn! I realise its a little more "clunky" than doing it using code but so far it has worked ok for what I want. One day I will find time to learn about hosting and servers and coding etc but I fear it may be a long way off!

tomstickland

Here's my google map list of trails so far. I know of several others that I need to investigate.
http://www.mbswindon.co.uk/articles/uk- ... ke-trails/

I don't intend to add detailed info - it's just a map to help people locate possible trails worthy of further investigation.

peter413

Just a few things about Inneithen and Glentress:

The Innerleithen XC route is now graded red and there is also the Icycles bike shop there

And Glentress Trailfaries has its own website aswell as the Yahoo group http://www.glentresstrailfairies.org/

And there is the Buzzards Nest and Red Squirrel car parks at Glentress as well as The Osprey

scotto

Personally I like the site, really appreciate the back to basics straight links and really hate rollover menus and animations ( I speak as someone who was a web designer for 5 years)

I would like to see starting /parking points with postcodes so tomtom people like me who are rubbish with maps can make their way there and just ride.

Also combine this with gpz files of actual routes and let people know what to expect on the route i.e does it have any drop offs or stuff which means you need a bike with 30ft of suspension to ride.

From what I read and then see there is a big difference between a red in one place then another, the colour grading scheme is nuts and a bit annoying.

The trailcentres site I find annoying all presentation but no content.

Carry on as you are just concentrate on supplying the info and then maybe move it across onto wordpress and slam a forum in there at some point if you can that just talks about the trail centres/trails and nothing else

I think you will have a winner, don't listen to the haters, I mean where's their sites then :-)

nonnac85

Tomstickland - I will get your map linked from my "Useful Links" section, thanks

Peter413 - Im just about to go through all the info for scotland so I'll make sure those updates get sorted, thanks

Scotto - thanks for the positive comments, much appreciated. I have the nearest postcodes for most of the centres themselves which are also on the tomtom file that was created by a fellow mtb'er. Im not sure what you would change about the current post codes?
I will look into the gpz idea and see if I can get them on my site some how.

List of things to do currently stands as...
Add a regional map / links
Find out about accommodation near the trail centres
Look for gpz files of actual routes