Welcome everyone to the 2015 version of Biglines.com. Hopefully you like what you see. If you’re interested in learning more about our new site, please keep reading.
Thanks. First thing’s first, thank you for coming. It’s flattering and humbling to know how many shredders come to Biglines on a regular basis. Running a small and independent media company is full of hurdles. But your patronage is the reason we keep going. We know that we’re far from perfect, but we hope that our strengths outweigh our weaknesses.
This is our 15th anniversary and it’s an absolute privilege to still be posting about our passion after all these years. Our goal is to continue to serve as a medium for all of the voices in the big mountain freeride community.
What’s Different. The biggest technical change is that we’ve switched website platforms (from Drupal to WordPress). WordPress has come a long way in the last five years and it’s going to be a much easier medium for us to innovate on. And it will also be way easier for you, the user, to publish your own content to the site.
We know our platform has been outdated in the last few years, but we’ve been stuck in a nasty circle of being not being able to afford the changes we wanted to make. We’re stoked on the way that WordPress is going to help us move forward. We’ve got a whole new way of exposing content and we look forward to bringing you along for the ride.
We are incredibly grateful to Helly Hansen, Whistler Blackcomb, Arcteryx and Dynafit for believing in our dream to make this switch. As you notice from our top banner, their continued support is what allowed us to make the shift to this new site. Without them, we couldn’t have done it. We also have to shout out to all our sponsors, big and small, who are working with us. If you care about Biglines, clicking through to learn more about our sponsors is a helpful way to support us.
Old Site: What about the old site? For now, the old site is available at http://vault.biglines.com/ . We’re keeping that live for a while so that people can access our invaluable legacy content. We’re also in the busy process of migrating the best of the old site to the new one. We’ve chosen to do it manually for a couple reasons: cost and effectiveness. It will be our ongoing project to sift through 15 years worth of stories and bring over the ones that are still relevant. It’s a gargantuan task, but it’s going to help turn the new Biglines into a kick-ass site packed with awesome content from around the globe.
User Data: One thing that kinda sucks is that user data will not be brought from the old site to the new one, at least not in the short term. We know there are some users who care about their content postings and old statuses. We ask you to register with the new site. Once you are logged in, please send us a message mentioning that you’d like your old content associated with your new account. We will make a special effort on these accounts.
Forum: Forums are dead right? At least starting a new one doesn’t happen in 2015. Well, maybe. And if that’s the case, so be it. But we do see a relevant role for forums on the web and we think our new one will be easier to use than our Ghost Town of an old one.
3. What’s The Same. Content has always been what has driven Biglines and we will continue to post the best from around the web and also to make contributions of our own. If all goes well, you’ll see an uptick in original content from the people we work closely with.
Our commitment has always been to cover the big and steep ski and snowboard descents that happen around the globe. And as has always been the case, Biglines is more concerned about what gets done than who does it. We’ve always tried to be a voice of the everyman, the up-and-comer, and the no-namer. That hasn’t changed.
You can read more about how we see the world in our Brand Manifesto.
4. What’s In Store: In the short term we hope for more of the same. Biglines posted 512 pieces of content last year and you can expect that and probably more. We will occasionally wander on the main feed into other sports like, surfing, skateboarding, climbing, and whatever else we think will be enjoyed by the Biglines community.
And as the site progresses, our “Locations” category in the drop menu will become an expansive database of rad locations so that we’re one of the best resources you have for planning trips near and far.
Shop: You can expect to see some new swag in the near future. We’ve got new hats and t-shirts on order. And we plan to launch a store with a select line of Biglines original pieces, while also connecting our community with products that we trust…
This is our next chapter. We hope you enjoy it.