Issue date
The Finn class is pleased to announce that it has launched a new website after successfully porting its existing site onto a new platform and to a new server. The address remains, as always, www.finnclass.org. The whole site has been reworked onto the new platform and should be faster, more reliable and more secure.
The previous website has served the class well for four years, but advances in technology and security issues meant a new approach was called for and the new site went live earlier this year. For all intents and purposes it is the same site as previously, but the new platform will allow the site to be further developed in the coming years.
The new site is now running on Joomla 3.2 content management system software (CMS) and was ported across in late 2013.
The major advantage of the new platform is that it offers a responsive design, meaning that the layout responds to the device it is being viewed on. Whether you view the site on a desktop, laptop, or increasingly as sailors do these days, on a tablet or smartphone while at an event, you get the same viewer experience, resized to match the device. As the screen gets smaller, all items progressively resize to fit on the page, though the text remains the same size. This means the page is always readable and there is no scrolling side to side to find what you are looking for. The entire designed width is always available. When the page is too small for this, such as on a small tablet or smartphone, the page automatically jumps to the mobile format, with the entire menu accessible from a button in the top left of the screen.
All the content from the old site is there, including some 600 articles from the past four years documenting the sailor's stories and all the major events during that time. The Finn class media package is one of the most advanced of all Olympic classes and engages a worldwide audience through its in-depth press releases as well as operating an integrated media platform that includes extensive photo galleries on Flickr, videos on YouTube, and social media interaction on Facebook and Twitter. The hub of these activities is always the class website and it was essential that this was modenised to match the ongoing growth in the classes other media activities, which will be further developed through the coming years.
While initially the new site has no additional functionality, the new platform and CMS will allow it to be developed far beyond what the previous site was capable of doing. In effect it is future proofed and will be a valuable part of the classes wide ranging media activities in the run up to the 2016 Rio Olympics. The road to Rio really gets under way in earnest in 2014 and the Finn class media will be there every step of the way to tell the stories as they happen.
