Updated: The SurfPulse Redesign

By
adam
Published: December 15, 2008Posted in: SurfPulseTags: ,

New cam page is up, sorry for the delay.  Tide charts and bouys up next.  Stay tuned!

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Hello SurfPulsers,

If you’re reading this, you’ve probably realized that there’s a new look to SurfPulse. We hope you like the stuff we’ve added, and bear with us while we finish getting all the features you’ve come to expect from SurfPulse moved over and have them all working properly. As always, our goal is to make sure SurfPulse is the best one-stop shop for local surfing info relating to the Bay Area and Northern California, published by people who know it, surf it, and love it. In that spirit, we thought it’d be a good idea to tell you a little more about the redesign, and what’s still coming.

The last time SurfPulse was redesigned was 2002. In web technology time, that’s a long stretch, and it was time to update a few things. We wanted to add new social features to allow greater interaction among the SurfPulse community, and we wanted to make it easier for people to contribute great content relevant to NorCal surfing. For you techies, we also needed to make some improvements to the site’s infrastructure. Our content management system (CMS) was very old and difficult to use. We were paying too much for hosting, and wanted to switch providers on that front as well. So, we figured we might as well do it all in one go. Of course, we wanted to do all this while keeping all the things that make SurfPulse what it is: an uncluttered, local focus on current and forecasted surf conditions, updated daily.

While we’re at it, we also figured it was a good time to clear up some misperceptions. Primarily, the redesign has nothing to do with advertising or making more money. Nobody is getting rich off SurfPulse. In fact, SurfPulse isn’t even anyone’s full-time day job, and the site barely makes enough from advertising to cover our hosting costs (sometimes not even that). We work on SurfPulse because we enjoy it, and want to make a contribution to the NorCal surfing community that we love.

We hope that gives you greater insight into the new look of SurfPulse, and we look forward to continued improvements and getting all the features you relied on at the old site moved over into our new home. Have a great week, and get some waves!

The Surfpulse Team