Web Development Articles from York web designers Semlyen IT

Very soon we’ll be launching a new site for fundraiser Graham Kennedy. Graham organises an annual sponsored bike ride to raise money for research into finding a cure for Friedreich’s Ataxia, and this year, in recognition of his fundraising work, he received an MBE in the New Year’s Honours.

Since 1991 the Big Bad Bike Ride has raised almost £600,000 for Ataxia UK, a charity which supports medical research into the causes and possible treatments of Friedreich’s Ataxia. The name ‘ataxia’ means ‘absence of order’, and people with the condition have problems with co-ordination which usually become progressively worse over time.

Graham started his fundraising campaign after his two children were diagnosed with the condition in 1990. His aim is to raise one million pounds for the charity, and, one ambition, he says, “to close York with a massive bike ride, similar to what happens in Cape Town every March when 36,000 take part.”

This year the Big Bad Bike Ride will take place near Pitlochry in the Scottish Highlands, on an undulating circuit of 75 miles. If previous years’ turn-outs are anything to go by, it should see over one hundred riders taking up the challenge.

Graham says the award is “a tribute to all the people who have helped me. Over the years, a lot of people, mainly from the York area, have been involved in the bike rides.”

The Big Bad Bike Ride website will be launched on 15th January 2010.

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Whilst I’m waiting for a big upload to finish, I thought I’d take a moment to talk to you all about bicycles.

We’ve been working for some time with Get Cycling – nationally renowned cycling promoters and purveyors of all manner of pedal-powered fun. We also took on the task of developing a site for their sister company, Company of Cyclists.

The site was launched last week: Cyclorama – a guide to all things pedal-powered. It’s an ambitious project, an online bicycle (/tricycle/quadricycle…) exhibition featuring high-quality specialist cycle manufacturers and retailers worldwide, backed up with the results of a lifetime of work in bicycle journalism. If you like bikes – and I do – you’ll probably love it.

The site is being launched in stages – right now you can read over 250 articles, essays and technical guides in the bike culture section. Over the next few months we’ll see the exhibits appear: the retailers, manufacturers and bikes on exhibition, as well as blogs, discussion boards and an online shop.

The site has been coded to be entirely multilingual, so that exhibitors can upload their profiles in their own languages, and in as many of them as they like. Translations are being added to the existing site.

That’s one of the complications of the site: the other big one has been not getting absorbed in reading all the articles!

The Cyclorama Homepage

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Here are two new sites designed by Bivouac and coded by Semlyen IT:

The first is for Get Cycling, a cycling promotion company who specialise in organising cycling roadshows, bike try-out roadshows and other cycling events.

The site showcases the huge variety of cycling-based activities they provide, including a page featuring their menagerie of ‘Megabikes’ such as pedal powered sofas, multi-seater cycles and a pedal-powered Scalextric.

The site utilises multiple image slideshows and a WordPress powered news management system.

York Counselling has had a site redesign, and also some SEO to highlight the additional services provided and areas covered – for example anxiety and depression treatment, in Leeds and Wetherby.

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