cycling | Web Development Articles from York web designers Semlyen IT

Cycling related websites are proving to be an excellent area of business for us. There are several in our portfolio already, and some more in the pipeline.

Last year we built a website for the York Festival of Cycling, and this was followed by a new site for Get Cycling, one of several projects run by the Company of Cyclists. Get Cycling is a community interest company which organises and promotes cycling events, bike try-out roadshows and cycling festivals all over the UK.

One offshoot of Get Cycling is now having its own website developed. Bikeboost is a scheme set up to promote and support cycling to and from work in urban areas. The first city to participate in the programme is Sheffield (one of the UK’s hilliest cities!) where 800 people will take up cycling to work. The scheme provides bike loans and support over a two year period, and will offer free cycle training in association with Sheffield cycling organisation Pedal Ready.

Our contribution to the project was a sophisticated bespoke (no pun intended) online system to manage the various BikeBoosts. Participants can register their interest and fill in an online questionnaire about their current commuting habits. People are selected to take part based on this information and the number of places available, and they are then given an account within the BikeBoost site.

Once admitted, participants can log into their account on the BikeBoost website and record their experiences and progress throughout the challenge, keeping track of the distances logged by themselves and their colleagues.

The online system makes it a whole lot easier to sign people up, loan them bikes, and find out how they’re doing. Reports on the facts and figures of the challenge are available at the click of a button.

Another project run by Company of Cyclists is Cyclorama, an enormous, multilingual online cycling resource which is still being developed. Cyclorama incorporates the online cycling magazine Bike Culture, which features a vast array of cycling articles and essays on practically every aspect of cycling imaginable. The site also serves as an exhibition space for specialist cycle designers, manufacturers and retailers. Each exhibitor has their own profile page, which contains a portfolio of their products and a blog.

Last month saw the launch of a website for the Big Bad Bike Ride, a sponsored charity bike ride which has been raising money to fund research into Friedreich’s ataxia since 1991. This site was set up to provide up-to-date news and information to participants, and to take online registrations and payments. Participants can also collect their sponsorship money online through Just Giving.

The next cycling-related website that we will be developing is Cycling City York, a project for the City of York Council which will promote York’s status as a Cycling City.

Bookmark this post:

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.

Bookmark this post:

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

Bookmark this post:

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.

Bookmark this post: