Hey Everyone,

I'm working on site currently for track addicts and I need to some help coming up with a feature list. The options are pretty much open since it's a site being started from scratch. Some of the main features I was thinking were:

- Forums
- Blog
- Registry
- Photo Gallery
- Ebay style private classifieds
- Robust Vendor Classifieds section
- Features section
- Video/Media Section
- Wiki
- being able to customize the layout and front page.

It's a big list and rather then compile a pile of features that most won't use or even care about, I wanted to ask you all (being avid track addicts) what you would like to have as a feature list.

 

Track locations and links to their website (ala trakpedia.com) would be helpful.

 

track day schedules by region.

the video/media section would be great if it had on board video organized by track.


- andrew

 

A key element I want to incorporate.

What other resources/elements might be important? With regard to the features seciton, we have discussed a more magazine front end with featured cars, including new ones, race cars, and owner track cars. Also interviews, product reviews, news, tech articles, etc.

 

Heck yeah... think trackpedia but with more interaction and community!

Local knowledge of tracks is also nice. Places to eat. Safe places to stay. Spots to avoid. How much do the cops like racers?

 

You mean like this?:

http://www.trackhq.com/forums/index.php

 

Both are great sites, but we are not trying to directly compete with either. The is a features based site, not simply a forum. The forum section may turn out to be an important section of the site, but not what it is centered on. So is there some other features fellow trackwhores would like to see more that they are not getting or getting adequately elsewhere

 

+100 for the schedules by region, organized by month/year that way you can go to one board and see the 5 or 1 or 200 tracks in your region and see who's racing when, kinda like we tried to do for sebring a lil while ago. Get in touch with all the marketing/presidents of each club and "nudge" them to run the show that way you guys don't have to do a lot of the leg work yourself - but make sure it gets done regardless.

Also, and i hate to say it, separate out the autocross and road racing sections IF it gets busy. We don't really have that problem on here as there's not a lot of traffic to make the posts scroll past the end of the page where you can't find the section tailored to your addiction - but you might run into that on a "dedicated" site.

More useful/meaningful/UP TO BLOODY DATE sticky's. Take for instance the Evo series post that Bitterman was gonna start but flopped, useless for today, let alone this year. Monthly schedules, redline stuff, or something would be worth reading/up top.

This is gonna take a LOT of work on your end to make it different from the others - not a cookie cut site with the same info you can find by spending an additional 10 minutes in google. It's gotta have all the right info in the right place to stimulate.

Oh and maybe regional meets/track days like Charles has been trying to do forever now, write it in stone even if it's piggybacking onto another group - I'm sure you can reserve 15 spots or something in a n00b group for educational drivers and 5 spots or something above that. Again it'll depend on the group/people running the show.

Ok i'll stop

 

Just a suggestion but what about track line maps?? I've seen a few of these before but I'm brain farting as to where I saw them before...

Cheers-
E

 

These are all great ideas guys. Like Charles said this is something that will be unique and different then what is out there currently. I'm not going to slap up a forum and add standard "gizmos" to make it look nice. This will be a full site package built from scratch.

What I'm trying to figure out is how we piece all the sections everyone wants to make it not overly complicated but easy to use. So the first step is to come up with a list of features you all want and go from there.

So far what I'm getting is:

- In depth Track info with video, pictures, and tips for each track (includes line tips)
- Event Calendar
- Extensive tech articles that are updated
- Having strong community support through a forum

Anything else?

 

?

I like it a lot....I think this could be really cool.

Having pro driver in-car with commentary for major tracks would be awesome. You could do that for at least a couple of tracks on the east coast with some of the drivers over here (in time).


- drew

 

That would be pretty sweet, but would take time to setup - unless they get it from some school or something. Mayhaps run the first part of the random video without the engine sounds, and someone overwrite the audio with commentary using slow motion on the difficult corners, rewind, play again, easy enough to duplicate with basic software. Also some video's of spins on the same track with the same idea going to show what can happen, then play the whole thing at regular speed with the original audio.

More ideas, ripping from usefull stuff i've used on trackpedia - the weather snippits for that "city/region" are always very cool. Tells me what i need to think about packing/bringing to the track day. Maybe also a traffic update snippit for the normal routes to get to that region....

Also i was poking through trackhq like mentioned above, and I really didn't like - on the track section for example sebring - that they used the generic black and white layout, then zoomed (literally) each corner in thus pixil'ing the photo. I'd prefer that pic, a satalite pic, then either real life photos or the sat zoom with the lines drawn so you can attempt to identify braking markers and such.

 

Over time, we could use our Chase Cam setup do do our own exclusive in car laps with commentary from us and our network of pro drivers. We of course wont be able to get all tracks easily, but with a little help from the community, I think we could get all the popular ones

 

didnt someone else start a forum like this?
Timeattackforums.com?

 

That's more of a forum then anything else and it is geared towards only one thing, Time Attack. We are talking about something different that includes other forms of racing.