I'll say from experience that it is a tremendous amount of work to maintain a website for a track.  The fans, drivers and sponsors ALL have to be happy because without even one of those elements the track is finished.  Just think of all the things that need to be done on a weekly basis - it is a daunting task, and it is hard to remove or change even one element after the fact because people want it.  When I removed the For Sale section I caught all kinds of flack for it, but IMO it was better it not be there than be way out of date.  That was my judgement call and unfortunately others did not agree.

Finding the right people, reliable people to help is very difficult.  Dave James at Barrie struck gold picking up Dave Vokey as he does a great job in his writeups, and Mike does a great job with the photos, and scoring does a great job at getting results to the webmaster in a timely manner (so I assume judging the final product).  Dave has all those elements in place and puts out a good, consistent product.  In my case I was doing all three - every single thing on that website was from my hands including points calculations.  Add in building a house up North at the same time in 2006, and it became too much.

Don't blame Simon for the website guys - he did a revamp partway through the year and improved the look greatly but he doesn't have the time to attend the track every week.  There are no less than 3 people doing individual work on the site and none have any specific web training - I think they did a great job with what they have.  But for the record, I warned him and Glenn personally to NOT rehire Brian for those writeups way back before the season started and they did not heed the warning.

Hell, I'd do the site again in a heartbeat but not doing it all like before.  Except for the BS that occurred with a small number of people there, it was a lot of fun.  The right people would have to be in place to help out and I'd be in again.

Mark

It truly is a sin to see the Sunset website not being utilized as much as it should. I have to say when I first started racing at Sunset Mark was the first to come into the pits and shake your hand and introduce himself. He made sure that he knew every driver and any information about that driver because I think he really loved it (shades of Spencer really). It didn't matter if you were the last place car or the first place car Mark seemed to sincerely be your biggest fan.

I found Mark to be the unofficial go to guy for the track. If you needed an answer to a question Mark took up the chore of getting that answer for you, hunting down Glenn, finding Fred or just putting in the leg work and getting your answer. If anybody knows about the track this can be no easy task but Mark would get 'r' done for you. 

There appeared to be a big trickle down effect from the track as I seen Mark appear to suffer burnout trying to balance his life (building his house) and the workload of maintaining the site along with the lack of help I am sure he needed to make the site work.

Mark would know the facts on the amount of hits the website gets but it seems to be a poor business decision to let it slip as it has. From what I have been told the amount of traffic the site gets would overshadow any money that would be spent on radio, TV or any other print media. I know I go online daily to see if there are any updates.

I hope we see some drastic improvements next year and to anybody reading this that has the opprotunity to talk to Glenn put your vote in for Matt on the site considering he has a great track record (pun intended) with websites.

Thanks for those comments Harold - that means a great deal to me bro.  *thumbsup*

I'll wait until after the banquet and talk to Glenn to see if he has any plans afoot for next year.

Mark