In a little over a year, the Cycling in Christchurch website has grown to be a busy wee space, with over 5000 page visits each month and dozens of comments. It’s great that we’re getting such wonderful support from our followers – keep spreading the word; we know there’s plenty more people in Christchurch who might find useful what we have to say!
But as we keep plodding on, it also potentially gets trickier to find what you’re looking for. Wasn’t there a post with advice about biking in the rain? I’m sure they said something about dealing with roadworks sites when cycling? Is there anywhere that shows you some maps of where you can ride? We’re up to nearly 180 blog posts and 15 static webpages on this site. So we think it’s important that we make it easy for you to use the website not just as a place to get the latest news and thoughts, but also as an ongoing resource for you to dip into as needed. As more new people discover the site (especially would-be cyclists), it becomes even more essential that site navigation is easy.
With that in mind, we’ve tried a few different tricks and I thought it was about time to remind everyone of these. Firstly at the top of every Cycling in Chch webpage is a green menu that links to a range of different places:
- Home: fairly self-explanatory; gets you back to the front page.
- Blog: If you just want to see a continuous stream of all blog post articles (10 per page) go here.
- Topics: Now the blog posts are grouped into eight main categories and just previewed (again with 10 at a time).
- Groups: Some direct links to some of our favourite local cycling groups and activities.
- Information: Underneath this is a treasure trove of useful guidance, especially for those new to cycling, including where to get a bike, how to develop your riding skills, and where to ride around Chch.
- Cyclopolitanise: If you’ve never heard of this word before, you can blame our fantastic website founder Unity and her sister site Cyclopolitan, where you can find some of her thoughts about what it takes to make a cycle-friendly city.
- Links: Name says it all really… here you will find handy weblinks to various useful cycling sites in Christchurch and further afield, both “official” and less formal.
- Shop: If you’d like a piece of Cycling in Chch memorabilia to call your own, the good people at Zazzle can produce all manner of t-shirts, bags, coffee mugs, bags, etc for you, emblazoned with some suitable CiC insignia.
- Site Map (A-Z): Here’s where you can really drill down and hopefully find what you’re looking for. All blogposts contain a variety of standard subject “tags” assigned to them (see examples below). So by clicking on the particular subject you’re interested in, you get to see a preview list of every post that was ever written on that subject.
Still not enough ways to find what you’re looking for? Well if all else fails, there’s still the good old Search field at the top left of every page, where you can find every single page where the search term is mentioned.
As always, we welcome feedback on what’s on Cycling in Christchurch (and what’s not) and also value your thoughts about how to best present the wealth of information we are building up.
What do you think about the Cycling in Christchurch website? Can you find what you’re after?