Back in October 2007, I launched Ironspoke.com.
There are a lot of details that go into building a website. One of the first things I had to do was design a logo. Actually, before that even, I had to come up with a name. In the early to mid 2000s I posted a lot on the old Dirt Rag forums. When I registered for that site, Ironspoke was the name that I used. I’m not really sure where it came from other than the fact that I always thought if I ever became independently wealthy I’d quit my day job and open up a combination fly fishing and bicycle shop. And I would call the place The Iron Spoke.
(My original Dirt Rag Avatar)
By the early to mid 2000s I’d let my subscription to Dirt Rag lapse, but I was a regular user of their forums. There were some interesting characters on there to say the least…Wigger Thomas, Rockhound, RepublicanSS, Rocky Rider, Peatbog, Davkatreb, Mscotch, Cricket (this guy was simply a total asshole who used to really get under my skin), Jhl99 and many, many more that I’ll probably remember just after I post this. The internet for me has changed quite a bit in the past decade. I used to go to Dirt Rag and join in online discussions about Rock N Roll, bicycle gearing, cameras, movies, current events and POLITICS.
I wouldn’t say that the conversations were always completely civil (Again…that Cricket ass hat really used to do a good job in pissing me off), but if you went on the Dirt Rag website to post about George Bush or who was the blame for the mortgage crisis, etc. you needed to be prepared with your best argument. While the majority of the regular users of the site absolutely leaned left, there were a handful of conservatives who always contributed from the other side of the aisle. There were some spirited debates and we were all very much engaged.
By the summer of 2007 I knew that I was going to be laid off from my job in the finance industry. It had been a good run, but it was time to move on and reinvent myself. I had this idea for a website so I reached out to a technically savvy friend of mine and he got me in touch with Jim MacDonald who is currently a Managing Partner at 3Seed Marketing, Design and Interactive (If you are a decision maker at your place of employment and you need a marketing firm you really should reach out to Jim.). Jim listened to my ideas for a website. I wanted to write reviews of things and places, but I also wanted to build a community where fellow bicycle enthusiasts could come and post their adventures and show off their bicycles. I billed the site as “Your online resource for all things about bikes and adventure travel.”
Like everyone with a website, the concept of monetizing clicks and content is a never ending reality. My original business plan was something like this…write reviews of products, sell advertising, turn a profit and then once I did that go and put together a franchise where I would show people how to do the same thing I did but for products that interest them, ie cameras, books, chainsaws, snow skis, etc. One small problem – I never actually made any money.
But back in those early days I was all about trying to drive people to Ironspoke. I needed content. I had some online acquaintances I knew through Dirt Rag and I was constantly reaching out to them to post on Ironspoke. I had some high quality Ironspoke stickers made (I still have a bunch) and I placed them everywhere I could.
(Look close at the bottom right side of the door)
Then the election of 2008 rolled around. After Obama won the folks at Dirt Rag decided to eliminate the Politics section of their forums. Poof…over night it was all gone. I don’t really remember the exact reason they eliminated the Politics section, but I always had a sneaking suspicion they simply didn’t want to hear any criticism of Obama. It was easy to invite all of your liberal biking friends to trash W, but they simply weren’t going to offer a platform for anyone to be critical of Obama.
At this point I did attract a few more regular users of Ironspoke, but it was becoming clear to me that I was not necessarily going to be the next My Space or Facebook. So what did I do with Ironspoke? I worked on content. Every CD I listened to got a review. If I took a camping trip somewhere that also got a review. I posted a lot of pictures and I did a lot of writing. The sheer number of people posting on Ironspoke seemed to shrink, but I could see the clicks. I was having a lot of people coming to Ironspoke to not necessarily interact, but simply to read my content. I shouldn’t say just my content. Peatbog posted all sorts of brilliant words and pictures about his creations. That guy has some serious skills with a welder, a grinder, a can of spray paint and a camera.
Within a year or two the folks at Dirt Rag got infected with some sort of ugly virus and their forums were shut down completely. And I simply continued to work on content…a lot of it. One of the big issues however was the infrastructure at Ironspoke. It was built on an old Dot Net Nuke Platform and because of financial restraints and not really wanting to put a lot of money into a hobby I simply let everything stand pat. I knew that as operating systems morphed away from being driven by PCs to the world of smartphones that my old website developed back in 2007 was simply behind the times. The final straw was when I was issued a new work computer that had Windows 8. I simply couldn’t access Ironspoke.
When I decided to update the website I had two main decisions to make. The first was whether or not I would be setting up a traditional forum where anyone could post anything, the way the original Ironspoke had been devised. The second question was what to do with the old content.
The answer to the first question was easy. I always figured that I’d dodged a bullet in that I never had anyone upload anything malicious to the old Ironspoke. I had controls after the fact but something could have sat on there for several days and I never would have even seen it. Additionally, the same virus could have easily been uploaded into the forums and brought everything to a screeching halt. The new Ironspoke would be geared toward me driving the content compared to a traditional forum.
The second big question was how to migrate over the 9 years of content. There was no easy way to do this. I was extremely saddened to discover that if I wanted to move over the content I basically needed to go in and grab every photo individually and then cut and paste the words. You’ll notice some of the original content that I brought over. The exact amount of time it took to bring it over was astounding. The only way to have salvaged all of it would have been at a cost of over five figures. That clearly wasn’t happening. So all of that old content? As much as I hated to let it go…its gone.
So I spent about six months grabbing content and posting it on to the temporary Ironspoke. Also, I should mention at this time that I never could have done any of this without my niece’s husband, Kris Kinsella. I certainly would never say that all of his computer skills are driven by the fact that he is 20 years younger than me, but I’m sure that helps. He is sharp. Ironspoke was his first webpage and his influence on structure and layout is obvious. I’m hopeful he continues with additional clients and helps them develop their ideas of what a website should be.
The new site may now be accessed from your phone or tablet or on that old computer as well.
Last week we made the switch from the old page to the new. It takes 7 days. Yesterday Ironspoke 2.0 went live. Here is to another 9 years!
… Good deal