Event communication
We all have our soap box moments, when we’re passionate enough about something ... our emotions just can’t be contained. These moments are tolerated as long as they are brief. So I will try to be brief.
I have since learned that the entire website for the 2009 Snipe Worlds was moved, and is now an extension of the San Diego Yacht Club website (www.sdyc.org/snipeworlds2009). While it was good to hear that the information has been retained, it still did not change how every media report regarding the event was directed to the original site. And now those links are broken. Whether it is on the ISAF website or the Scuttlebutt website, stories about the 2009 Snipe Worlds link back to an event site that no longer exists.
But what really moved me to climb up on the soap box was a press release announcing that the Notice of Race for the 2012 Etchells World Championship was now available online at http://www.etchellsworlds2012.org/. Anybody want to take a guess what is going to happen to this domain address in two years?
Anybody want to guess what has already happened to the event website from the 2009 Etchells World Championship (www.audietchellsworlds2009.com.au)?
Tips to help event organizers with their event communication can be found here: http://www.sailingscuttlebutt.com/pr
posted by Blogger @ 9:11 AM
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2 Comments:
I agree a custom event url makes it difficult to find the information after the event is long gone. From my perspective as the SDYC webmaster, what would you recommend we do for our large scale events where a custom url is important for marketing?
One idea would be to host the full site at something like sdyc.org, and just have a domain forward that goes from the custom url to the event url on the SDYC domain. (Example: all Snipe Worlds 2009 files would be hosted, as they are now, at sdyc.org/snipeworlds2009. So all linked urls would go to various places on sdyc.org. The custom url www.snipeworlds2009.com would simply forward to sdyc.org/snipeworlds2009 for marketing purposes but wouldn't host any files. Is that the best solution for us at SDYC and similar organizations? Any other ideas?
Jared,
Your re-direct suggestion would still not work. The problem is that people outside (i.e. media, etc) would link their sites to the custom URL which you created and used to market the event and once you let that domain lapsed and die, all outside links to it would now be broken.
The solution is to create and market "sdyc.org/snipeworlds2009" as that domain would remain live forever. The classes (in this case, Snipe) should have a single domain for their worlds - www.snipeworlds.com - which would have links to your files on the SDYC web server.
Another option would be to use services such as www.yachtscoring.com which would run your events and maintain all of the data live for you for years to come - outside links would not be broken.
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