Valencia Sailing comes to an end and moves ahead

Dear friends & readers,

After nearly six years online, the Valencia Sailing blog is about to sign off. I started it in March 2005 as a test to see whether anyone would be interested in having weekly updates from the construction of the America's Cup Port in Valencia and the activities of the teams and, I hope, it now has reached a point where it became a reliable source of daily sailing news from around the world. Well, it is now time to close this chapter and move ahead.

To start with, the name of the site doesn't make any sense any longer. As you most probably have seen from my photos on Monday, BMW Oracle is definitely leaving its Valencia base in a week and Valencia will cease to have the importance it once had in the sport of sailing. It will in fact become just like any other Mediterranean city, most probably holding one or two main regattas each summer. Even if the city goes ahead with its plan to tear down most of the bases, the infrastructure in place will make it easy to host an RC44 or AUDI Medcup event. However, this will never come close, even remotely, to holding two consecutive America's Cups.

I took this opportunity to make some radical changes. First of all, Valencia Sailing will change its name. I still haven't decided and I have a handful of names in mind but all of them will be redirected to the final name. Most probably, the new website will be called vsail.info.

Secondly, the site will no longer be a blog. It will move to a "normal" news website format will all the bells and whistles you would expect from it. In fact there is a demo already online and I would appreciate if you checked it and gave any kind of feedback you thought appropriate. It's not yet the final version but it won't be radically different.

Click here for a preview of the new version

News Sections
As you can see from the demo website, there is a new navigation bar that has all the news separated in sections. The broader categories will have sub categories, for example the offshore category is divided into the Barcelona World Race, Vendée Globe etc. The America's Cup category is divided in three subcategories (32nd, 33rd, 34th) and most probably the 34th America's Cup will further be divided to news according to each team. The same will apply to the Volvo Ocean Race. As a result, if your interest is just the news on Artemis in this edition of the Cup, you can have a dedicated page.

Featured News
Right under the navigation menu, you have the 5 latest Featured News, the 5 most important news but not necessarily the latest. For example, when BMW Oracle announce the venue of the 34th America's Cup, such an important information could remain in the featured news section for one or two days.

Latest News
Right beneath the Featured News you have the Latest News, providing the latest 6 articles, in strict chronological order.

Recent Videos
This is a brand new section and I hope it will be an easy and practical way to have the latest 5 videos right in front of you without the need to leave the front page. All you have to do is click on the title of the video and it will automatically switch.

Advertizing
One of the reasons that also made the change necessary were the inherent limitations in advertizing placements of the blog format. The new website now offers new technologies for advertizing campaigns that can have a great impact such as the ones Gillette and Braun are using in various major websites. Send us an email to learn how you can take advantage of the new technologies.

Transition period
Please bear for a week until the new site is fully functional. My aim is to switch it on the eve of the Barcelona World Race start, on December 30.