Tell Me, Greenie!

Hell, I'm no expert, nor do I have any real inside knowledge about what's going on these days.

All I can say is that it's long been my opinion that the website reflects many other (but certainly not all) efforts of the front office, in that management is simply happy with the bare minimum.

That said, the Rapids have never made a priority of presenting themselves as a first-class professional organization when it comes to their marketing materials, whether printed or electronic.

Similarly, there's been a long tradition of ill communication with the general public, and with that a history of shutting out ideas that originate externally (example: their arm had to be twisted to even have a website in 1998).

While much of this is attributable to the structure of MLS, many other clubs in the league accomplish this more capably.

Will this attitude change any time soon? Not if ticket sales continue at a brisk pace.

I think some aspects of the team are showing signs of improvement, such as the Rapids establishing Section 127 and working with involved fans to make it as strong as possible.

However, the current tide of events does not suggest that the website is in line for improvement in the near future, especially not when (as joeyclams stated elsewhere) two members of the Rapids' PR department are leaving the team.

note: number of full-time employees in the Rapids PR department: two

At this time, I have little hope for the Rapids website to improve in the foreseeable future. There are simply too many strikes against them at this time: lack of a motivated PR staff to keep the site updated; lack of a webmaster (internal or external) who is knowledgeable of and dedicated to the team; lack of an even minimally realistic budget; general lack of understanding of the purpose and function of a website.

Perhaps if a fan would step up and start their own Rapids website...

 

Starting a fans website is the thing that has to be done. However, no matter how pretty the layout of the site is, it is useless if there are no hooks into the Rapids inner sanctum. You would need people that go to all or most of the practices and are willing to commit time to offer decent editorial pieces. Box scores and bland post-game analyzes make for light traffic on a site.

 

The Rapids took another step in the right direction, I think -- according to the Rocky, German Sferra has moved from ticket sales to be the PR assistant.

This means we've got one of the most passionate soccer and MLS guys I've ever met involved at the PR level -- and best of all, the guy is the closest thing that the league has to a "lifer."

Hopefully this slows down the revolving door that has been Rapids PR ever since the departure of Ben Grossman...

 

I'll second Greenie's assessment of German, he is a quality guy. He was one of the first people I really got to know in the Rapids organization, and he never did anything to turn me off from the Rapids. Good move by the Rapids indeed...

 

I agree probably with everyone that this is a fantastic idea, but who has the expertise and the time? SmudgeyJoe says he can be a webmaster, but he needs a site. From what little I know, if you want to go beyond your free AOL site, you have to pay some money.

I know there are supporter's groups but does one charge dues? If it did, they could put some money and time into a site and keep it up. You could pay some dues then get a password to log on and spew whatever venom pops in your head (if it isn't race, ethnicity, gender, orientation, or nationality based. There was some dude on RapidSpeak from Indonesia that was a victim of some borderline crap.) It would also keep the Burn fans from hijacking our threads. Not that this wasn't fun last year. Rivalries aren't any fun without a little bad blood. But I remember RapidSpeak and that was a blast. It seems those discussions were more active and far reaching than what we get here. People were calling for firings right and left and the perpetual Paule debate was awsome. Maybe it is because here people troll with the express purpose of showing others up as SmudgeyJoe may have noticed.

I have seen a lot of fan sites but they periodically die off because of the commitment needed. Maybe with some time and money support, we could get one going. I'll pay dues but have no computer resources (ability) to donate.

 

Um, wasn't Zar asking a little while ago what to do with the RiverRatz site? The domain is already paid for and all it would take is someone to create a message board area. I'm definately not the expert but that could be a start for someone.

I do have to say this, it is a lot of work. I would expect a PROFESSIONAL organization to provide this, like it did just early last year. Can't image that they would have a webmaster, internal or external, and not have a message area.

 

First of all, I am not volunteering myself, yet.

I worked with Zar a couple years ago on doing a redesign of the Ratz site. It got stuck midway due to his and my ability to invest time in getting together the content.

I would be willing to talk more about reviving that design and the webmaster needs of such a site. My current concern is the lack of time in my schedule for webmastering another site (I currently handle about 10), but my time could be freeing up in a couple of months.

 

Just thinking out loud...

Can you and/or Zar speak to the bandwidth/space requirements for such a site? Anyone know what the traffic was like in the past for either the ratz site or for the official site (before it sucked)?

I've got a few dedicated servers for our business and could potentially provide the hosting space (and some occasional development), but it would depend on what type of site's being considered and the bandwidth/space needed.

A content/news site probably wouldn't take too much... but traffic goes up considerably with discussion boards. Which leads to another question -- unless it's an official discussion board where Rapids staff hang out, what would be the benefit of a discussion board? It's not like everyone would stop coming to bigsoccer.com, so why duplicate this forum?

Again... just thinkin' out loud at this point.

J

 

Back to the original topic... and this is kind of depressing, but compare how the two following pages come across:

http://www.coloradorapids.com/site/goal.asp?cid=5

http://www.coloradomammoth.com/TicketInfo/IndexTicketInfo.asp

Public image says a lot. Good thing we're not trying to start the Rapids franchise at the same time as the Mammoth.

(side note: the Mammoth and Crush websites are nearly identical... unfortunately, that means they're both cleaner and more professional in appearance)

 

The Rapids site has like 4 different font sizes, is all cramped and shite and generally looks like a four year old is managing it.

 

Here is an example of a very cool website. The intro is especially fun. It's from Metz, a second division French team:

http://www.fcmetz.com/intro.html

 

There are scores of "cool" websites out there, whether for soccer teams or any other sport.

I could care less about "cool" so long as the presentation is clean and professional and the content is fresh and accurate.

Maybe we should start a betting pool on when the Rapids will finally remove the homepage photo featuring Valderrama and Palacios.