Evolution of a web site...

I was going through some old portfolio stuff and found a few snapshots of old Redline Derby sites. Pretty fun to see and (more for me) to think about how they all came about. Eitherway, it all led to where we are now...here's to the future.

Before it was called Redline Derby, it existed as a showcase on my blog (2007-ish). Just pictures of my cars. I love the counter, "over 146 cars" - ha, that number has gone up at least 10x since then. 

After that I started to (kinda) blog about cars and collecting, or at least I tried. Very basic stuff but by this point there was a message board, so this is the last non-community version of the web site (2009-ish). This was also the first version to called Redline Derby Racing. Interesting tidbit here is "The Great Race" link. The Great Race was little more than me logging which cars were fastest on my track, doing a few cars each week. From this was born the Fantasy League because I found myself trying to pick the fastest cars and figured other people would dig that too.

After that, I tried to get fancy (2010-ish). The Fantasy League had been going for a bit by this point but the blog had started to decline. The original how-to topics existed by otherwise the entries were basically fantasy league recaps. The message boards were doing well and starting to have a short list of regulars. All in all, I think this site style holds up pretty well, still looks decent.

After this the fantasy league got more popular and the message board became it's own living thing. This was the first great expansion.The site shift to be more Fantasy League since that's where all my efforts were going (2011-ish). But the biggest problem at this point was that the site was more or less divided in the Message Boards and Everything Else. But it was a good problem to have.

After this came the version you see today (2014). This was a big redesign and tackled the silo problem by eliminating the message boards as a separate section. The mail-in scene on the message boards became it's own thing and coincidentally enough, I had to stop the Fantasy League due to family time needs. The shift from fantasy league to live events was a great one to see and the site needed to reflect that. This redesign was also focused on community content rather than my own writings. Most of the message board threads were far more interesting than anything I was writing, so the site was completely rebuilt to allow me to help put focus where it belonged. I think it's held up pretty well.

And next? The site will continue to evolve and change. I don't think we'll see any drastic changes for quite some time, but there are updates on the horizon. I hope everyone has enjoyed the ride thus far and will continue to hang on as move on down the road.