Motorsport.com announces new look

Motorsport.com's ongoing commitment to high-quality, professional journalism on the Internet has now resulted in a new website design. The new look is even easier to navigate, still loads quickly, and is also pleasing to the eye of the readers.

Like the previous design, Motorsport.com 3.0 was developed by an in-house team led by Art Director Eric Gilbert and technology guru Tom Haapanen.

"There are many objectives behind the design and structure environment of Motorsport.com 3.0," Gilbert explained. "One of them is the pure visual aspect: the 'old' site, version 2.0, was more than three years old and was starting to show its age, both visually and technologically.

"Motorsport.com's new cutting edge environment uses recent Web publishing technologies while retaining a fresh and simple look.

"The layout is uncluttered, with the different textures delimiting the different areas: interface, support section, ad space and, the last but not the least, the actual content."

The home page offers a new look that will allow the readers to easily see the top news stories of the day along with the new formatted "Latest News" area. This new format gives the fans the ability to immediately see the latest news of their favorite series.

The change to the left tower incorporates the easy access of locating a series for the viewers. A simple click of a mouse button will allow them to navigate to the page with all the news and features for said series.

The home page still highlights photos of the current racing around the world. Plus with a simple click, they can navigate to the Photo Channel and/or the latest photos from a race weekend. All easy to access.

The Magazine Channel list on the home page shows the five latest features by Motorsport.com's outstanding writing staff. Another simple click will allow one to easily read the feature of their choice and/or access the Magazine Channel's main page.

The top of the home page "tab" area will allow, as in the past, simple navigation to the area of choice: News, Magazine, Photos, Statistics, Directory, Compete, and Forums. Each area now has its own colour scheme, aiding the readers in navigating and identifying the different channels.

Gilbert commented, "We also wanted to add variations in the viewing experience: with more than 4 million page views per month, Motorsport.com is now one of the most trafficked independent online publication on motor racing.

"Furthermore, Motorsport.com is a 'sticky' site: viewers navigate a lot between each channels, during a typical session, and we wanted to convey a sense that each channel has its own personality, is a world in its own. Hence the different color scheme for each channel."

Motorsport.com have also changed their motto (commonly called 'tagline'). The new motto reflects the way Motorsport.com view their longtime commitment to motorsports and complete continuing coverage of all types of racing.

The motto was created by Haapanen and F1 Editor Nikki Reynolds. It is simply stated as "All the Racing, Only Racing, since 1994."

"The new design also retained the flexibility of the old one," said Gilbert on the past, present and future for the site. "This was critical since it had to be compatible with our massive amount of content. Version 3.0 is 100% compatible with our current database of 120,000 news articles and 100,000 photos.

"Future compatibility was also a concern and our upcoming statistics database will work 100% in this new environment. We will also be able to add new channels and new functionality quickly."

About Motorsport.com, Inc.

Motorsport.com, Inc. is a media corporation based in Tallahassee, Florida. It publishes Motorsport.com, the oldest motor racing Web site, providing original content on a continuous basis to motor racing enthusiasts throughout the world. With more than 4 million page views and 200,000 unique visitors (March 2003), it is also one of the top online destination for motor racing content.

Motorsport.com also has a corporate division offering three distinct services: online communication service to corporations and advertising agencies, as well as media service, and Web development, design and hosting services to motor racing organizations.