Welcome to the new Canada MotoGuide!
As you can see, we’ve changed our name (Canadian Motorcycle Guide was too long and CMG Online just plain outdated) but we’ve also rebuilt the site from the ground up.
Since 1996 when we first hit the web CMG has essentially been a print magazine online. We’ve focused on all the things you find in a print magazine – tests, tours, editorials, news, etc, but instead of sending it all off to the printer every month we’ve posted them online as soon as they’re done.
Although this gave us an obvious advantage over our print brethren, like the myth on the human brain, we’ve only been using a small part of the web’s abilities. With the dominance of sites like Facebook and Twitter the web has become as much about community as it is about information and the Canada MotoGuide will focus as much on building the community side as it will on its news and features.
But to start we’ve given the site a visual overhaul, with wider pages, a new slider for the latest features and the re-introduction of the ‘On The Side’ section which will include editorials, product test and short features on a weekly basis.
Over the next few months we’ll be introducing new options to cross communicate with your fellow CMGer, receive specific information on articles and events from us and post on the new forum (yes, the one we’ve been promising for the last 10 years!).
All this will require that you register and log in (another feature that is coming soon), but if you don’t want to, then you’ll still be able to access all the current editorial content of CMG that you’ve grown to love and cherish (you do, there’s no point in fighting it).
In order to make it as user friendly as possible, registration in its most simple form is just a matter of entering a username, email and password, though we do have additional info options for those who’d like to explore the community side of the site a little more in depth.
If we manage to get this right (there’s been a lot of work just defining where we think we need to steer CMG, never mind how to implement it) then CMG should be as much about community than it is about articles. But that needs you to jump on board to make this work.
There will be issues and it may take us a little time to get things going the way they need to, but please bear with us and please jump in and start using the tools that we’re adding to keep CMG the Canadian motorcycle website of choice.
We’d also like to thank the Government of Canada for their contribution to this project. Although we are still unable to take advantage of the lion’s share of grants that are handed out to our print competition, we did find a fund for Business Innovation, which gave us a one shot injection of $24,312 to do this site.
Yes. I’d be happier if we could all play on a even playing field and ultimately don’t think that the government should be using tax payers money to prop up the media (it means that someone will inevitably be at the wrong end of the stick and that’s usually the smaller, more innovative guys), but it helps us to compete with the heavily subsidized print mags AND actually do something beneficial for our readership in the process.
As a result of this support (it’s your money after all) the rider’s club is free to join, although we will be introducing a paid supporter option which will give you additional karma on the forum (you’ll be tagged as a supporter) and a fancy new CMG t-shirt.
So, I hope you enjoy the revamped Canada MotoGuide and let’s see if together we can get a solid and respectful community of Canadian motorcyclists happening. For now, I, along with the rest of the staff and contributors at CMG would like to thank you for your support to date and we look forward to getting to know you better through the CMG community.
You’re the editor and as such the leader. As leader, those behind you may be following or chasing you. Point being, just stay ahead of the pack, and do what it takes to stay there!
I wants me a tee shirt! Set it up!
Getting there.
On a desktop browser, sometimes the site comes up with a big grey square instead of an image and takes anywhere from a “fraction of a second” to “long enough to give up on it” to show the proper content. On a mobile browser, the On The Side section shows above the news so one has to scroll past stale articles from 2011 to get to the latest news.
Other than that, the new site is fine and the new name is much better.
Yes, we’re working on caching to get it sped up and a mobile template to smarten that up too.
When you first go into the soapbox at the top of the page are links to “Home * News” that sit above the border of the ad in the top left corner and the frame around the forum options. Looks like the links are a bit of an afterthought. Should there be a banner ad across the top like when you read an article in the forum?
The News link is to http://cmgonline.com/news which redirects to https://canadamotoguide.com rather than https://canadamotoguide.com/category/news/
When you read an article in the forum there is a banner ad across the top with text “CMG Online Magazine: Home * News” displayed below it. Should the “CMG Online magazine ” be replaced with Canad MotoGuide?
The link to News in the forum links to http://cmgonline.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogsection&id=0&Itemid=51 which also ends up at the home page.
The Icon displayed in the browser title bar when in the forum is the old Red on black CMG, not the new white on red CMG logo.
Thanks for that Wilfred. We also found out that Explorer 8 does funny stuff to the site with menus showing the full listing and features being grey text on white, Sigh. We’ll hopefully get all the issues tweaked by end of next week now that I’ve done my time at the Toronto Show and am heading back ‘ome east.
Noticed that the slideshow for “features” on the main page does not start automatically cycling through images when you first come to the page. Once you click on one of the arrows on the side of the image it starts cycling through about every 9 seconds.
As it is unless you click on the arrows you dont know aobut all the other features that are available. Many sites have some little dots/boxes overlaying a corner of the image that shows how many items are in the rotation and which one you are on.
Yeah, we decided to not automate it because we figured it didn’t emphasize the latest article enough and hoped that the forward arrows would be sufficient o go to the next feature. We’ll relook at it though.
There is a ‘features’ tab in the top right that opens up some of the other features but we’ll add a “more features” link underneath to take you to the main listing.
Me like.
To hell with the naysayers.
Thank you sir. Anyone asked you for $ for tomatoes yet?
Unfortunately, no. 🙂
As an aside, the more I look at this site, the more I like it. Kudos to you and your team.
Good to hear. You’ll be sad to hear that I came away from the stage unstained by the juice of fruits.
I can finally get a t-shirt! Will definately be a supporter. Keep up the great work.
Yay. better get some made …
Looks good to me. Take Care.
Hmmm I was sure I posted my comment but now it is gone. Can you add a CMG Daily News item to the “news” drop down that matches the “CMG Daily News” link on the main page (https://canadamotoguide.com/category/news/).
Could the items in the News dropdown menu be put in alphabetical order?
The one just below? Anyway, I’ll go over the news idea with Pat, I don’t see why we couldn’t. As for the order in the drop down it was initially alphabetical but it didn’t seem to emphasize importance so we rearranged to show by order of what we considered would be most interesting to the reader.
Yes that comment. Hmmm.. wish there was some way I could delete the comment.
Main page has a CMG Daily News (https://canadamotoguide.com/category/news/). Can you add that to the News drop down menu as well?
Also on the News drop down, any reason why they are in semi-random order. Brains like patterns, alphabetical is nice.
I’m just happy to see you find a way to squeeze some money out of the government for the switch. I’d wondered what happened… It’s still not right that the print mags get subsidized for adding a web version and you don’t get similar access to that fund.
Yeah, but they have so many hoops to jump through, half your time is spent doing just that. I don’t like applying for these grants but there’s so much Government money going to my competition that I don’t see any other way but to get what we can. Be nice if they’d drop all subsidies and let the chips fall as they may.
I hope CMGers will feel that the money is well spent.
Cheers, Rob
Dammit I wanted another windmill!
Under Product reviews -> Farkles there is nothing listed, but there is a nifty search box. Any reason why it is hidden away?
Hi Wilfred!
The trouble with the OTS stuff is that we didn’t have much to populate it with to start of with. We’ll add to it as we go from now.
OTS? Why not have a “Search” on the home page somewhere?
Great news but I’m still gonna call you CMG
Sure, that’s still our acronym.
Great news. Looking forward to all the new features.
I hope we satisfy. Lots of work, big changes.
Can we have the much easier to read black letters on a white background?
Possibly. We’re looking into user options to set up the pages how they like.
This is probably low on the priority list, but will our current comment names be reserved when the forums go live?
We’re not sure. Unlikely though, but if we can’t then we’ll try and give due warning so that everyone has a window to register their current names right away.
You got to resurrect the DYR section – don’t let those valuable touring maps and notes go away. I know some are getting a little dated now, but I’ve used the Pennsylvania one, for example, recently.
That’s be part of the new touring section. Should be up and running in Jan/Feb.
what?
eh?
I hate it, I hate it, I hate it, I hate it!!!!!
There, now that the angst is safely out of the way, good luck with the new format and i hope it earns you and the rest of the staff lots of $$$$. Larry in particular doesn’t mention single malt much anymore so I assume he’s not getting enough of it to keep it front of mind.
Mr Porteno,
No, please, tell me what you really think. 🙂 I’m surprised because we tried to keep it similar to the old site but just updated with the capacity to add the community part. What in particular is irking you so?
Sorry, Rob. You miss my point. Being a father has made you waaaaay too serious. People hate anything new. In my case, I got over it in about 3 seconds and have moved on. It will take a day or two to get used to the new format, but if I recall correctly, you have made format changes before and we seem to have survived.
Sorry if my weak attempt to mock any naysayers fell short!
🙂 Not sure it’s the father thing, more the “very tired and hoping the new format is accepted by the (beloved) readership”. But good to hear it was more mock than shock.
I need a pee.
I knew something had to be done cause the regulars are all pensioners now.
Ture.
I’ve a feature request for the forum assuming it’s PHP based. Would you mind installing the “Tapatalk” module so we can follow and post with mobiles?
I’d love to help beta test it, and promise not to whine too much. 😉
Will do!
Yeah Tapatalk!