Sleep? Who needs sleep? If you’re reading this now then it means that the next phase of CMG, albeit after a rather long night of cursing Internet Explorer 8 (the 6% of CMGers still on that, you do know IE11 is out don’t you?).
(BTW, if you are experiencing any layout irregularities you may need to clear your browser’s cache. Failing that, please contact us with a screen shot so we can get it fixed ASAP.)
The obvious change right now is to the overall look of the site which now sports flashy white duds – yes, CMG has been pimped out! This is phase one which also includes the foundations  of the new community aspect of CMG which we’ll be releasing in early February along with the new forum.
You’ll also notice that we’ve added a sidebar to the left that will be used to show info from our Events, Touring, Business and Buyers Guides, as well as your community info and forum updates.
The main menu has been rejigged by sectors of the sport (racing, touring, etc) rather than by features and news, enabling us to highlight any content that we think warrants it by adding it to the slider at the top (oh, and the soon-to-die Soapbox is under ‘community’ in case you’re wondering). It’s a more fluid philosophy which will be accompanied by shorter and more regular updates of what we’re doing (no more waiting 6 months for the next bumper update, slackness allowing).
The next phase is a big one and will involve readers signing up (it’s free and would take about 30 seconds) in order to access the community and post on the new forum. It will also ultimately offer the ability to grade, comment and interact with our Business, Events, Touring and Buyers’ Guide modules.
This has been almost two years in the making and once we’ve managed to launch all the components, CMG will be able to offer everything that the Canadian motorcyclist would hopefully ever need. From finding a local motorcycle related business, to a must do event, to the best routes in Canada and even the best bike to do it on. CMG will have it all.
Of course, being centered around the motorcycle community means that we need you to help make all this work. We want our members to comment, discuss, create groups for like minded riders, just get involved and make this new space something that really works. In fact, we realize that your experience is often as valid as ours (if not more so) so we’re hoping that this will lead to more reader generated content in CMG too.
We’ll still be writing unbiased and honest news, tests and touring features that we’re known for, but we really believe that our quest to be the best Canadian motorcycle magazine can only be achieved by blurring the lines between  publication and reader, involving everyone into the discussion and sharing useful information in the process. After all, this is what the web does best, so why follow the old print model when we live on a two way street?
Thank you for all your support for the past 17 years and in helping to build a strong and resourceful Canadian motorcycle community over the next.
Rob Harris
Editor & Publisher
Hi Rob. Just a comment about the menu bar across the top. The type face is a bit small and the background colour doesn’t provide a lot of contrast – so a larger type face and/or a stronger contrasting background would be easier on these (old) eyes.
thanks
Jim
Site Looks good. But I miss the link to the next or previous article at the top of whatever article I’m reading. Having to go back to home to find the Next featured item is a bit of a backwards step. Unless it’s a browser / firewall issue here at work!
Hi Alan, no it wasn’t just you!
We’ve added article “navigation” at the bottom of each article. Hope you enjoy it!
Your site is a valuable resource … ROCK ON BRO!
Thanks Percy.
The new look is great ! Well done.
Thanks Jim.
Fantastic. I had a real hard time reading the red text on the black background. All good now.
Thanks
‘
Yeah, sorry, we should have made the switch a long time ago.
New logo inspried by a box of Tide soap? lol
It’s just for this article, playing on the new whiter than white look!
What the….? All that fuss, and it looks exactly the same on my iPad!?! 😉
I’ll have to brush the dust off my old laptop to have a look later on.
I still remember riding my first bike (450 nighthawk) out to the local bike shop to pick up a copy of OMG. Thanks for all the hard work everyone has put into this, and thanks for staying so, errrrr, Canadian 😉
Yeah, the mobile version will change soon. The idea is that the new site can actually be shrunk down to any size and still look good but all the changes we made to the original template messed up that action so we had to stick to the original mobile template for now.
Always good to here about OMG. That was a long time ago now but what fun times!
I wish you all the success in the new site. Looking forward to seeing the changes. It will be a sad day to lose the Soapbox but all good things must come to an end. Bring on the new Forum! I wonder who the last poster will be??
Thanks. We’re going to set up a Soapbox section in the new forum so that everyone from the old one can carry on the community they created there. What we’ll probably do with the old Soapbox is suspend any new posts being made but still allow comments on existing ones until it slips off into the darkness … 🙂
Looks nice, but prefer black on white ( I think this is dark grey on white?)
Whoa! Thought I hit the wrong bookmark for a second. Looks Great!!
Thanks Paolo. We’re pretty excited about all the changes that are coming.
The site looked terrible this morning with half grey / half white and some misaligned text. Refreshing the browser fixed it so it’s probably only a cache problem for regular past visitors.
Hi Terrance, yes it’ll take a day or two for people’s caches to be cleaned out but we should be good to go then. We’re still having some oddities when viewed in IE 7 and 8, but unfortunately that’s par for the course – hopefully it will help encourage people to finally upgrade!
Cheers, Rob