Tulsa Wheelmen - Racer Self-Help Page

Somewhere around the year 2000, the Tulsa Wheelmen became officially part of the internet with the launch of www.tulsawheelmen.com thanks to the efforts of Sid Parker and others in the club. For the first time, the club had a way to promote their sponsors and events, as well as provide race results to the masses. The site built momentum for two years growing as a valuable resource to cyclists in the state of Oklahoma and around the region.

2002 and 2003 was a difficult time. The Wheelmen were struggling as the lucritave Williams sponsorship ended and the club was having difficulty finding new leadership. During this time, thoughts and ideas started to take shape as the Wheelmen started the evolution into a racing focused club. Along with this evolution came the launch of a new website with the vision of fresh new content and a change in the way the club published information.

2004 saw the first major overhall of the club in 4 years. The jerseys were redesigned with the orange and green colors, new Sponsors stepped up to fund new initiaves, and a racing team and club were born. During this time, the website provied vital information to current and potential members such as access to jersey order forms, race team and club team applications, and one of the most comprehensive list of cycilng events in the region.

A changing of the guard happened at the end of 2004 when Kary Cummins became the new web master for the website. In addition to maintaining essential content like the events list, racing results, and a growing collection of pictures from cycling races, Kary brought new ways of organizing data and streamlining processes for updating content. By 2005, the site was averaging 20,000 page loads and almost 4,000 uniquie vistors each month. That's 600 page loads and 120 uniquie visitiors each day!

2006 ushered in another round of sweeping changes. A database became the next big leap for the website giving racers the ability to maintain their own contact information, indicating what races they will attend, and recording race results in a centralized location. The events list was database driven for the first time which reduced time required to make updates to our already popular calendar. Suddenly the possibilities of how the data could be sorted and viewed became endless.

What does the future hold for the website? In the future, club members and racers will be able to check their membership status and renew their memberships online. Jeresys and other clothing/equipment purchases will be made on the website instead of in the race team directors garage, and new tools will be used to allow a wider range of club members to contribute content instead of just web savy volunteers.

With the change in sponsors our jerseys had to be redesigned. With new colors on the jerseys it only made sense to give the old website a facelift too. Jeremy Stitt did and great job. Thanks to CSS too. This year life took control and got in the way of website changes. 2009 saw the least about of changes to the current design. However, what people don’t see is that behind the scenes work has started on a conversion to SQL Server and ASP.NET. Hopefully this will happen sooner than later.