What ski area's web site do you like?

[skijay]

What ski area do you think has the best website? I judge a website based on design, ease to find information and information provided and the most important, how up to date items are and how accurate the conditions are. Another thing for me is how fast it downloads. If it is a huge page it is a bear on a dial up connection.

My pick would be Berkshire East. I like the history, the pictures of trails, up front / truthful conditions. Even though I have skied there only once this season I find myself checking the site a couple a times a day.

 

[MichaelJ]

Killington's is pure misery. The stuff in the left-hand sidebar keeps rolling up and down and sucking cpu and not working correctly using Galeon, a Mozilla-based browser under Linux.

Pretty much any place that's pure Flash or expects IE-only is a site I'm going to avoid.

Only after that do I start looking at content.

 

[Greg]

Cool topic! I have to say, after the recent resort profiles update, I would consider myself somewhat of an authority on ski area Web sites. Based on your criteria which I basically agree with, Ski Butternut's new Web site has it hands-down:

http://www.skibutternut.com/

Great design and navigation there, which I would consider most important. By the way, all current ski area info is now in our profiles:

http://skiing.alpinezone.com/resorts.htm

Hopefully that layout works well for eveybody.

 

[salida]

Alright, I would normally base this on a ski areas web page and its design yada yada yada....


HOWEVER, when I go to a ski area web site I like to hear good news not hardpack ie lets invite the bruins up to lace the skates and play hockey. I like to hear hey we have a 116 inch base come ski endless powder. Hands down my favorite ski area, it takes the cake. wolfcreekski.com

sorry I love the east but you can't argue with 116 inches.

in the east it would have to be mad river glen, concise, weather report, trail descriptions, and they have some cool movies!

porter

 

[Joshua B]

My favorite is Mad River Glen and I agree with Salida that it's easy to grab the info that you want. I would also nominate their site for most honest conditions report.

 

[riverc0il]

definitely gotta love MRG's web page. they have set the bar for new england web pages.

come to think of it, most ski area web pages are pure junk! i can more readily name the one's i hate to navigate than the one's that are well layed out, easy on the eyes, quick loading, and easy to navigate, lol. in efforts to keep the thread positive, i'll only say i really enjoy MRG's web page

 

[severine]

Another vote for Mad River Glen's website. It's laid out logically, easy to use, and is easy on the eyes, too. Sites like Sugarbush's and Jiminy Peak's are a maze that take time to get through--and I'm sorry, but I would rather have it be quick and easy than time-consuming but inclusive of just about everything you could think of. They may have a lot of information on the bigger ski resorts' sites, but it's like information overload.

 

[goldsbar]

MRG - Easy to navigate and I love how you can get the pictures of the trails on the trail map. Suggested next step - live pictures of the trails. That would be cool! Too bad it's 5+ hours from my house!!!!

 

[severine]

MRG - Easy to navigate and I love how you can get the pictures of the trails on the trail map. Suggested next step - live pictures of the trails. That would be cool! Too bad it's 5+ hours from my house!!!!

My only complaint about MRG's website is that the photos don't load in Safari (the web browser that comes with Mac OS X). But it's still my fave...

 

[Greg]

This is a really interesting thread. How does AlpineZone.com fair in terms of what seems to be the criteria for a good skiing Web site? I'd love to get feedback on how you think this site is based on:

• Navigation
• Design/User interface
• Information available
• Load speed

Comments are appreciated.

 

[RISkier]

Greg,

I think you've done a really nice job with this web site. I think it's well organized, seems to load pretty fast for me, I don't have specific suggestions for other content. I find it easy to navigate. Of course, when one is searching for info sometimes it's right in front of your eyes. You really shouldn't have needed to post links to lodging to my earlier query -- they were right in front of me and I didn't even click the links, doh . Well, I'll just blame it on old eyes. Overall, great job! My one tiny quibble is that when I try to respond to a post from work, and I'm not logged in, I click respond, enter my name and password, and then get a message that I need to be in a forum, so I have to go back to the forum main page and load the forum and specific post again. It's as likely something on this machine as your server.

 

[Greg]

My one tiny quibble is that when I try to respond to a post from work, and I'm not logged in, I click respond, enter my name and password, and then get a message that I need to be in a forum, so I have to go back to the forum main page and load the forum and specific post again.

Hmm. I just tried it and I get the "You must select a topic to reply to" message as well. This happens on both IE 6 and Netscape 7 (Windows XP). Hmm...strange. I'll look into it.

 

[Greg]

My one tiny quibble is that when I try to respond to a post from work, and I'm not logged in, I click respond, enter my name and password, and then get a message that I need to be in a forum, so I have to go back to the forum main page and load the forum and specific post again.

Hmm. I just tried it and I get the "You must select a topic to reply to" message as well. This happens on both IE 6 and Netscape 7 (Windows XP). Hmm...strange. I'll look into it.

RISkier - this is a bug in phpBB 2.0.7. I've made a change that should fix this.

 

[Starter Jackets Rule!]

MRG.

 

[Joshua B]

Gotta think the MRG webmaster is loving this. 8) Don't think for a minute the marketing guys from the ski areas don't lurk.