Wellington Area Trail Riding Club

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There doesn't seem any point putting this task off any longer - it has to happen and now's good, so tonight's the night.

The old blog will continue to be hosted on the WCN site, but all updates and new posts will go to the version hosted on Blogger.com. Once the migration has completed successfully, I'll update the sidebar links on both sites to point to the new location.

The way this all works, you should not notice any disruption to your access to the blog, but to get future updates you will need to resubscribe once to the new location. I'll signal when you should do this.

Fingers crossed we all make it to the other side ;-)

We've just been advised that the Waitarere and Waitohu events will swap dates.

The calendars on WCN and on Google Sites have both been updated.

Waitarere will now be held on 11 April, and Waitohu on 25 April.

We trust this change will not disrupt your plans for those weekends and hope to see you at both rides.

The latest newsletter and results from the Turakina ride have been posted to the website. Photos from Turakina are still some days away as we navigate our way through a few more social events than we're normally accustomed.

What a fabulous venue is Cluny Farm - we missed it last year and it's really great to see it brought into the main calendar this year. A well designed course, well marked, and terrain varied enough to be interesting and a challenge, but not so tough as to be off-putting. Well done, Aimee and Brenda and helpers.

Some time before the end of March, I aim to have this blog moved off the WCN host and onto the Blogger.com host. That move will be followed fairly rapidly by the migration of the entire website onto Google sites.

There are a couple of drivers for this aggressive time table. First, as advised previously, Blogger.com is withdrawing suport for FTP publishing as of 1 May. Second, Wellington Community Network is ceasing to provide free hosting for community websites from 1 July. And third, Leslie and I will be travelling overseas for some weeks from early May. The hope is that by completing the migration by the end of March, it still leaves us April to iron out any glitches and get our back-up webmasters up to speed.

The Blog migration is expected to go fairly easily as Blogger.com have provided a migration tool to help with updating the blog and the hosting site. I anticipate having to change the main links from sidebars, and there may be a few embedded links that will break until I can track them down, but disruption will (I hope) be minimal.

The migration of the website will be a bigger exercise and may be a little more disruptive. Much of the new site has been built already in Google Sites, but there is still some work to be done. You're welcome to take an early peek at the new site. It's not that much different to look at than the old site in fact, but some links still take you back to content on the old site until the migration is complete.

Aside from the website URL changing (I suggest you bookmark the new site and the old one in the interim), the demise of WCN also means our email addresses for club officers will have to change. I'll be setting up the new addresses and placing them on both sites for the transition, but the old addresses will continue to work up until the day WCN pulls the plug. When you see the new addresses, I suggest you update the contact details in your personal address books.

For the time being we are maintaining the two sites, but a tipping point will be reached at which the main pages of the old site will carry advice that you should start to use the new site, and a link to take you there.

Please bear with us as we make the transition, and by all means let us know if something appears to be "broken" so that we can fix it.

Belmont attracted only a small field of competitors, which was a pity really, as it's an excellent venue with well marked trails and fine views over the Wellington, Hutt and Porirua cities and surrounds.

It's a challenging ride with a few more than the usual number of climbs and descents, and this was compensated by allowing all classes additional time to complete the distance. The course layout was in the reverse of last year's and covered some of the same ground, dropping out parts and adding in a few new sections.

Despite the patchy and uncertain weather we've been having this summer, it was a very good day if a little breezy on the exposed tops.

The photo set was uploaded overnight last night and is now available through the photos page as usual, or direct via this link.

We do hope as many of you as possible will make it to the Turakina ride. This venue was a late addition to the season last year and got excellent reviews from those who were able to attend. This year it's been brought forward into the main season and promises to be a "not-to-be-missed" event.

Hope to see you there.

We've recently received notification of changes at Blogger.com that will affect us slightly. As you may have noticed, when you open our WATRC blog, you are still on the WATRC website. That's because, when we set up the blog, we've chosen an option to publish the website to our own web server rather than using a Blogger.com server.

Blogger.com have announced the withdrawal of support for that option (FTP publishing) and will shortly be offering a tool to help existing FTP publishers to migrate to the Blogger.com servers. While we could do so pretty much any time now, we've decided to wait for the tool to see if it offers any benefits to us before making the move.

When we make the move, we'll make sure the links from our site are updated. If you have bookmarked the Blog you'll need to update your saved URL. If you subscribe to the RSS feed, you'll probably need to update that too. Aside from opening at a new URL, nothing much else about the blog should change, and it will deliver the same irregular and quirky updates as ever.

Of far more significance to us is the recently confirmed withdrawal of funding for the Wellington Community Network (WCN) by the Wellington City Council. The effect of this is that WCN will cease to operate, and we are now in the process of looking at alternative website hosting services that fit within our budget.

One alternative is free hosting on Google Sites, where you may stumble across an in-progress build of a "look-alike" WATRC site. This is not a done deal - more part of a "learn-by-doing" exercise for me as I work out what's involved in moving the site from it's current off-line site editor style maintenance to an on-line site editing basis.

So, this note is simply a "heads-up" to let you know that some site changes are coming and we're working to ensure that our website remains functional and serves our club through the transition - nothing to worry about here ;-)

A smaller field than we've been accustomed to lately. Doubtless a few folk put off by the venue's reputation, and others by the undecided weather. Brights is certainly a tough ride with a lot of climbing and decending, and for the longer distances there's the psychological hurdle of doing it twice. Nonetheless it's a wonderful venue, and a worthy test of horse and rider.

With time at a premium, I headed out on the trail with riders initially catching me up, and then headed back against the flow and up the final hill. That way I could be assured of seeing everyone at least once, but still within easy distance of the base for when I had to get back. Of course, I tarried a while at the top after Leslie and Sharon had gone past so that I could catch a few more competitors, and then had to run down the hill and take a rather steep shortcut to get back in time, at the cost of one slip and painfully stiff muscles for the rest of the week - the things we do!

So now we watch and wait on the weather to see the outlook for Belmont. In the meantime, enjoy the photos from Brights.