Yes, The Masthead Has Changed…

By Bud Wilkinson

Yes, the masthead has changed. A new picture provides the background and a new name has been added – Ride-NewEngland.com. It joins RIDE-CT.com.

Why, you ask? The fast answer is that the website has outgrown Connecticut. The more accurate answer is that over the past two years, RIDE-CT.com has been attracting many readers from beyond Connecticut’s borders.

This website began as a complement to the RIDE-CT motorcycle column that appears in “The Republican-American” newspaper in Waterbury, CT. It started as a place to rerun old columns, but slowly items that didn’t make it into the column began appearing, eventually including loads of national and international news. The post earlier today about Honda bringing back the Valkyrie is an example.

In tracking the readership for the past two years via Google Analytics, it was discovered that many riders up and down the Hudson Valley were checking out the site daily. So were loads of riders in Massachusetts. Today, nearly half of the readership can be traced to New England, New York and New Jersey.

The Ride-NewEngland.com moniker – yes, the domain name has been registered – has now been added simply as a broader invitation to riders in proximity to Connecticut to visit the site regularly.

Connecticut news will still be the priority, but so will more news from Massachusetts, New York and anywhere within, say, a one day’s ride from home. The goal is to make this website a regional resource. That’s why individual pages devoted to each of the New England states were recently added (with NY and NJ coming soon).

So, if you’re inclined, tell everyone you know who rides about RIDE-CT.com. (If you go to Ride-NewEngland.com at the moment, it will say “Under Construction” until the URL gets pointed. Hey, you can only accomplish so much in a day.)

More improvements are on the way, and details will be announced soon.