Blog : Making AROnline better for you

Keith Adams

If you’re not a regular AROnline reader, it might have escaped your notice that I’ve made one or two changes, which I hope will make your viewing/reading experience that bit better. The problem is that, with more than 6500 pages to navigate, there’s an awful lot of content to plough through – especially if you’re just dipping in for a quick fix.

So, I’m hoping that, with a few tweaks, the glorious past content I’ve built up over the last 15 years will be more easily found. If there’s anything obviously missing, please do get in touch – I’m still building up the menu structure of this huge website.

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Starting with the ‘History’ (above), I’ve placed a load of new categories under ‘Facts & Figures’ in the menu, you’ll find the big historical pieces, and multi-part series, which will provide hours of entertaining reading. You’ll also find the Production figures and development codes – perfect for knowing your ADO numbers and how many examples of a given car were built.

The Converters is a huge section packed with all of those specials from people such as William Towns and Panther Westwinds, while the Concepts & Prototypes sections contains all of those amazing might-have-beens that makes the story of AROnline so special. ‘Essays’ is a great place for entertainment – want to read all of those lovely articles by Mike Humble? Step this way… Gallery and Resources are also worth a click.

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A new addition to the menu is ‘Reviews & Drives’. It’s here where you will find many of the cars that have passed through my hands in the last 15 years, and which have been blogged about, reviewed, or tested thoroughly. There’s a drop down menu you can hit if you want to pick a particular marque. There are many holes in that list – it’s not Autocar after all – so, if you’re willing to lend me your car, I’ll happily review it for you!

The Drive Stories area is what it is – the place where the motoring adventures took place. Want to know what it’s like to drive a Lada to Chernobyl or a Rover 800 Coupe around the South of France? Step this way…

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This is in addition to ‘The Marques’ and ‘The Cars’ areas, which were already there. It’s in here that you’ll find model and marque histories, massively detailed development stories and links to related pages on a car-by-car basis. I’ve been building landing pages for the important cars that AROnline  covers – a good example is the BMC 1100 (above), which has page-upon-page of content for you to enjoy. I’ve not finished these landing pages, so where there’s not an introductory image and descriptive text, you’ll still find a list of the stories relevant to that car.

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The best thing to do is play with the menus, click on all of the elements and see what pops up. I’d also heartily recommend playing with the search function (right), which is powered by Google. You’ll find it to the right of this page, and it is a brilliant search tool.

You can throw in any search term, and it’s bound to come up with something, such is the breadth of content on this website.

I’d also recommend playing with the ‘Archive’ function, which you’ll find below that, just to the right. It’s a drop down menu which allows you to search in date order and encompasses material dating back to 1959 – it’s all there, categorised completely in chronological order. Trust me, there’s little else like this anywhere on the Internet.

Enjoy the content, and do get in touch and let me know if I’ve missed anything, or can make improvements to make your time here better – and, importantly, to keep you coming back. The site would not be anywhere near as comprehensive as it is without your help and input over the years.

Keith Adams

18 Comments

  1. looking good so far Keith, but this must be a headache trawling through years and years worth of content, but it is very much appreciated..

  2. Some big improvements here on a site that could barely be bettered in the first place.

    One of aronline’s landmarks!

  3. Dear Keith —

    I very much enjoy AROnline and have been reading it for many, many years.

    I have but a single suggestion regarding your menu revamping: as there is a host of biographical information on the site (including, sadly but predictably, obituaries), it might be nice to have a menu for “People” (indeed, I have a vague recollection of this feature in the distant past).

    Regards (and thank you for all your hard work),

    — Kevin

    ’69 E-Type FHC (literally) daily driver in cool weather (50+ miles round trip)

  4. A simple improvement would be to allow someone who has entered a comment to change it. It’s easy to make a mistake and then you can’t fix it after the comment is submitted. Typically on web sites comments are only allowed for a short period of time or if no later comment has been added which prevents the commentator from “rewriting history”

    • Ken

      Recalling your writing skills from over 40 years ago, I would be delighted to read a road test on your Mitsubishi Colt.

      • I take it you must be John Christopher Lee! -not many people have known me for 40 years.
        As my wife has just veto’d me buying a 1990 Peugeot 309 with a duff water pump for £100 (any takers?), I may have time to write a less-than-serious road test. Watch this space.

  5. Keith

    I would just link to echo the comments of others as to how great this site is. I would be lost without my regular fix,

    Thanks for all your hard work.

    One suggestion for new areas of collaboration would be to examine the history behind the cars at Gaydon or even the development of the museum itself.

    Cheers

    S

  6. Much appreciate your continued time spent on the site.

    1) (Using Firefox) I often find it hard to open The Latest Stories links on the home page – the website seems a bit temperamental and I occasionally have to open the link in a new tab. Might just be my browser settings but does anyone have the same problem?

    2) I know the site effectively/officially ends at 2005 but I would appreciate a section or spinoff website showing what’s happening at SAIC/Roewe/MG.

    • I also find this site can be hit & miss on Firefox, for a simple looking site it can sometimes be very slow to load up some pages.

  7. AR Online has to be the definitive website for fans of British cars.

    Continuous improvement will ensure you keep on top of your game – Keep up the excellent work.

  8. It would be good if you didn’t have to click on some links twice to get the page up, but other than that an excellent website.

  9. The engines section doesnt seem to be listed? Also some MGR stuff post breakup would be nice to have together, the G series etc.

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