Introduction
What is Trials AUSTRALIA?
Trials AUSTRALIA is a website devoted to providing you with all the details on Australia's observed mototrials scene. It has been online since 1996.
Who runs this site?
Trials AUSTRALIA was originally started by Keith Jobson who ran it for 17 years. In July 2013, Trials Australia changed hands to Matt Langtree. Both Keith and Matt are thankful for, and dependant on the contributions from many, many people over the years.
Who made this site?
Trials AUSTRALIA is the original creation of Keith Jobson.
It started out being coded in raw HTML, followed by a ‘WYSIWYG’ editor, Dreamweaver. This current incarnation is completely web-based using Craft CMS content management system.
Who hosts this site?
Amazon, a US company with servers based in Australia.
Why is there advertising on the site?
All of the advertisers on the site are important members of the Mototrials community in Australia. Clubs, dealers & importers - just as they support mototrials in Australia, they each require our support.
You can learn more about our website sponsors and advertising packages.
Tell me more about Keith Jobson...
Keith Jobson has been involved in trials since 1995, after being bitten by the trials-bug when he was a spectator at a trials event at Mt. Bolton in Victoria. Riding C grade for a year or two he moved up to B grade where the challenge was more satisfying. Of late his attention has been bringing his kids through the sport, with two children riding competently.
Computers and the Internet have been a part of his life for many years. An embracer of technology, he cannot imagine life without the Internet.
History - Timeline and reflection
December 1995
I had just started off in trials, purchasing a Montesa Cota 304 and joining the Oakleigh MCC. At that time I started receiving the Victorian Trials Megaphone newsletter.
For a few years I had been dabbling in the Internet, and had created my own home page on my local ISP. I decided that Trials needed a presence on the 'Net, and so came up with the name Trials DownUnder. At that time it was little more than an online version of the Megaphone.
February 1996
Launch of Trials DownUnder website.
You can see the original message that launched the site via the aus.motorcycles newsgroup here, courtesy Google newsgroups.
Initial content of the site included:
* Dealers and Clubs
* "What's On" event listing
* the promise of a Classifieds page.
As a point of interest, Ian Johnston started the Trials Action website at about the same time.
April 1997
The site moved from Connexus to an Ozemail site, at this time including:
* Event calender - Vic and NSW
* Event Results
* Dealers
* Club Listings - Vic and NSW
* Classifieds
* Observed Trials Manual - how to ride one of these machines
December 1997
Launch of Trials AUSTRALIA at www.trials.com.au.
After two years gradually building a reader base, a decision was made to obtain sponsorship from the Victorian Trials Sub-Committee (now Trials Victoria) and move the site to its own domain name.
This was a significant milestone in the life of Trials Australia, with the site content now including a Photo Gallery, Tech Tips, more newsletters and rider profiles.
Site hit-rate just before this move was around 450 hits per month, or 15 - 20 per day.
Read the aus.motorcycles launch release information here.
May 1998
In the six months since moving to the new address, Trials AUSTRALIA had a threefold increase in hit rate. It was visited over 1400 times per month, or 50 - 60 per day.
Australian visitors to the site accounted for 57% of the total.
December 1998
All states' newsletters are now being scanned and put onlilne, with a few received via email.
In the twelve months since the launch of the new site, Trials AUST had been visited 24,000 times.
1999
The "Big Four" Australian trials importers - Gas Gas Motos Australia, DAVFIN Beta, Trialzone Bultaco & Scorpa, and TARPS Montesa - each have a presence on Trials AUST in the form of their own mini-website.
2000
Site visits are increasing each month, growing to around 3500 sessions per month by the end of the year. Trials Australia experiences a major peak in visits in October, with thousands more visitors seeking information and results from the Australian Championships. October peak is over 5000 sessions.
Sometime this year the current-look Message Board was introduced.
The most frequently visited pages are the photo galleries.
December 2001
Number of unique sessions per month to Trials Australia (counting each user only once in any 24 hr period) is around 11,000 (about 360 per day), serving around 2.5 gigabytes of data.
The most popular pages are the Message Boards, and within that the Classifieds are the most active.
Another point of interest, Ian Johnston calls it a day and sells the Trials Action website. At the end of the year Trials Action is recording around 50,000 unique sessions, serving over 15 gigabytes of information per month.
* see Glossary for explanation of statistical terms.
December 2013
In December 2013, the website was moved from Hostgator to Rackspace where it currently resides. Averaging around 21,000 sessions, 100,000+ pageviews and serving 50GB of traffic every month. 82% of traffic is coming from Australia with 5% from the United Kingdom, 3% from the United States and other countries making up the remainder.
Wayback Machine
For an interesting look back in time at Trials AUSTRALIA, check out the "Wayback Machine" Internet Archive site:
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.trials.com.au
(Note: a lot of the front page photos will be missing, however the news articles are sure to bring back some memories!)
Glossary of Terms (courtesy Trials Action)
Hit: A hit is any response from the server on behalf of a request sent from a browser. This includes any response from the server, not only text files or documents. If, for example, a HTML page has two images embedded, the server generates three hits if this page is requested: one hit for the HTML page itself and two hits for the two inline images.
Files: If the user requests a document and the server successfully sends back a file for this request, this is counted as a Code 200 (OK) response. Any such response is counted for as a file. Again, "file" here means any kind of a file.
Pageviews: Pageviews are all files which either have a text file suffix (.html, .text) or which are directory index files. This number allows to estimate the number of "real" documents transmitted by your server. If defined correctly, the analyzer rates text files (documents) as pageviews. Those pageviews do not include images, CGI scripts, Java applets or any other HTML objects except all files ending with one of the pre-defined pageview suffixes, such as .html or .text.
Sessions: This is the number of unique hosts accessing the server during a given time-window.
KB Sent: This is the amount of data sent during the whole summary period as reported by the server.
I want to contribute something. How do I go about it?
Trials AUSTRALIA welcomes all contributions! Check out the link in the Admin menu option above and read all about how to go about it.
How often is the site updated?
Trials AUSTRALIA is updated as items are received. This generally translates to 2 or 3 times per week. If you send me something just after I've finished another update, chances are that it may be a day or two before it appears online - I have another life too! ;-)
Over Christmas & January the frequency drops off as there are very few events being run and consequently no results etc being submitted.
How much work is involved running the site?
In the beginning, it was a few hours a day. Through use of better software and most importantly my contributor base, this has dropped to an average of around 45 minutes per day. I don't update it every day, but other days I'll spend 2 hours on it.
Questions?
My question hasn't been answered!
Got a question? Send it to me via the “Contact Us” menu link.