Web Site History

In early 2001, I proposed to the Corning United board to establish a web presence for the club. They approved the plan and soon after that the first Corning United web site was made public. Over the years, the site was enhanced to include field directions, player assignments to teams, contacts for coaching staff, online registration, club photos, and team pages with practice and league match schedules, along with scores and standings.

When the online presence was establish, there were no such sites for any soccer clubs, so every aspect of the web site was new and innovative. As time went on, many other clubs followed our example and established web sites, often using formats similar to the Corning United site, as they could see the value of an online presence.

For 18 years, I maintained the format and content of the web site, with the goal to have timely and accurate information for our club members. This usually meant making changes and updates to the content on a weekly basis, and frequently on a daily basis. One objective was to make corrections within 24 hours once I was informed of a need for updating the content, and I was reasonably faithful at achieveing this objective. Another objective was to have very high availability of the site. I chose a well-established host provider, and I can only recall one outage of the site for about half an hour during those 18 years. A third objective was to introduce some significant improvement in the site each year. This required a continual self-learning process so that I could make technical advances in the site as internet capabilities improved.

Over those 18 years, there were more than 100,000 unique visits to the site, most notably on Friday evenings and Saturdays, as people looked for their league match schedules and sought driving directions to away games. In addition, there was another spike in usage on Mondays as people went to look for their team's scores and standings.

In early 2018 the Board of the Corning United Soccer Club decided to establish a new web site. The new site is maintained by a club volunteer, and I no longer have any role in keeping its content.

I can say that I thoroughly enjoyed providing web content for the Corning United soccer club over the years. And I am thankful for the many suggestions that people have made regarging format, content, and technical improvements. I learned a lot about web design and maintentace, and about the administration of the club as a result.

Thank you to every one of you who have contributed to the club during this time.

Rich Wagner