We built a mobile friendly version of the American Whitewater river data and it's available to AW Members only. If you're a current member, login at http://m.americanwhitewater.org. If you're not a current member, join today!
It’s a beta product (e.g. unfinished) so this means that it will have bugs and imperfections. Despite this beta status, we wanted to get it in the hands of our members so they can start using it.
Why Members Only
Our website sees over 700,000 unique visitors a year (really!) but we have just over 5,500 dues paying members. Since memberships are the lifeblood of American Whitewater, we wanted to do something that rewards our members while encouraging other people to become members.
This approach strikes a reasonable balance. Anyone can still access all the information they want on the regular version of the American Whitewater website. However, if you want to use this nice mobile optimized interface, with all its features, you have to be a member. Seems pretty fair to us.
Access Issues
If you're having issues logging in, remember you must:
- Be a current, dues paying AW member
- Have your website user account connected to your membership account
- Your browser must accept cookies
To Connect your website account to your membership account
- Login to americanwhitewater.org with your website user account (or create one if you don't already have one)
- Go to "My Account" > "Enter AW Membership #"
- Enter the requested info
- Click Verify Membership
Features
Since this is a beta product, not all features are complete, some are only partially complete and others may never be added. Many features of the main website have not been intentionally left out of this interface. Rather than doing everything the full website does, we wanted to focus this interface on only doing the most important tasks and doing them really well.
Web App vs. Native App
Our members may wonder why we choose to develop an HTML based mobile interface rather than a native mobile app (e.g. an app for iPhones). First and foremost is the extensive cost of developing native apps on multiple platforms and then maintaining them over time. At American Whitewater, we go to great lengths to ensure we spend our supporter’s money very carefully. This mobile web app was inexpensive to develop and allows us to use many of the web resources we already have.
Second, since this interface is accessible to any device that has a web browser, we could make one version of this interface and have it be instantly available on nearly any device from day one. No need to make an iOS version, Android version, Windows Mobile version, etc.
Third, if we’re going to take the time and money to develop a native mobile app, we’re going to do a great job of it. We don't have the time or money as an organization to do that right now, so we’re going to have to wait and reconsider it in the future. Those are just the breaks when you hold fiscal responsibility and credibility as highly as we do.
Main Website
Our Members will be happy to know that we're also still hard at work redoing the main American Whitewater website, as we announced a few months ago. As with any AW project, we're proceeding carefully with the funds we have and with a high quality product as our end goal. Since it's a significant project, we don't have a deadline for completion to announce. We'll continue to update members on its progress, however.