North Carolina State University Athletics
TIM PEELER: A New Platform of Possibilities
8/1/2006 12:00:00 AM | Pack Athletics
BY TIM PEELER
RALEIGH -- Welcome to the new GoPack.com.
Did you notice the difference?
Perhaps not, here in the first few hours of NC State’s newly redesigned athletics department website. But in the coming months, we hope that you will see a wealth of new possibilities to serve everyone who has an interest in any part of Wolfpack athletics, including fans, alumni, media and students.
Here’s the big change: As of today, we have partnered with XOS Technologies, a Sanford, Fla.-based web-hosting company to implement the new website. We have new audio and video capabilities, a new look and more new features than we’ve had since the website was first launched.
For the last five years, the website has been hosted by College Sports Television, one of the largest web-hosting companies in the country. During that time, GoPack.com has grown immensely in content and in reaching Wolfpack fans globally.
Our new platform, however, offers new possibilities, as you will see throughout the coming school year. And our new premium content service,
Over the last six months, our website development team has considered a variety of new ideas to incorporate into the site. Not all of them are here just yet, but we will be rolling out new features throughout the coming school year, such as live streaming of events and press conferences, more interviews and features on athletes, coaches and athletics department administration and a broader look at what makes NC State attractive to prospective student-athletes.
And, as much as we have looked towards the future, we have also spent more time chronicling the history and tradition of Wolfpack athletics. The new “Traditions” tab on the upper right corner of the website gives a brief look at some of the individual and team accomplishments over more than a century of college athletics. We believe you will enjoy traveling through history, as we bring you a series of multi-media looks at the rich tradition of NC State athletics over the coming months.
We will be adding vintage clips from our vast video vault, including past bowl games and some of the most exciting moments in NCAA Tournament history.
“Our web development team has put a lot of effort in finding new and different possibilities for the website,” NC State athletics director Lee Fowler said. “We can now take advantage of cutting-edge technology to promote our student-athletes accomplishments and to inform everyone who has an interest in NC State athletics.”
The development team included Wolfpack Sports Marketing general manager Brian Asbill, GoPack.com managing editor Tony Haynes, media relations associate director Chennelle Miller, associate athletics director for external affairs Dick Christy, director of athletics marketing Chris Alston, Wolfpack Club assistant director Media Hooks, Wolfpack Sports Marketing sponsorship coordinator Sarah Stoneman and athletics department intern Krisin Fowler and myself.
"We need to extend a significant amount of thanks and credit to our partners at XOS Technologies, particularly Dan Noble and his technical team, and to Katie Weinberg, GoPack.com's customer relations manager," Asbill said. "Since we initiated discussions with XOS earlier this year, we have been continually impressed with their commitment to bring the latest technological advances to the market for our fans to experience."
Bear with us through August. This is our month of trial and error, of getting the kinks out of the new system, and of getting our brains and fingers to work a different way. Our goal by the time school starts and football season begins on Sept. 2 to have everything archived properly and all information about the coming school year ready to roll.
Feel free to complain at least until we have everything in proper working order. If you see something that’s missing, something that you don’t like or something you would like to see more of, feel free to e-mail me at tim_peeler@ncsu.edu. Not every idea will be incorporated into the new site, but in order to better serve the NC State community, we want to know what you want.
For those who previously had subscriptions to the Yahoo! Service to receive broadcasts of football and basketball games, that agreement has ended. However, the new
There will be live-streaming of events and press conferences and archives of anything you might miss. Take some time to explore the new possibilities. Let us know if anything is missing. Tell us what else you would like to see here. We have new and better capabilities and we are eager to share them with everyone who cares about Wolfpack athletics.
You may contact Tim Peeler at tim_peeler@ncsu.edu.
