May 23,2008
Sledge’s Edge
An Introduction to “Project WHAM!”
By Sledge

I’m writing this at 4:30 in the morning and exhausted from the late nights – and early mornings – I’ve been spending on what we’ve all been referring to as Project WHAM!. Up until this point of the “big reveal” not much was known about the mysterious change to our website. Some people speculated that Project WHAM! was the introduction of SeaWorld into the wonderful world of the hodgepodge we call Orlando United, but since you’re reading this you obviously know that was just one part of the change.

For the past few weeks I’ve been teasing the idea of SeaWorld being added to the site and even intentionally “leaked” a new banner onto the forum that included Shamu and the SeaWorld lighthouse, which was pulled after fifteen minutes. This was just part of an effort to build interest and get people speculating. If that wasn’t enough I made sure to “accidentally” spell the word “see” as “sea” in the teaser we had up on the front page. Some of you may have also noticed that if you explored the image you would eventually find a hotspot that linked you to SeaWorld.com.

The idea of adding SeaWorld was not mine and I never intended it to be a part of Project WHAM!. In fact I didn’t want to include SeaWorld since I didn’t think the interest was high enough to justify spending the extra dozens of hours adding it. I’d already done the entire layout, 90% of the site and everything had to be modified to incorporate the addition of a new set of theme parks. (Thanks for telling me we needed to add SeaWorld earlier, Brian!) If you’re a big fan of SeaWorld make sure to thank Brian. I told him the only way we were going to add it was if he gathered up all the pictures and wrote the descriptions – and he did. Thanks, Brian! Now that it’s done I’m glad we added it.

With the addition of SeaWorld we realized we were going to need some extra help. We didn’t need a new, full-fledged Staff member since Taryn was recently recruited, but we knew Kevin Contini – who is an OU member, frequent guest writer and runner-up in Staff Search 2008 – was a SeaWorld fan and made it out to the park every couple of weeks. We asked Kevin if he’d be interested in being a SeaWorld Correspondent and he enthusiastically accepted. (You can email him at kevin@orlandounited.com.)

Also, to help with the work load we are looking for a Universal Correspondent, so if you are at least 18 years old, have a good camera and make it out to the Universal parks weekly or bi-weekly let us know. The demand for Universal pictures and information is much greater than SeaWorld, so the more you can get out there the better. We are still encouraging everyone to send in pictures and information, of course.

You’ve also probably noticed some changes to the look of the forums. I think the new appearance works with the rest of the site much better than the old look – which you can still find in the list of skins for when you’re feeling nostalgic. The appearance is really the only thing that has changed, so you’ll have no problem using it and getting around like you’ve been doing since the site opened on February 29th.

It should be obvious by now that the biggest change is the brand new layout to the site. I’ve been working on it the past few months and have put around 300 hours into it. It averages to about 5 hours a day and a total of 12.5 days if you divide 300 hours by 24 hours. However, there have been days where it was literally 2PM – 6AM, with a few breaks in between. I exaggerate not. Brian and Taryn can vouch for me. I’m real proud of how it turned out and hope everyone enjoys it. Toot toot.

It’s kind of funny how Project WHAM! came about. I was talking to Brian one night about how I thought the site was starting to look too plain and boring; I thought we could do better. He told me to come up with a layout in Photoshop and he’d work on it the next day. What I designed was something I never thought would be realistic. I had a basic knowledge of Dreamweaver from courses I had taken in High School and College, but I didn’t think I knew enough to pull anything like this off. I started playing around with Dreamweaver just to get an idea of how much of what I’d designed in Photoshop was something we’d be able to do. A few hours later I finished what turned out to be a rough draft of the site you see today. I was really impressed with how it looked and Brian and Taryn agreed that it was pretty bad-ace.

I ended up tweaking the site a half dozen times and I’m pretty happy with what we have today. Is it the best looking theme park site out there? No way, but it’s 100 times better than I ever thought it would be. Brian has been helping me get the site online the past week and thanks to Taryn for finding all the errors before the site opened. If you find any errors on the site PLEASE let me know via email. You'll even receive rep points on the forum for doing so!

I hope we never lose site of one thing, that it all started with a mouse… click!

Jason@OrlandoUnited.com