We’re pleased to announce the all-new DCSki: the most ambitious re-design and re-engineering of DCSki in its 26-year history.
We took the best features of DCSki, simplified them, and made them the highlight of the new site’s design. DCSki’s core strengths include original news content, detailed resort profiles, a community forum, and an archive of “lost” Mid-Atlantic ski areas. Let’s take a tour through some of DCSki’s enhancements.
DCSki has published over 1,600 original feature stories, including trip reports, detailed interviews with industry players, and the latest news. In the Newsroom, you can scroll through recent stories, view the most popular stories of the past several years, or view stories that have the most recent user comments. A powerful new search feature lets you search across all articles.
If you are a registered DCSki user, you’ll also have the ability to see when there are new stories or new comments on those stories. Stories you haven’t read yet will have a green “New” badge next to them. If you see a green comment bubble next to a story, it means that story has new comments since you last viewed it. These indicators will also show up on DCSki’s home page
Although DCSki publishes content of interest to skiers across North America, its specialty is providing coverage of resorts in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast regions. The Resorts page on DCSki is a great starting point to explore Mid-A ski areas. A brand new interactive map shows the location of each resort. You can also view a list of resorts, sorted by name, vertical, or trail count.
We’ve updated every Mid-A resort profile with the latest information, including overviews, statistics, trails maps, directions, current weather and snow conditions, and related Forum posts. Where available, we’ve included information on each resort’s planned COVID-19 pandemic protocols for the 2020-2021 winter season.
The Forum has always been one of the most popular features of DCSki, connecting thousands of winter sports enthusiasts and providing them a chance to share experiences and tips. We’ve completely re-designed the Forum to make it even easier to find and participate in discussions.
To post to the Forums, you’ll need to register as a DCSki user. Once registered, you’ll be able to easily see when there are new Forum posts. DCSki will place a green “New” badge next to any forum topic that has new comments since you last viewed it. New posts within a topic will also have green headers.
In the past, it was always challenging to embed your own photos into your posts. Now, it’s as simple as dragging and dropping an image while adding your comments. Make sure your photos are in JPEG or PNG formats, and do not upload any photos that are copyrighted. Please try to select a few of your best photos, instead of including a large number. Drag and drop one at a time and wait for each photo to upload. Photos that are in an unknown format or are too large might be rejected.
Over the years, and with help from readers, DCSki has chronicled over 100 “lost” ski areas of the Mid-Atlantic: areas that were once in operation but have shut down over the past century. You can take a trip through memory lane in the Lost Areas section of DCSki, browsing profiles, photos, and hundreds of reader comments.
If you’re a registered DCSki user, you’ll also be able to quickly see when new comments have been posted to Lost Area profiles. Lost areas that have new comments since you last viewed them will show the comment count in a green bubble.
Registered users of DCSki receive access to enhanced functionality, such as the ability to post to Forum topics or to easily see when new content is posted. Registering on DCSki is free, and we’ve simplified the registration process.
If you already have a DCSki account, you may need to re-login on the new site.
Now, you can have DCSki remember that you’ve logged in across multiple devices, such as your laptop, tablet, and phone. So you won’t have to re-type your username and password as frequently.
Our new server also uses the latest security protocols. Every page on DCSki is now encrypted using strong SSL encryption.
If you don’t yet have a DCSki account, please consider registering. We manually review and vet every registration request to ensure that spambots don’t get through, so it may take a day or two to have your account request approved. Maintaining a respectful user community is of paramount importance to DCSki; we go for quality of discourse, not quantity. We expect all registered users to exercise civility towards each other as they participate on this family-friendly site.
When DCSki first launched in 1994, most people had a pretty standard screen size — typically 1,024 x 768 pixels. Today, people connect to the Internet with a wide range of devices. DCSki has been completely re-designed to gracefully adapt to the dimensions and resolution of whatever device you use to connect to it. So if you’re accessing DCSki from your iPhone on the slopes, or from your 65-inch television in your living room, you’ll be presented with a design that is easy to read and easy to navigate.
We’ve also significantly increased the resolution of photos and images on the new DCSki, so that they look crisp even on the highest-resolution devices. If you’re a registered user, be sure to swing by your User Profile page to update your user avatar photo with your best shot.
To use a technical term, the Internet has become icky in recent years. You might visit a product web page on one site, and then find ads for that product following you across every site you visit. Most web pages on the Internet are overloaded with code that is designed to track your every move, so that targeted ads can be displayed to you.
DCSki doesn’t play that game. We do not participate in any cross-site advertiser networks, and we respect your privacy. We don’t share your ad viewing details with anyone else. Ads shown on DCSki pages are sold, managed, and hosted directly by us, from advertisers who appreciate and support DCSki and its user community.
We also don’t try to cram as many ads as possible on one page, as most other sites do. In fact, most pages on DCSki will only show one ad, from one advertiser, placed tastefully within the content of the page. DCSki doesn’t allow pop-up ads, animated ads, or any other practices which only serve to annoy and disrespect readers.
As a bonus, because our pages aren’t bloated with all this user-tracking code, they load much faster than other sites.
If you are interested in advertising on DCSki, you can learn about available packages here.
DCSki runs on a dedicated server, and we purchased a brand new server in 2020 to support the upgraded site. Every page on DCSki is carefully engineered to assemble in a fraction of a second, so assuming you have a speedy Internet connection, you should see pages load almost instantly.
The goal of DCSki is to present engaging content in a simple, thoughtful way. To achieve that simplicity, there are hundreds of thousands of lines of computer code running under the hood. Although we’ve performed extensive testing, there’s always a chance that some software bugs are still lurking in the shadows. If you notice any functionality that appears to be broken or misbehaving, please let us know. You can reach DCSki’s Editor here, or you can post to this Forum Topic.
Beyond just pointing out bugs, we’d also like your feedback on how we can make DCSki even better. So don’t be a stranger.
That’s a quick tour through some of the biggest enhancements to DCSki, but as you browse the site, you’ll likely notice dozens of smaller touches that serve to improve DCSki. Thank you for visiting DCSki, and we hope you enjoy the new site!
M. Scott Smith is the founder and Editor of DCSki. Scott loves outdoor activities such as camping, hiking, kayaking, skiing, and mountain biking. He is an avid photographer and writer.
