American Y-Flyer Sailing Association

The American Y-Flyer Sailing Association (AYFSA) is the governing body for the Y-Flyer class sailboat in the United States. The Y-Flyer is an 18′ scow type racing dinghy that is crewed by two persons and is primarily active in the midwest and southern regions of the country. The AYFSA is responsible for maintaining class records, ensuring that a reputable builder is available to construct new boats and to oversee class regattas.

Like most other small sailboat organizations, the AYFSA is run primarily by volunteers who are also members of the organization. As such, their website was previously maintained by someone who volunteered for the job. The original AYFSA website was implemented in Microsoft ASP (“active server pages”) and over the years had additional functionality tacked on using various different technologies. The end result was a site that was a hodgepodge of technologies that no one really understood how they all interacted or, more importantly, how to update them.

The AYFSA webmaster decided to move to WordPress to solve these issues. Unfortunately, the decision was made to stick with the existing Microsoft web server infrastructure. Since WordPress is designed and tested to be used in a Linux-based web server environment, the end result was a sub-optimal site (the least of your worries running WordPress on Microsoft web server infrastructure is the apparent inability to use permalinks).

Cardinal Acres Web Development re-implemented the site on a Linux-based web server using a theme and plugins better suited to AYFSA’s needs. The new site implements an event registration system via The Events Calendar and Event Tickets that the class can utilize for either displaying their event schedule or leverage for RSVPs to their regattas. If the class wants to move to collecting regatta fees online, Event Tickets Plus is the paid version of Event Tickets that will allow them to do that via integration with WooCommerce.

In addition, the site’s content was re-organized and presentation was improved to make the site easier to navigate. Site pages that were previously just collections of links to other areas of the website were converted into entries in the menu system. Non-HTML content was converted, wherever possible, to HTML to maintain the “look and feel” of the site.

The final result is a significant improvement on the previous site and, via WordPress plugins, offers the ability for the site to grow in functionality as the AYFSA’s online needs expand.