The Radavist

It’s been a year since The Radavist returned to being 100% independent again and a year of our Group Ride Membership and the Rad Bazaar. John’s got some updates to share below, so read on for more…

As the longest-running adventure, lifestyle, and alternative cycling website, we’ve been accumulating massive amounts of videos since migrating to WordPress in 2008. By our last tallying, that includes over 8000 videos, spanning across every path of cycling culture. To make things a little easier to navigate, we’re starting to roll out some simple tweaks and large restructuring improvements over the next few weeks. The first sampling is currently available; a new Video Category page.

You can access this by clicking the hamburger menu at the top right of the menu, or simply click the video category tag on any video. This is where we’ll pin our video projects to the top. More granular breakdown of the content itself is on the way, too…

And as always, if you like and subscribe to our YouTube channel, it’ll help us make more documentaries like From Biocrust, With Love.

John here with an exciting announcement!

The Radavist has great content dating all the way back to 2008 (there are even our 2006-2008 archives floating around on the ‘net still!), and now, our once-missing 2010-2015 image bucket has been uploaded again! Back in 2018, we lost it in a website server migration, and while doing some digging through our convoluted image bank, web lord Ian Register uncovered our lost image server!

All 150+ GB of images are back, including some of my personal favorites like a 2012 Fuji XPro-1 Review, Robin’s Dirt Drop Highball, Erik from Peacock Groove’s Evil Dead Tribute Bike, NYC Shop Visits, Austin, TX, shenanigans, a lot of Austin, TX shenanigans!, Blackburn Ranger rides, Ryan Wilson’s road bike rides, Bandit camping on Diablo, Peacock Nük, the original Oregon Outback Reportage, Aussie Bush Rides, and the Head Shots and Head Tubes NAHBS article!

I’ve been covering bike touring, framebuilders, and maker culture for 18 years now and in that time, each of these sub-genres has grown more and more. It’s nice having a deep catalog of this content on The Radavist!

Many thanks to Ian for kicking ass on our refresh, which includes a lot of backend maintenance.

One note: when you search through the archives, if the title image is still missing, don’t fret, the entire gallery is back up and running, we’re working on the title image break fix.

We’ve been working on this refresh for over nine months with two talented designers, Seth and Julian, as well as an equally talented developer, Ian. Together, we’ve fixed many issues with the platform’s backend, updated it to a new infrastructure, and paved the way for multiple website improvements.

While this initial launch might not seem like a big change, allow me to walk you through it.

Photo: Kyle Klain

Our Radar column has shifted back to the left column. This is how the website was pre-2016 refresh. Now, we’ll be slow-dripping products and videos on the left throughout the day. Radar = news blips.

The middle column is our endemic content. This is content we produce ourselves. All Reportage galleries; Shop Visits, Beautiful Bicycles, Events, and Reviews will be in the middle column. The center feed will also contain Radar reviews or reviews that don’t include a gallery.

On the far right is our ad columns; these ads, along with your Group Ride subscription, merch sales, sponsored content (when noted), and affiliate links (we’re working on a page to explain how we use all of these – thanks for your patience!) keep this website and its staff funded. Thanks for your support!

As with every refresh, there will be formatting issues or bugs that pop up from time to time. We have a checklist that’s running but if you spot anything awry, please note it here in the comments!

Happy New Year!