Web Team Update - November 2025

New Web Team Member - Jeff Loomis

Jeff (RUSA #3445 from Seattle) is ramping up and will assist with coding. Welcome to the team, Jeff!

Server Upgrade

We're making progress on a long-overdue server upgrade. We are running very outdated versions of Debian, Perl, PHP, and Drupal. The current Drupal system is very fragile and consequently we have been unable to deploy any code changes to it this year. A server upgrade is blocking website development for a core feature planned for the beginning of 2026.

 

The team has devised a new server upgrade strategy using server snapshots on Linode that will give us a safety net and some confidence in being able to eventually do an in-place upgrade of the production environment. Current testing is looking promising and we will hopefully be able to complete some key upgrades in November.

2026 Permanents Program

The web team will need to modify the permanents program registration workflow in preparation for the elimination of the perms fee in 2026. The timeline for the server upgrade as well as competing priorities will likely prevent a perfectly streamlined workflow, however there are still some quick improvements that are planned. Most notably, the PayPal step will be removed. The full workflow will look like:

  1. Log into Drupal.
  2. Click the button to register for the 2026 permanents program.
  3. Click a link prompting for payment for the 2026 permanents program.
  4. The landing page after (3) will indicate that the registration was successful.

Climbing

We’re continuing to develop the infrastructure and data gathering for collecting riders’ climbing data starting in 2026. The brevet routes team provided access to their private RideWithGPS library, and we were able to export climbing data for approximately 1000 approved brevet routes. After some additional cleanup, this data will be backfilled. The remaining "burndown lists" will be handed off to RBAs (and their deputies) to address using a self-service elevation assignment tool.

 

Additional work is needed before the end of 2026, some of which is blocked on the server upgrade. We anticipate being able to fit everything in.

Awards

  • Bug 1116 - Updated the main awards page with the new awards philosophy statement proposed by the Awards Review Committee and approved by the board.
  • Bug 1134 - American Randonneur Award entries on the website listing now link to the AR articles that describe their contributions to the sport.
  • Bug 1141 - Backfilled 2025 Can-Am awardees.
  • Bug 1132 - Fixed a display issue that corrupted the R-12 application page when foreign events had been used for previous applications.
  • Bug 1129 - Discussion on how to surface a website listing for gravel distance awards.

Miscellaneous

  • Bug 1145 - Unpaved distance for calendared events is now exposed through the RUSA API.
  • Bug 1144 - There is some confusion due to the email address field being "editable" in Drupal. This field is synced from another system, so editing it has no effect even though it seems like it should. This field should be hidden or read-only.
  • Bug 1142 - The perms team has some undesired overhead due to riders asking for gravel distance to be updated after submitting results, contrary to current guidelines. There has been some discussion about how to update the workflow to better facilitate this.
  • Bug 1128 - The membership team got a flood of corrupted member data update requests. Some investigation confirmed that the problem was transient.
  • Bug 1131 - The "Links" page has been reworked to eliminate duplication and reduce ongoing maintenance.
  • Bug 1125 - The downloadable RUSA membership application has been updated with the proper gender codings for Non-binary and Decline-to-state.
  • There was an inquiry about setting up Google Analytics. This has already been set up for years.
  • Phil Fox (Chicagoland region) inquired whether RUSA's points tables could be updated more frequently so that he can better track his club’s performance. Lois updated these manually. Charlie did some initial investigation into automating this in the future.

 

Respectfully submitted,

- Lois, Charlie, Man-Fai, Paul, JLE, and Jeff