Gym Jones — Website Relaunch

Prior to my trip to Europe I put a good three weeks into the relaunching of GymJones.com. Gym Jones, if you haven’t heard, is the local enigma of a gym here in Salt Lake City. Most local climbers at least know of it since it was founded by Mark Twight, one of the country’s finest and boldest alpinists. The gym focuses on performance gains through psychological breakthroughs, which sets it far apart from the typical mirror-lined, machine-packed commercial gym experience. I myself am attracted to the focus on functional fitness and mental growth, as these benefits can enhance many other aspects of one’s life.

But I digress. GymJones.com was in need of an overhaul, especially as their site has grown exponentially in popularity over the past few years. STS is a big fan of the gym, and was a natural fit for the site’s overhaul. The first stage in the project was a functional and aesthetic improvement on the public-facing website. I’d say we succeeded, especially on a (typically…) greatly condensed schedule.

The site launched on September 1, and allegedly had 10k hits in the first week. A NY Times article (with a link to the new site) on the gym undoubtedly increased that immensely. This makes the site far and away the most visited one I have ever built. Woohoo!

Be on the lookout for a revamped members site in the next few months. I’ll undoubtedly contribute to some extent — hopefully with the technical architecture and possibly the code as well. Many thanks to STS for hooking me up with a really fun project — you guys rock it, again and again!

Design: Super Top Secret, Gym Jones
Development: 95% me
Technology stack: Django/Python, MySQL, HTML5/CSS3, JQuery/javascript