March 2020 President’s Message

The health and safety of our members and fellow car enthusiasts is of utmost importance to the Redwood Region and the broader Porsche Club of America. Amidst growing concern over public gatherings of any size, we have opted to keep our late March and early April calendar clear of any club events. We will continue to monitor the situation, and will provide updates if we find any further adjustments must be made to our planned 2020 calendar. Please stay safe and be well.

The end of February and early part of March were packed with significant Redwood Region events. The first, of course, was our annual Run for the Crab on February 22nd; an event that drew over 60 cars on the tour and 119 folks for lunch. We then joined the Hi Tec Automotive team to celebrate their 35th anniversary and grand opening of their new sales showroom on February 29th; with gourmet food truck eats and “Le Mans” on the big screen, it was a truly fabulous experience. Finally, despite a little rain, on March 7th, we set out on a nice drive that ended at Brewster’s Beer Garden; led by our Past President, Vern Rogers, we took a fantastic drive, arriving just in time to open the doors at Brewster’s to enjoy a wonderful lunch. Be sure to read the write-ups by Ben and Kurt for these events to hear more about them.

Some of you may have already noticed, our website got a face-lift at the end of February, following roughly 60 hours of work in January and February. The results of the effort are visible at https://redwoodpca.org (note: this is a new URL).

With the exception of some archival/historical data still left to move, the entire site has been rebuilt and streamlined on a new platform. It’s not perfect by any means, but if you look at it from various devices (desktops, tablets, and mobiles), you’ll note a marked improvement in general information conveyance and look/feel over our old site. Please feel free to let me know your thoughts and suggestions on the new design.

This website update has also allowed us to accomplish a lot in terms of being able to spread the load of content creation across more people while actually improving overall security. Not only do we now have a dynamic WordPress platform on which to share responsibility for maintaining the site over time, this dynamic platform is abstracted from the actual content delivery…and only runs when we are editing content. The rest of the time, our site is delivered to visitors securely as static content from a high-speed content delivery network. In simplest terms, we get to enjoy all the benefits of a content management system like WordPress with none of the risks those systems tend to open up in terms of security vulnerability. If you are interested in more details about the underlying technology we are now using, feel free to contact me directly.

Nothing good ever comes without a down-side. Unfortunately, because red.pca.org is what is known as a “sub-domain” of pca.org, which is under the control of PCA National, continuing to use it is not possible with these recent changes. You will notice that visiting the site at the old address will redirect you to the new site at https://redwoodpca.org; please update your bookmarks accordingly.

Thank you and drive safe out there!