Frequently Asked Questions
Categories
- Advertising
- All About Our Operations
- Contact Us
- Free Subscriptions via RSS
- General questions about skiing
- Miscellaneous
- Registration with our sites
- Video
- Website Problems
Recent FAQs
Question
- How do I contact you?
- How do I advertise with you? How much does it cost?
- How do I receive your RSS news feed?
- May I integrate your ski news into my web page?
- I'd like to write for you! How do I arrange that?
- Your website doesn't work!
- Does it cost me anything to read First Tracks!! Online?
- Hey! You jerks spammed me!
- Where are you located?
- I work in the snow sports or PR industry. How do I send you a press release?
- What websites do you operate?
- What is RSS?
- What happened to your email updates?
- Why would I register?
- I've been a member of your Liftlines forums for ages, but when I try to log in to your new website my username and password aren't recognized. What gives?
- I'm a member of your website, but when I try to log in to your user forums my username and password aren't recognized. What gives?
- I'd rather get your news via email, but you no longer offer an email subscription service. Can I still do that?
- How do I search your site? Is there an easy way to do this?
- Why is it called "Nordic" skiing?
- Who started this web page or site?
- What is your number of hits (visitors) per month?
- Is there a way to change my user name or cancel my account so I can set it up with a different user name?
- What is your circulation rate?
- Hi, I used to be able to download your movies AND see them them fullscreen !!! What happened ? Can I get these options back? Thanx for a great site.
- Who is the author of the June 25, 2008 article about Belleayre Mountain Ski Center?
Answer
You may reach our offices via any of the following methods:
Via email at webmaster (at) FirstTracksOnline.com
By phone:
Voice - (801) 783-2565
Fax - (801) 783-2565
By postal mail:
First Tracks!! Online Media
3018 Sequoia Av
Salt Lake City, UT 84109-2327
USA
How do I advertise with you? How much does it cost?
Our rates are surprisingly affordable -- Click here to learn more.
How do I receive your RSS news feed?
Enter the following address in the RSS/news aggregator of your choice:
http://feedproxy.google.com/firsttracksonline/pDno
If you're using the new Microsoft Internet Explorer 7, you have a standalone RSS aggregator already built into Windows. Simply visit http://feedproxy.google.com/firsttracksonline/pDno or click on the little orange RSS icon 
in the Internet Explorer browser toolbar. On the resulting page you'll see a "Subscribe to this feed" link. That saves First Tracks!! Online to your news feeds in your Favorites center, accessible by clicking the star in the toolbar or by typing Alt+C. By clicking on "View feed properties" you can select the frequency at which Internet Explorer checks for new stories.
Note that this is a new feature of Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 -- versions 6 and earlier do not have this feature. Click here if you wish to upgrade.
Firefox users can use the browser's Live Bookmarks feature to enable RSS delivery - click on the little orange RSS icon in the address bar to add the Live Bookmark to the bookmarks folder of your choosing. The latest First Tracks!! Online stories will then always be available expanded from that bookmark. For frequent readers, you can even save it to your Bookmarks Toolbar for quick and easy access.
For email client software, users of Microsoft Outlook can use Attensa for Outlook to receive RSS content right in Outlook. Users of Mozilla Thunderbird will find RSS functionality built right into their email client.
Web-based aggregators include such familiar sites as My Yahoo!, My MSN and Google News as well as specific news aggregators such as Bloglines and Newsgator.
For simple buttons to add First Tracks!! Online Ski Magazine news stories to popular web-based aggregaors, click here.
May I integrate your ski news into my web page?
Yes, you may. We maintain the copyright on all of our material and therefore ask that you:
- not alter our feed in any way;
- reprint only that portion of our news stories that's released in the feed -- link to the full article;
- do not use our feed on any website which promotes pornography, hate speech, or other illegal or offensive content or activity; and
- credit "First Tracks!! Online Ski Magazine" as the news source.
We reserve the right to rescind permission to use our feed in situations that violate these terms, or where it is used in an inappropriate manner.
We'd love to see the results! Contact webmaster(at)FirstTracksOnline.com and let us know where to view your integration.
I'd like to write for you! How do I arrange that?
Direct your inquiries to our editor via email at editor(at)FirstTracksOnline.com. Provide publication credits and a writing sample.
Drop us an email at webmaster(at)FirstTracksOnline.com with specifics regarding the error. We sure appreciate the feedback! Please be as detailed regarding where on the site the error occurred as well as what precisely happened to help us diagnose the problem.
Does it cost me anything to read First Tracks!! Online?
Not at all. Our content is entirely advertiser-supported.
No, we didn't. We never send unsolicited commercial email. There are two possible causes for your complaint: 1. Our email address was spoofed. Web robots scrape literally millions of email addresses off of the World Wide Web, and with the tens of thousands of web pages on our site our address is rather prevalent on many spammers' lists. Trace the IP address and we're confident that you'll discover that the email didn't originate with us. 2. You signed up for one of our email subscriptions. We require confirmation to ensure that others didn't sign you up -- it had to be a proactive effort on your part. Follow the instructions on the email if you wish to unsubscribe.
Our main offices are in Salt Lake City in the great skiing state of Utah in the western United States, and you'll often find that on powder days we've "gone fishin'" at Alta, Snowbird, Solitude, Park City, and other nearby Wasatch Mountain ski areas. Our writers, however, are scattered around all skiing corners of the globe. Our primary server is located in a data center in Houston, Texas.
I work in the snow sports or PR industry. How do I send you a press release?
Send press releases via email to newsdesk (at) FirstTracksOnline.com.
We operate FirstTracksOnline.com and SkiMovies.com. Our services are also put to work in print consumer ski publications and ski industry publications, and we're busy building our first regional electronic publication, UtahSkiAndSnowboard.com, for a Summer 2007 launch.
RSS stands for "really simple syndication." In short, it's a way to get our news delivered right to you. You read RSS news via a news aggregator. There are numerous aggregators available both as a stand-alone client and web-based. Click here to read specific instructions on how to receive our news via RSS -- chances are that you already have an RSS aggregator installed on your computer! If you'd rather receive RSS stories via email, and you don't already have an aggregator and don't feel like installing any new software, see the answer to this FAQ qestion. To learn more about RSS, visit here.
What happened to your email updates?
Given the automation capabilities afforded by RSS feed technology, we've dropped our email distributions in favor of providing push news via RSS. If you'd like to continue receiving our original Ski News via RSS, simply sign up here.
There are actually two separate registrations available on First Tracks!! Online, and you may choose to register with either or both. Registering on our primary website allows you to customize the home page according to your wishes. Registering on our Liftlines user forums affords a whole different set of capabilities. For one thing, you must be a registered user to post to any topic or to create a new topic. It also allows you to send and receive private messages, receive email notifications of replies to topics you create, and to see a highlighted list of topics with new messages posted since your last visit, among many other things.
The registration databases are separate -- you need to create a login for the new site as well. Sorry about that, but given the complexities of integrating the databases, as well as the opportunities to corrupt them as a result, we've steered clear of trying to merge the two registration lists. It also affords the user flexibility to choose to register for only part of the website if so desired.
See above.
Of course, albeit in a slightly different way than you may be used to. There are several free RSS-to-email services available, among them RssFwd, Rmail and FeedBlitz. Simply enter the address of our RSS feed (http://feedproxy.google.com/firsttracksonline/pDno) and your email address, and you'll receive our news stories in your email inbox. To use Google's FeedBurner to subscribe to our news stories via email, use the subscription form below:
How do I search your site? Is there an easy way to do this?
Due to technical restrictions our search functionality is a bit fragmented, but once you understand how it's laid out, it's quite easy! The first place to start is to Search our Current Website which displays results from our original news and features. If you don't find the results you're looking for there, you can check our Archived and External News which will display archived original ski news content as well as news stories we've indexed from other newspapers and periodicals. If you're interested in what our readers may have had to say, you can always Search our User Forums. Finally, you can find another ski website when you Search Our Ski Links database.
Why is it called "Nordic" skiing?
Cross-country and ski jumping originated in Scandinavia, hence the "Nordic" label. Downhill skiing traces its roots to the Alps, hence the "Alpine" designation.
Who started this web page or site?
Marc Guido, our current editor and publisher, began First Tracks!! Online Ski Magazine in 1994, originally as an insider's guide to Jay Peak ski resort in northern Vermont where he was serving at the time on the ski area's patrol. Eighteen months later, upon leaving the Jay Peak patrol the website transformed into the global magazine format that exists today and is expanding into other snowsports e-zines as it morphs into First Tracks!! Online Media.
What is your number of hits (visitors) per month?
Our site traffic naturally fluctuates seasonally, but tops out at over 1 million page views per month to more than 150,000 unique monthly users. Full details are available to qualified media buyers upon request.
Send an email to webmaster(at)FirstTracksOnline.com with your registration information and to let us know which side of the site you're trying to de-register from, the news or the forums, and we'll assist you.
What is your circulation rate?
We don't publish a print edition, we're solely electronic. However, hit information is available here.
In order to ensure that the greatest number of users can view our movies, we've shifted to Flash Video format, the same format used by such popular video hosting sites as YouTube and Google Video. This allows for small download sizes, high video quality and rapid streaming. Unfortunately it does not allow for local playback.
Who is the author of the June 25, 2008 article about Belleayre Mountain Ski Center?
Marc Guido, our editor, compiled from various sources. We customarily only byline our original features.
