We know what you’re thinking: ‘Another announcement post already? Why is there another article carousel at the bottom of the home page?’

To answer the latter, we’ve moved site announcements to their own rotating carousel on the front page because we don’t want the top to be dominated by announcements. This is our third bulletin in the last four days and second one on October 24, and we’d rather not have the actual quality Storytime write-ups pushed off by them.

As for the former, this is partly to build on our Storytime announcement earlier today.

In that post, we explained how the Storytime subcategory is going to be used for long-form journalism and telling stories from off-road racing’s history. It’s fairly straightforward.

However, there are some longer stories that are neither journalism nor related to motorsports. For example, our idiot writer likes to write about conventions he attended or his latest Hot Wheels purchase. While he occasionally shoehorns something about racing history for both, the connection to this site’s mission is tenuous.

Thus, we’ve rebranded the “By racers” subcategory into “Blogs”. By racers was exactly as you’d expect, originally intended to feature posts written by guest writers. Willem Avenant, a long-time friend of the 131 Off-Road team, wrote three such pieces alongside his usual work for his Decoding Dakar project: how to follow his Dakar debut, a debrief of said rally, and his work with Big Red Racing.

However, he was the only contributor. Since those are in essence blog posts and Justin’s off-topic write-ups are basically blogs as well, it made sense to spin By racers into Blogs.

Ironically, Justin has his own WordPress blog for actual blog entries. He hardly writes on it these days and especially now that he has 131 to focus on, but there will be times that he wants to post in a similar manner that’s more related to racing. Thus, off-topic posts will likely be on his personal blog while slightly more relevant ones go here.

Topics that fall under the Blogs category include Justin’s con breakdowns and discussing whatever merch he’s bought in depth. He might even write about something completely unrelated and intended for his personal blog but had to be migrated here, such as if a blog requires him to upload files (which he can’t do on the personal one since it doesn’t have a payment plan like 131). They will be included in the carousel at the top of the home page alongside other features, though this could change depending on clutter.

Featured image credit: Helena Clancy / Edophoto / DPPI / ASO