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15/02/2011: Official GKR Karate Website upgrade

As mentioned by Shihan earlier this year and according to the beginning of a recent online interview of Sensei Anthony Ryan, there is much work being carried on at the moment in finalising a major revamp of GKR Karate's official website gkrkarate,com  In the interview, Sensei Anthony said:

I flat out here at the moment getting GKR’s new website up and ready for launch. One thing you will find on the website is that we are uploading every… single… Shimbun article… EVER. So you can go to the Articles section, click on the subject of ‘Tournaments’ and find an enormous amount of information and inspiration regarding tournaments (or any other subject for that matter).

Beyond this, the right hand side of the web page will have every belt listed in order. If you click on that belt, you will plenty of information relevant to that grade. When the website launches (pretty soon) it wont be complete. But within a month each belt grade will also have kumite pointers for that particular grade, outlining the kumite journey through the belts. The text for this is already complete. The only reason why it won't go up straight away is that we want to shoot videos to go with these tips.

This upgrade will remedy one of the biggest complaints that students have about the website in that it provides nothing except basic details and Tournament Reports, unless you are a member of "myGKR". It will be interesting to see if the video content includes Kata as the existing DVDs available for purchase are now several years old and some kata have had a number of changes since the original shooting. In regards to "every single article", it will be interesting to see how far back the articles go, as the earlier version of the Shimbun which stopped at the end of 1996, contained mainly grading lists and Region reports. I suspect it will be from the 2000 relaunch.

It seems a very positive step in providing available online content and will be welcomed by all students. One interesting point, will the Shimbun still be published or will the articles just be made available online. Will access be freely available or would it be an extension of "myGKR" membership?