CBS Relaunching StarTrek.com This Summer — Site To Showcase TrekMovie.com

Since late 2007 www.startrek.com, the official site for the Star Trek franchise, has been mostly dormant. But that is about to change. This summer CBS is relaunching the site with a new look and new features. The new site will also showcase fan sites, including TrekMovie.com. More details below.

 

Press Release

CBS CONSUMER PRODUCTS TO RE-LAUNCH
STAR TREK.COM THIS SUMMER

One-Stop Entertainment and News Destination for All Things STAR TREK to Feature Complete Redesign, Breaking News and the Most Comprehensive Star Trek Database Available

NEW YORK – May 5, 2010 – CBS Consumer Products is re-launching the official online destination to the popular Star Trek sci-fi franchise — StarTrek.com — this summer with a new web design and added features. The ultimate entertainment destination for all things Star Trek, the comprehensive site will feature breaking news, rare interviews, a robust online community, online store and the official Star Trek database.

Designed to incorporate the very best of Star Trek content across the web, the site will showcase top fan sites and blogs including TrekMovie, TrekToday and TrekWeb. StarTrek.com is being designed by award-winning graphic design and content production web developer Funny Garbage.

“Star Trek fans deserve an online hub to suit all their needs,” said Liz Kalodner, Executive Vice President and General Manager of CBS Consumer Products. “The new StarTrek.com will embrace the incredible fan activity across the web and bring together the many different voices that celebrate Star Trek.”

Star Trek fans can follow the progress of the upcoming relaunch via official Facebook (www.facebook.com/StarTrek) and Twitter (www.Twitter.com/StarTrek) pages.

 

POLL: Will you be checking out the new StarTrek.com?

Now that StarTrek.com will again be regularly updated with new content, will you put it into your website rotation?

[poll=574]

 

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As a long-time ST.com user, I must say that I’m pleased to see that CBS is re-launching and re-invigorating this site.

And (dare I say it?)…FIRST!

I am very happy now

So, does this mean they might be putting their toe in the water for a new TV series?

It took them long enough. Corporations – sheesh!

3. Although we all knew it already, it’s nice to see the powers that be at CBS recognize Anthony’s site as a “top fan site”. It is only logical. Congratulations Anthony and staff.

Sounds like fun…

Given CBS’ woeful mishandling of the Star Trek franchise, I must admit I am a bit skeptical. Not trying to sound like a suckup, but I am willing to be Trekmovie will remain my primary source of Trek news. I wish the new site luck though, and hope it’s an honest effort on CBS’ part.

What really pleases me is that it will also will showcase top fan sites. This is really great news.

What Star Trek.com needs to become to be a legitimate website again, is to be a gateway of information for Star Trek much like what we already get with the Memory-Alpha.org website.

For myself, personally, I don’t really have any reason to go to startrek.com because I can go to Memory-Alpha to get the information I need.

Maybe they’ll revive that animated web series?

Corporations can’t blog. It’ll be filled with the same boring drivel that the old site was filled with.

@7: I agree. I feel a sense of loyalty to trekmovie.com and will likely continue to come here first. I am also very happy to see startrek.com released from its Rura Penthe internet gulag.

I still fail to understand why this has taken so long to happen, like many other Trek things, such as decent models from the new movie. I just saw on some site that the Polar Lights model of the new Enterprise has been pushed back from a June to a November 2010 release. WTF? Why does all this have to happen at a snail’s pace?

It’s about frickin’ time!

And I agree with @12 above, why does it take so long for the new models to be released? I’m waiting for my 1:350 scale TOS Enterprise! (Although my marriage is probably happy it’s being delayed…)

Kind of funny seeing these news today, since I yesterday was browsing the site (being irritated over the fact that no matter which season of a series you click, you’ll still stuck at season one, forcing you to browse manually through the address field) and wondering if it isn’t time to relaunch the site by now. Answer given.

The only way they could have “the most comprehensive Star Trek database available” is if they incorporated Memory-Alpha.org (the Star Trek wiki) into the site. :)

We “deserve” a fan hub? That’s a strange word to use.

Glad ST.com is coming back, glad TrekMovie is getting its due, and looking forward to new content. Are they rehiring any of their old staffers, so unjustly fired back in 2007? And, in other news, does the return of ST.com mean a reinvigoration of the possibilities for the animated Rossi project, Star Trek: Final Frontier?

I wonder how this will work. Will they allow the “freedom of speechyness” that we have here???

Well. I may be a little Biased. But No matter how great Star Trek.com will be. It will not be as good as Trekmovie. But I am glad they are bringing back StarTrek.com and maybe. Just Maybe this is a sign of things to come. Maybe a new Trek Series.

This is a start. Now how about re-hiring those that were working on the site who were laid off? Assuming they haven’t moved on to bigger and better things.

This is very good news, though. StarTrek.com was practically dead when the new movie was released last year, a time when it should have been most active. At least now the site will be fully up and running by the time the sequel arrives.

Unless they decide to fire the people running it before the movie’s released. :-P

Anthony they should hire you to manage Trek’s online presence.

I may never visit startrek.com. I can barely keep up with all the Star Trek and genre news from this site :-)

Would be great if some of the former StarTrek dot com guys got their gigs back. . .Any word on this, Anthony?

19. Charles.

Sorry, didn’t see your comment above.

I’m very happy their doing this. I was normally a regular user of startrek.com until they fired the staff of startrek.com and just left it. I can’t wait to use startrek.com to reference or look up information on some episodes and/or check out other trek events, etc. Finally CBS…. thank you !

#21. I agree with you. I don’t have time to visit another website in my day…

i hope they can incorporate any Star Trek: The Experience merch into the new online store of ST.com.

I wore an NX-01 cap with pride (yeah, that’s right ENT NX-01), and somehow it disappeared on me and i can’t find ’em anywhere. kinda bums me out.

Actually knew about it a month ago or so, but hopefully it will be changes for the positive.

Strange, according to sources, Funny Garbage was out of the st.com project for a while…the “stboardadmin” who posted on the Website Board there about a year ago was supposedly the guy from Funny Garbage…but nothing more was ever heard from him except for one day recently he posted under his real name and vanished again.

Looked at some of Funny Garbage’s products, not that incredible. They mainly take a generic framework for a site and customize it to the show in question. They’ve done several other CBS shows…

@Charles Trotter #19…Marc Wade, the former StarTrekAdmin, is working for Disney now. Not sure where Tim Gaskill is.

Correction: Marc Wade was StarTrekEditor, I believe Gaskill was StarTrekAdmin.

I Bailed on that site a few years ago.

Nice of them to finally notice years later, that nothing interesting was happening there.

This is the best Star Trek site in the internet!
This is where I will continue to come!

I love Trek Movie.com!

The old startrek.com site was great back in 2006. But after CBS (or Paramount) fired the old stuff, nothing interesting happend with this site. So I abandoned it and I think I will not return and stay with the very best Star Trek website we have now:

trekmovie.com

PS: Who really needs an official side by now?

I kind of agree with #11. The old site was kind of crappy. I’ll go check it out when it’s up and running out of a sense of curiosity. But I have been here for years. StarTrek.com will have a lot of work to do to fulfill my need and want for all sorts of Trek related news. This site gives me a pretty much unbiased view of the Trek and genre world, warts and all. The old StarTrek.com site was really not much more than a “Rah! Rah!” site that celebrated everything that Star Trek did and never seemed to be able to criticize it or welcome an opposing or negative viewpoint. That’s probably why that negativity manifested itself so vociferously here.

Could be nice to have it back, cause that was my MAIN source back in the day. But now that I have TrekMovie, I doubt I’ll give it a second look other than perhaps the “Most Comprehensive Star Trek Database Available” they’ll claim to have… but I doubt it could be better than my own Trek library and MemoryAlpha combined.

Instead can we get the rest of the 700+ episodes of star trek in HD?

So startrek.com will be back. Better late than never. But too late to promote the recent Trek movie. Actually, the site was effectively closed down just when the promotion would have needed to start. Just imagine: There’s an upcoming movie called “Star Trek” and a lot of buzz about it, and at startrek.com, the obvious place to look for first-hand information (especially for non-fans and casual fans), there is next to nothing about it! How short-sighted can company officials be?

And so fans found everything they needed to know about the Abrams movie here at trekmovie.com, a private-owned site (and to lesser extent at startrekmovie.com which never had much in terms of news). Anthony did just the right thing when he was busy getting all the latest news and involving the fans, while the official people at CBS probably thought it would be enough to show the trailers, and not care about the fans any longer when the film was out.

I can only agree that the fandom deserves an online hub, but perhaps rather more than just one. startrek.com will have a hard time to become a hub that can compete with the fan-run news sites, except with the power that comes from its domain name. And creating a more comprehensive database than MA is definitely impossible anyway. startrek.com has simply missed a couple of years of development. (And by “development” I don’t mean incorporating the newest design techniques. I only hope startrek.com won’t be turned into another Flash hell rife with ads and with bad accessibility that makes my CPU and DSL line burn)

As there is a lot to catch up with for startrek.com, it is only logical to involve unofficial sites in some fashion. I appreciate that and it is a first time that the fans’ online contributions are being recognized. We’ve come a long way since the time when fan sites were under observation from Viacom’s law department!

However, an alliance with the official Trek may become a two-edged sword for fan sites. Allowing free speech in a forum attached to startrek.com should be a matter of course. But featuring news and other content from fan sites is a whole new ball game. I hope that trekmovie.com and other places of interest won’t give up their independence and won’t be bound to a “code of good conduct”.

This is the best site. Where else can you chat back and forth with Bob Orci and sometimes even J.J himself. Or Blog with Cawley from Phase 2. This site has gotten a lot of Exclusives for us. If StarTrek.com and be half as good then great.

@THX, #32…how you been, old man?

No negative viewpoints? You should have been on the Movies board before the movie came out, especially before they let on it was an alternate timeline…Yikes!

I still need to have the “bad taste” washed from my mouth after the firings in 2007.

I consider Trekmovie to be the most official Trek site on the web. It has Orci, Sternbach and others chiming in from time to time, plus it gave us access to the ‘wrap’ of ST09. Will the new ‘official’ site be able to do better? Will its ‘database’ be better than a visit to Memory Alpha? I doubt it.

Star Wars has had an active official site for dogs years, and it helps to have an active franchise, i.e. new material, to keep it vital. CBS is still sleeping in that regard. Unless they ante up for a new series, animated, or whatever, the site is just going to appeal to the occasional tourist from Trekmovie who wants to buy a T-shirt.

Over the years, this web site has become my primary source for Trek news (I won’t bore everyone with a bunch of accolades and atta-boys).

I will give the relaunched startrek.com a fair opportunity to see if it really has improved, but it will take a mighty effort — one which is Herculean and epic on a scale of biblical proportions — for them to get me to switch my allegiances from here.

I’d like to hear Anthony’s opinion about how the new ST.com will co-exist with Trekmovie. Pluses and minuses.

I would say that CBS is a bit green envious! And been shamed on the net. So many wonderful fansites here and all throughout the net! Especialy yours anthony! They feel now a need out of embaressment to “catch up” good luck you will need it LOL

This is cool. more Star Trek stuff is always better.

I’ll definitely go visit it a couple times but unless its way better than trekmovie, which it probably won’t be, because I’ve kinda grown to like this place, I’ll stay loyal to here.

Just keep us updated about it, like when it will be officially on and stuff like that.

And now that Paramount has essentially put startrekmovie.com in a basket and pushed it out into the river, CBS probably finally sees the need for an oficial site for it’s products.

Interesting that the release mentions CBS and st.com working in conjunction with fan sites, because the new admin on the message boards has intimated that CBS might at some point go after fan sites like Paramount did years back and conduct a purge of fan-run sites.

Hopefully, the fan films will be featured as well.

Anthony Pascle im a little scared… Will trekmovie.com still be business as usual once the new startrek.com is up and running? I come here for all my trek news daily and I would hope that nothing will change!

That is great news! Also it is wonderful for them to recognize this site and Trekweb as most important ST fan sites.

Keep up a great work, Anthony and crew!

congrats to Trekmovie.com – you earned that one!

Can’t wait for regular udpates on StarTrek.com.

Hopefully the forums also benefit from all good things to come.

” the site will showcase top fan sites and blogs including TrekMovie”

That’s good news. As it should.

I know mine is a not a top site but it would be nice if they want to feature it too.

Great! I was a fan of ST.com since the days of Pelgar, the Ferengi advice columnist — even got an email answered once in his column :) and I was bummed when it was painfully obvious that the site was on life support (though at least they’re streaming STTOS episodes there now).

–44, I doubt Paramount would shut Trekmovie down, this site’s been a boon to Trek in general.

@ Pat #49 – Paramount’s own site, startrekmovie.com, is already adrift and not monitored, I doubt they are worried about TrekMovie.com.

Remember CBS owns Star Trek and runs Startrek.com.

Someone over at st.com mentioned the possibility that the revised st.com may be used as a portal to channel info from TrekMovie, Memory Alpha and others…cutting down on a lot of need for site upkeep.