Cycling Builder

The team at PCPartPicker and I have been working on a new site dedicated to cyclists and do-it-yourself bicycle builders. It’s called Cycling Builder and it’s live. Whether you’re building a road, mountain, or cyclocross bike, Cycling Builder can help you choose compatible parts at the best prices.

We’ve been working on Cycling Builder for awhile now. At PCPartPicker we’ve built tools enabling a massive community of computer builders to research parts and pricing, connect with others for build advice, and be inspired by the creations of fellow-builders. While we love that space and have big plans for new features, we’ve also been thinking about our other areas of interest and if we could provide similar value to the communities which exist in those niches. A few of my coworkers are into cycling, be it mountain biking, road biking and/or bike commuting and we saw similar pain points with regards to specing out a part list, sharing cycling knowledge, determining compatibility of parts, etc. Over the years we’ve also had people reach out to us on their own asking if there could be a “PCPartPicker for bikes”. We decided to devote resources towards building up the site and it feels great to roll it out.

The feedback we’ve received so far has been very helpful. We’re already making tweaks and continuing to build out the part database as well as onboarding additional retailers around the world. The Cycling Builder forums are a great place to send us feedback or offer product feature requests.

Cycling Builder also showcases the new responsive site templates my co-worker AJ and I have been working on. I’m currently working on getting PCPartPicker up on the same templates which we plan to roll out soon. Once the dust settles with these two launches I’d like to share more on our process and the decisions we made along the way. I’ve spent a lot of time figuring out how to wrangle tables in a responsive layout as well as how to build a core library of templates and CSS which can be shared across sites but also customized to meet the specific branding needs of each site. It’s been a great journey of learning and growth.

I’d love to know what you think about Cycling Builder, so hit me up on Twitter, leave feedback in the Cycling Builder forums or send me a direct message on the site. Also, if you’ve put together some interesting builds send me the part list permalink, I’d love to see what you’re dreaming up.