Freshman Amanda Loescher was clicking around the UW-Eau Claire home page one day when she came upon something that she found very helpful.

The ride board, which countless Eau Claire students have used to find rides home for the weekend, now has a location online at www.uwec.edu/rideboard. This gives students in search of a ride home for Thanksgiving weekend another place to look.

Sophomore Mark Ziesemer got the idea for an online ride board because of the number of students who had trouble finding rides home for the weekend.

He said he had noticed that the current ride boards were not kept up-to-date, and they are spread out over campus.

The three physical ride boards, located in Davies and Hilltop centers and Towers Hall, are independent from one another.

The information on the boards can be inaccurate, and the handwriting can be hard to read, Ziesemer said.

It isn’t guaranteed that the people who post are university students, he said.

Ziesemer, a computer science major, said he hopes to solve those problems with the online ride board.

With the online board, students need to sign in to prove they are Eau Claire students in order to use it.

The online board sorts entries based on ZIP code. Whether a student is looking for a ride or better riders, the list is sorted with the closest destinations listed first.

Ziesemer said he came up with the idea for an online ride board last semester and made a proposal about it to United Hall Council in March. UHC recommended that the online ride board replace the physical boards.

Ziesemer said the online ride board, in its current form, has been operating for about four weeks and has been well received so far.

“Most people I’ve talked to think it’s a good idea,” he said. “It beats checking another board for rides.”

Loescher had success finding riders using the board.

She said she had trouble finding rides home early on in the semester when she didn’t have a car. She uses the online ride board when she drives home in an effort to return the favor.

“A whole bunch of people call me every time I put my name on there,” she said.

While people who have used it have been pleased with it so far, Ziesemer said there are still a few bugs to work out.

For example, the board cannot be accessed using a Mac computer.

In addition, Ziesemer can’t make any changes or corrections to the board himself. He has to have Computer Networking Services do it.

The programming for the new board wasn’t difficult, he said. The most difficult part was getting somebody to host the page, because the university did not allow him to host it himself. Eventually, Housing and Residence Life agreed to host the page.