Once upon a time, skateboarding was a strictly local phenomenon. All the boards being sported on at the skate park bore a suspicious resemblance, and aspiring Tony Hawks were at the mercy of the ordering habits of the master reseller in town. Custom parts were hard to find amidst the mountain of different catalogues and took ages to arrive in the snail mail.

No matter what style of skating you prefer, whether you stick to street skating just to get around, or prefer kick-flipping, ollying and grinding over all kinds of obstacles at your favorite skate venue, you have probably had a frustrating time or two at a local skate shop that just didn’t have your special aluminum trucks or trick wheels- especially disadvantaged skaters living in small towns where, if you’re lucky and have a sporting goods store, they might have a small rack of boards next to their hoodies and shoes.

Now that internet access has spread to the far reaches of the globe, anyone can browse skateboard websites, with an unlimited inventory of the most exotic specialty parts available. Customizing your board is now as simple as surfing your way to the supplier, ordering all your specs, and kicking back until they arrive at your door.

While you’re waiting for your special order to be speed-delivered, you can check out the many skateboard websites featuring videos of competitions and compilations of clips from your favorite celebrity skater will be easy to find. On the other hand, perhaps you prefer watching amateurs taking a dive instead. Whatever your pleasure, the hard part will be signing off.

There are a number of skateboard websites and plenty of general video-sharing sites like YouTube, where you can find how-to videos teaching you how to perform all skill levels of moves and tricks. You can now get tips as simple as getting onto your board and basic riding to learning how to execute that 360 backside pop-shuvit that’s been landing on your backside more than your board.

Thanks to digital video cameras and skate related websites, you can now get personal tips and tutorials from the original pros on their signature tricks. If you think you’ve got something important to teach the noobs, just get a friend to record your best moves so you can upload and share your clips.

There are also plenty of skateboard-related forums on where you can get together with other to trade trick tips, debate the merits of various brands and equipment, ask any questions you can think of, and discuss the skills and styles, or lack thereof, of publicly known names in the skating world.

Thanks to the miracle of the internet, your community of skaters now spans the globe. Knowledge and opinions fly freely online at the lightening fast rate of a satellite connection, bringing the growth of skating to heights unthought of during the humble days when a select elite surfed the sidewalk. Today, the skater on a quest for the perfect board or trick to perform on it surfs the World Wide Web as well.