Archive for the “Project Developments & Hype” Category

Within the next few weeks, WebCommons’ flagship local discussion space, Louisville History & Issues will be changing its name.

Here’s an excerpt from the site’s announcement:

Since [last Spring], usage of this site has dropped off considerably, and from many perspectives, the site seems to be drifting. All kinds of reasons could be cited, but I think the biggest problem is that this site has never appeared to have the tight focus it deserves. And I believe this tight focus should be on discussion of local issues.

Too many people seem to believe that this is a “history site”, when that was never my intention. I had meant the site to be about the discussion of local history and local issues, with neither one weighted over the other. While I continue to be very interested in providing discussion space for historical discussion (and two forums dedicated to this won’t go away), I think it’s time for a clear shift to local issues as the main thrust of this site.

Barring the acceptance of another suggestion, the site is tentatively set to change its name to
“Metro Issues :: Louisville”.

This change has had me wrenching for months, but I’m finally going to do it.  I am transitioning my web programming business into a media business.

The rationale for me doing this is really mostly personal, but I’ve discovered over time three things:

1. Web programming, as delightful as it is when it’s just the design and programming work, is a horrible business for a small outfit like mine to engage in for myriad reasons.  One of the biggest horrors I have is simply being able to keep up with all the different ways to develop a website and the technologies, and that’s just within the PHP/JavaScript universe.  Also, I have come to the hard conclusion that it’s become too prohibitively difficult to find the paid projects I can handle from very difficult-to-identify customer sets.  Marketing and handling inquiries has become pretty much become an impossible chore for this line of work.  And I detest impossible chores — they deplete my passion.
2. Because of #1, revenues have been way too uneven, and this has dissatisfied me to no end.  I need to have income that is more regular.  I’m sure everyone can sympathize here.
3. Developing my main media site, Louisville History & Issues, has become an increasing labor of love to the point of addiction, and I also have another media project in development that has me increasingly excited, if not riveted.  Strangely enough, the first web project I ever tinkered with in the mid 1990s was a media site, an e-zine to be exact.  So this is my first love, and I would like to make a go of it as the WebCommons business.

So, as of now, WebCommons :: Web Programming Services becomes WebCommons :: Media.

Since I am spending most of my time working on developing the media sites, this company site will be changed slowly.  I haven’t even decided on my new company logo yet. 

Further, I fully intend to take care of existing web programming customers, and perhaps even take on media-related projects that you may have (e.g., blog/sites).

The biggest thing spurring this change is my deep desire to concentrate on building a media business, and this includes running Louisville History & Issues as a commercial public service (kind of like a newspaper) for the first time — up to now, it has been run as a fully non-profit service.

As for the specific changes to Louisville History & Issues, I will post more about that over there soon.

Big thanks (!) to everyone, including my customers, for bearing with me as I make these changes.

Little Loomhouse - New Website Design

I apologize for not posting very much in this blog so far, but I guess I’m the kind of web programmer who would rather do than blog about it.     But that’s no excuse of course.  So here goes…

Recently I completed a site makeover for the Little Loomhouse in Louisville.  Check out the new WebCommons page where I show what the website looked like before I did my magic, and what the website has been transformed into — a dramatically improved website, both visually and functionally (and the client wholeheartedly agrees!).

Like I say on the page… If your business or non-profit organization has an informational website that needs to come alive with programmed features and the easy ability for you to make changes to it, or even just receive a visual makeover, contact WebCommons — Get a quality result that everyone raves about, for a very reasonable price.

On edit: WebCommons is no longer in the business of doing web programming projects for clients.

One of WebCommons’ non-profit pet projects, the local discussion board Louisville History & Issues, is becoming increasingly prominent in Louisville political and history circles, but even more interesting for discussion here, it is also becoming a highly functional (master?)piece of web software.

Louisville History & Issues (LouHI for short) is based on WebCommons’ fork of phpBB version 2 that is currently dubbed “Citizen Assembly Board” (CAB for short).   CAB has been in development for several years, and has many interesting and unusual features, many not even available on the newest version 3 of phpBB.   Of course it also doesn’t enjoy some of the newest features and design approach of phpBB 3, but that has its own set of pros and cons, and I will likely muse about that in a future post here.

LouHI is currently undergoing a phased release of its “Version 3″, which I am touting as the “finally useful!” version.   Read about the changes in Phase 1 as well as plans for later phases after the jump.

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