Web stuff

I’m not a web developer or a programmer or a designer. But I’m interested in all those things, so I try to keep up with some of the basic technology on the web.

I’m also really interested in niche online communities — particularly how leadership develops, how the communities are formed and how they are maintained. Anyway, here’s a list of stuff I’ve dabbled in.

  • sea_2007.gifSearch engine optimization is pretty interesting. Overhyped, but interesting and useful. I spend a bit of time keeping up, and I even took a class and got a little ribbon!
  • I’ve used a few different content management systems for various projects. I’m comfortable using WordPress, Drupal, Mambo, Joomla, Google Apps, and Cascade Server. I’ve even used a few different flavors of wiki for some projects.
  • I started a blog called Slacker Manager back in October of 2004. I sold it to b5media in the summer of 2007. When I finally washed my hands of it, the blog had 8,500 RSS subscribers and 150k-200k pageviews per month.
  • I started Yamhill.TV to learn about video blogging. It’s been a great experience, and I’ll continue to develop the site.
  • I blog about bike stuff at BikeHacks.com.
  • I wrote a manifesto for a site called ChangeThis. The manifesto continues to be pretty popular. It’s called Slacker@Work and it was the genesis for the Slacker Manager blog, mentioned earlier.
  • I cofounded a site called FinAidPro.com, which is offline now. It was intended to be a community for Student Financial Aid professionals. It never quite took off and then we forgot to renew the domain name and that was the end of that.
  • I started a site called Admissionary.com. It’s intended to be a resource/community portal for Higher Education admissions professionals. Too many CMS changes and template changes have made it more of a testing ground than an actual community site.
  • I own a few other domains that could be interesting projects. Right now they point here, but…you never know.
  • I keep a personal blog over here. I’ve been a part of pintglass.org since it first came online back in 2001. It’s just an informal group of friends who use the site for various web projects. There are a few active blogs and a few dusty corners.