Action: Website Building

Hi everyone,

Starting today, 22 May 2008, I will be blogging in two places: here at the sites I have been running for a while and to be saved as work for the www.reinventinglife.org site which is not up yet. For any of you that haven’t heard my woes, trials and tribulations mixed with cries of delight over putting up my own website -here is the jist:

1. I want a site that weaves all the various sides of my life into one place – many of you have said, “I like (one blog) but don’t get (what I’m doing on another blot).” If all goes well the new site will let you take what appeals, but also give you links into the other parts of my life and how they play off of the bits you know.
2. I also want a site where we can talk – really talk back and forth with each other or in a group, just like I talk with students at online universities. Have you ever liked what you read in a blog – wanting to comment back but then said “what the heck, lots of energy to respond but then it goes nowhere?” I have that response all the time, in fact it was my frustration in wanting to respond to Chris Brogan when he posted this morning about his thoughts for the future that created this blog (smile).
3. I have a girlfriend who used a relatively expensive site building tool, and a male friend who told me about Joomla, an open source system he thought I could manage. As you can see from the picture above I am almost there (well I WAS almost there before the system locked me out of my own website – but more about that at another time).
4. I’m learning all kinds of things, and trying to apply out of the box thinking to them. So why don’t we see sites where we respond to each other in forums (where we don’t have to go through a long sign up process just to say hi?) Why don’t our websites let us sign up after we know the ideas there are interesting enough to come back to? If you find me in one place how can I ensure you can find me in others? How can my site model distributed content (like education, some art, some words, some video, some discussion, some group work). Why do we see blogs when articles are just as easy?
5. Long story short (as my mother would say) I haven’t been here – actively writing, because I have been there – planning and putting these plans up on a site.

If you want to ensure you see the site once it is up for suggestions and editing to the larger body of my readers – please email me at james.alana@gmail.com and I’ll make sure you get notification when it is ready to see.

Now if I can get past the last two hurdles, getting back in and getting it up on the server, then soon I will be sending you all an email telling you we’re active. Given that I have to do taxes, my guess is that the site will go live around the 4-15^th of June. BIG SMILE - there would be days when I would say: "pray for me."

Love to you all,

Alana