Some 15 people in Heritage Village expressed interest in building of a website for Heritage Village on our a sign-up sheet posted in the clubhouse in January. Our goal was to seek funding from government programs for Seniors and have the structure of the website built by professionals. But funding takes time and we're hot to trot. Basic websites as marketing "brochures" can be built in hours or days, but a dynamic interactive website that can involve the whole community is a complex effort: FaceBook and MySpace have spent $ millions. Our goal is more modest, but still a daunting task if we want to satisfy the on-line needs of 700 people and post archives as well as daily events.
People are asking me, when I'm going to build their Village website. I'm approaching retirement, so no, I don't want to build it alone - that's no fun. We need to pool the talents of our 700 residents: that's how the best websites on the planet have been built, by collaborative effort. Visit Wikipedia or any software forum to witness the power of "Crowdsourcing" (Economist, Sept.6, 2008).
So how do you build a website, collectively? Back in 1996, when the World-Wide Web was just a baby, I built my first website the hard way, alone, using raw HTML code, and uploading to a university server using FTP (File Transfer Protocol). Then came shrink-wrapped packages such as Microsoft FrontPage to make it easier. But you still needed to know raw code to fix the bugs. I had to buy the software which became obsolete in 2006 when Microsoft stopped supporting it. That's not a friendly task for Seniors. (If you are using Internet Explorer, just go to "View" and then click on "Source" to see what I mean). I had to buy the FrontPage software but it became obsolete in 2006 when Microsoft cancelled further support, putting my second website on life-support. My next website won't be built under the thumb of Microsoft, at my expense.
That's not how most websites are built today. Even professional website designers now use on-line tools called CMS, or Content Management Systems. Once a domain name and host server have been acquired, a website is built by content added in much the same way that you write an article in Microsoft Word, and add pictures. The CMS tool sits on the host server, not on the end-user's computer. Contributors just use their own computers and log on to the website using their regular browser - no new software is needed - no costs but a learning curve. There's still a big difference between a professional site, and what a group of amateurs initially assemble - but that is in the details - and with time, an amateur site also gets better.
The good news for Seniors, is that some CMS software tools are "open source" and thus free! One of the best free on-line CMS tools is called "Joomla!", the Swahili word for "all together". This tool allows people who are not computer programmers, and don't know or care about source code, to contribute to building a site. Joomla! was developed since 2005 by the collaboration of a core of volunteer software programmers assisted by 200,000 forum contributors, world-wide. Such is the power of the Internet. Visit http://www.joomla.org/ to get more information or seach for Joomla! article at http://www.wikipedia.org/ .
I'll have more on how we get started in my next post. Our website will be developed at: http://www.inheritage.ca/ with your help and input. A meeting of interested Village residents will be held shortly.
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