I'm still formulating the ideas of all the things that can be done here but here are my thoughts. Unless there is someone else new that I don't know
about I'm the only web developer in the group. And quite frankly I just don't have time right now to create a website from the ground up but I have a
better idea anyway.
A week or so ago, I setup freethoughtfortwayne.wordpress.com. Here are my thoughts;
#1) We map the domain name FreethoughtFortWayne.org (which I have purchased both .com and .org) to this blog and it becomes the group's website.
#2) Any member of FFW can become an author and post their entries. These posts can be new or cross-posted from your personal blog (I don't know how many of you blog but that's what I would probably do). The advantage to cross posting of course is moving web traffic from your site to the FFW site and back.
#3) You can post anything you want about any topic you want as long as it sticks to Freethought topics (which is a very broad range of topics although) and important events in FFW members lives. This will help make the site more relevant and target a specific niche market.
#4) Perhaps the largest advantage to a site like this is the public exposure it will receive over anything we post here in the forums. Comments are open to anyone. Perhaps the blog would replace some of our forum topics here and simply move the discussion to a more public venue. Our forums can be used for more "off-topic" internal type items, I don't see a lot of people wanting to take time to post on both the blog and forums, but you never know.
#5) One disadvantage to having a "real" website is that in order to operate it it would require a certain level of expertise that would probably fall on my shoulders, which is fine but I have a feeling I'm going to become a bottleneck for updates and changes. Which is bad ;)
#6) It gives an immediate and public place for interested people to find the group. We'll setup some pages dedicated to "about us", meeting times, events, speakers, Enlightenment Show, etc.
#7) Ironically I'm not the first to have this idea in fact here are some recent posts on FriendlyAtheist of other groups doing the exact same thing.
A week or so ago, I setup freethoughtfortwayne.wordpress.com. Here are my thoughts;
#1) We map the domain name FreethoughtFortWayne.org (which I have purchased both .com and .org) to this blog and it becomes the group's website.
#2) Any member of FFW can become an author and post their entries. These posts can be new or cross-posted from your personal blog (I don't know how many of you blog but that's what I would probably do). The advantage to cross posting of course is moving web traffic from your site to the FFW site and back.
#3) You can post anything you want about any topic you want as long as it sticks to Freethought topics (which is a very broad range of topics although) and important events in FFW members lives. This will help make the site more relevant and target a specific niche market.
#4) Perhaps the largest advantage to a site like this is the public exposure it will receive over anything we post here in the forums. Comments are open to anyone. Perhaps the blog would replace some of our forum topics here and simply move the discussion to a more public venue. Our forums can be used for more "off-topic" internal type items, I don't see a lot of people wanting to take time to post on both the blog and forums, but you never know.
#5) One disadvantage to having a "real" website is that in order to operate it it would require a certain level of expertise that would probably fall on my shoulders, which is fine but I have a feeling I'm going to become a bottleneck for updates and changes. Which is bad ;)
#6) It gives an immediate and public place for interested people to find the group. We'll setup some pages dedicated to "about us", meeting times, events, speakers, Enlightenment Show, etc.
#7) Ironically I'm not the first to have this idea in fact here are some recent posts on FriendlyAtheist of other groups doing the exact same thing.
http://friendlyatheist.com/2008/03/02/mississippi-atheists/
http://friendlyatheist.com/2008/03/02/iowa-atheists-join-the-blogging-mix/
This site is ready to go so let me know what everyone's thoughts are. I'm going to start contributing unless someone thinks this is a bad idea. If you
want a login and want to start contributing drop me a line and I'll set you up. It's very easy to use. In fact if you can post here you can post
there.
