Sneak Peek
Article for Mar. 2008 article in Our Isle and Times
Doesn’t that sun feel great! Fortunately, winter provided enough rain to keep me indoors working on Lasqueti’s new website, which should be ready for all to try next month (barring 30 straight days of sunshine!). In the meantime, I’m pretty excited about how it’s shaping up, and thought I’d give you a little preview. The site has two central aims: (1) to serve as a communication hub and resource for our community, with a focus on Lasqueti’s unique culture and lifestyles; and (2) to showcase local artists and businesses, both within our community and more widely. To those ends, the site has a number of nifty features – here are a couple of my favourites:- Community Built – what I’ve been beavering-away at is building a framework that makes it easy for you, any of you, to post and share your “stuff” on the site. That stuff could be photos or poems, articles or announcements, classified ads or community events, even your own page, but whatever it is, you will be able to post it and edit it easily, without having to go through me. I aspire for the site to be for Lasqueti, by Lasqueti.
- Photos – the site uses images to present a multi-faceted view of our island home: our community, our people, our beautiful scenery, and our local artisans and businesses. Not only can you post photos in your own photo album on the site, but you may choose to share your best photos right up on the front-page.
- Marketplace – more than simply a business directory (although that’s there too), the new marketplace is designed to be much more like an actual market, where you can browse the “stalls” and see what’s new and what folks are doing. It’s very easy to update your own market pages, and post news and photos about your latest endeavours. I hope this will keep the Market fresh and active.
- Subscriptions – Interested in a particular discussion? Just love X’s sculptures? Always want to know what’s available at the market? On the new site you can subscribe to virtually any “content” (page) of special interest, so whenever that content is updated, you will get an e-mail with a latest changes and a link to the page.
- Latest News – on the front-page, and elsewhere on the site, small “blocks” along the side of the page will keep you informed about upcoming events and recent posts. This allows you to quickly access what’s most relevant, without searching.
I’ll be writing more about the site’s features and how to use them in the coming months. In the meantime, if you’d like to be involved in the release of the new website - I need volunteers to add a little “real” content. So, even if you can just add one thing - if you have a couple photos or a poem to share, or you have something to sell in a classified ad, or an event for the calendar, or a page on the lasqueti.ca website to update - please contact me, as always webmaster (at) lasqueti.ca (8849) Joseph
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