FAQ: Why the new website?

Gaystlouis.com goes through a change every few years.

As the website has evolved, it has gone through transformations.

Keep in mind, it *IS* a thirteen year old website. It is older than Google. It is older than many kinds entering high school.

The early days, the website was a simple TEXT webdesign, handed coded by myself. Eventually I learned to write a few minor CGI scripts to handle things like Server Side Includes, so we could do things like online surveys, or allow people to sign up for our mailing list, hosted over on Queernet.org.

During that time, I started work on something called “Rainbow Arch” which was meant as an online-only newspaper/magazine. I declared that print was dying and it was time to embrace this internet thing. But even better… ANYONE could print. Looking back, we call this “Blogging” but at the time, there was no word for it.

About this time, I started implementing a CGI script which handled the Calendar functions, as well as another which handled the Guide, allowing me to list a Random Business and Organization each day. Eventually I purchased a CGI application which allowed the site to have forums. And shortly after that, I purchased, yet another, CGI application to run the Classifieds area.

However, the spammers had started to learn to abuse systems, and the random CGI scripts all written by different people was not working properly. It was time to prepare for a shift.

Complicating matters, during this time also, we started working with KDHX to create the “Rainbow Calendar” which aired a few times a day listing upcoming events in the LGBT Community of St. Louis. I started posting the latest ones on the website. Again, we now call that Podcasting, but there wasn’t a term for it then.

I also had started publishing this thing called an RSS feed. It was brand new and wasn’t even a standard yet, but the potential was there. All the RSS feeds were coded by hand so they weren’t very good, but the website had it.

So, version 1 of the website ended sometime in 2003 after starting in early 1998. I spent 40-50 hours a week hand coding/entering data onto the website. There was no way for anyone else to update information on the site. It had to come in through email. And I was flooded.

Version 2 of the website was based on a new system called php-Nuke.

php-Nuke allowed the website to be updated without having to code the website. It was a framework to allow others to get involved in the website. I was intentionally giving up my control so that others could have more freedom. This was also motivated by a layoff I was hit with. I was paying $300/month for the server before and that’s a lot of money to pay on unemployment… and the website unfortunately makes less than a few percent of its bills back.

php-Nuke allowed a consolidated Calendar, and an updated Guide function as well as an integrated Forums section.

However, php-Nuke had lots of security issues. We had hack after hack hit the website. I’m adept enough to have secured the big holes in the website, but it still got nailed a few times. I’d find a hole they broke, plug it and then they’d find another.

I also started implementing this new Calendaring feature called iCal. The day my iCal feed went live was the day that Google started supporting it. Gaystlouis.com was one of the first with an iCal feed. From day one, our events could be synchronized on Apple’s iPhone and auto-updated.

In the end, the company that make php-Nuke sold it off to another company and hadn’t updated their software in over a year. The writing was on the wall. Time to move on.

Sadly, there was nothing out there which worked well enough to jump. And I was facing another layoff (two years after my previous) and so I was burnt out. I shuttered the website for about 9 months.

Then I started receiving emails from people pleading with me to put it back online. In my absense, no other site had stepped forward to take a leading role in the LGBT Community and these emailers wanted something… anything.

Version 3. About this time I was also moving the website to a new host (after getting a new job). Similar server capabilities to what I had originally, but only $105/month now. Now I could run a slightly better software program.

As part of that, the website moved over to phpBB3. phpBB2 were the forums that were part of the php-Nuke setup, but wedged into place. phpBB3 was far more secure than php-Nuke ever was. In fact, the website was never hacked once when under phpBB3. It was spammed to hell-and-back at one point, but I fixed that.

phpBB3 was good, but had a big problem. The Calendar was a separate script I purchased and the company went under shortly after installing it, so I could never move it. Likewise, the Guide could not go back online as the software I wanted to purchase to run it, needed a better server. To make matters worse, another module, the Gallery, did work, but didn’t function quite right.

So we were back to multiple different programs, wedged together trying to make the website work… Which didn’t work properly.

Version 3.5 – I tried making the front page of the website solely stories from RSS feeds from other organizations and news media in town, however, two things happened. First, almost none of those people provided a link back to my website, much less covering my feed. Secondly, the system started getting “gamed”, where someone would post a story at a false time so it would sit at the top of my website for days longer than it should. Since I was doing this and not getting anything in return from these other groups, I felt it was time to stop the bleeding from the website and cut off the free-for-all.

Version 4. The Latest.
So the new website is based on WordPress 3. Why WordPress?

Because it powers most of the blogs on this planet. If I had to do a rough estimate, WordPress is probably the largest blog engine in use on the internet. And this version has some functions which worked perfectly with what I wanted…

So in short… The website used to be completely controlled by me, but I got overwhelmed, so I pushed it out to the community to maintain and it wasn’t. So I pulled it back, which burnt me out really fast, so I tried to push it back out, which again failed. So we are back to I’m running the show again.

But this time is a little different. Gaystlouis.com used to be focused solely on providing the best resource to the LGBT Community of St. Louis. And I still have that.

However, I will not make claims on what the future will hold. In the past I would’ve made public statements on the future of the website and where it is going. With the way the economy is, I could be in Chicago looking for work in a year. I could have someone who wants to purchase the website. (And yes, after nearly $20K in debt *still* on my credit cards, I am always open to selling the website.) Facebook may take over the world and leave smaller sites in the dust. Who knows?

I have been able to predict trends in technology and I think Gaystlouis.com is going to be in good hands on WordPress.

BUT… I will do my best to support the LGBT Community using the best resources I have… Like WordPress 3.

So if anyone has any thoughts or questions, feel free to leave a comment here and I’ll try to elaborate.