finishing line in sight!
After a long summer of rainey weather things at horsesmouth are finally coming to a point where the end - or hopefully the beginning - is in view.
Ok, so now I know that building a very smart web (two point zero no less) site is a lot harder than I thought it would be. I think the idea of permament beta is one I should have grasped a bit earlier - but ever the perfectionist - I think I’ve added lots of things to the new site that have just taken time to build. Hopefully this will all be to the benefit of our users and partners in the long term. But it has made it a bit tougher for the thousands of wonderful people who took the time and trouble to join up to our beta. As one of them put it - some are feeling quite “underpestered” in the mentoring department at the moment. This is because we haven’t begun marketing the site at all yet as all of our resources have been going into building the main site behind the beta. Meanwhile - many people are enjoying helpful and supportive exchanges on the site and lots of calls for help are being answered by lots of people. We’ve even had some great feedback on outcomes and how some great advice and interventions have come at just the right time.
We’re also still experimenting with our moderation policies and practices. Our main goal is to keep the site safe for users - and we really do discourage people from exchanging contact details and meeting in real life. Its clear for some people though that this can be counterproductive - particularly in business mentoring relationships - and we’re looking for ways to deal with this and to work with partners to address it.
The new site (more colour, more visible content, more user friendly navigation etc etc) is currently being tested and the bugs (colonies of them) are being zapped. This appears to be a one-bug-at-a-time process which of course frustrates me. It seems that one dead bug makes another bug appear ( the rabbit bug?) but that of course is the nature of technology - its ultimately binary. Amazing really.
So I’m hoping that we can launch (which means go live) in about four weeks time. But I have been saying that for about four months. At least I’m consistent!
Meanwhile I’m a Facebook addict and we’re busy with idea for horsesmouth apps! Check out our facebook group.
Any thoughts on any of this much appreciated here
best
MT
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- Posted by mt on 06/11/07 at 1:34pm
- Comments (35) Trackbacks (3)
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