Council has approved the building of a mosque at Shoalhaven Heads. A spokesperson for the council said “this is a much-needed and welcome addition to the wider Shoalhaven as there are many Muslim people who have to travel many miles to attend services. The Christian community has been very supportive in the proposal and we thank them”

Gee, that made you sit up and take notice didn’t it? No, it isn’t actually true - I wouldn’t personally care one way or another if it was true, but at least you are reading this!

Why? I hear you ask… Simply because I’d like you to read on.

The observant among you will have noticed that the home page now contains the latest articles (or posts if you prefer the blogging term). I have made the change because this way, recent articles and updates are immediately presented to the site visitors instead of an unchanging page.

I thought I’d have a go at this to see if it helps with community involvement - which apart from the fishing club members, is basically nil.

To be honest, prior to the drama when the site went down for a few days, I was seriously considering abandoning the whole project for lack of interest. I am about to approach the sponsors again to ask them for an annual donation but I’m not prepared to do so unless I feel it is worth carrying on with.

Unique site visitors - and no, logged in users like myself aren’t counted - still number around 500 a month, (Edit June ‘09 : make that around 2000 a month now since the update!) but it seems that local visitors are few and far between and even though I have tried to promote it via my computer email newsletters, letterbox flyers and the odd adverts in the Heads News, it seems that local people just aren’t that interested in visiting a site put up solely for their benefit. If there were locals visiting I’d expect to see far more comments left than there are and some feedback left on the Contact page.

The web site is well indexed by Google and the other search engines, so it’s easy to find if you look for ’shoalhaven heads’ but it would seem that to get locals to visit regularly will take something more ‘in your face’. People have moaned to me in the past ‘oh, well I never knew it was there - why don’t you advertise on the radio or something?‘. Hmmm.

Putting it simply (and without using any bad langauge), I don’t have the budget for this and am unlikely to ever have it. The best way to promote community sites is by ‘viral marketing’ - where people recommend it to others, they tell more people and so on. This is where you come in.

What about recommending this website to 5 locals you know? You can simply use the ‘Email this article’ link at the top of every article, fill in the details and it’s done. It will take all of 2 minutes.

Because honestly, in the end - I’ve got better things to do with my time than spending hours every week finding/thinking up/adding content, helping site authors (well, author - apart from me it’s just Jim Webster) with article layouts and problems and promoting it if it simply isn’t needed or wanted.

I don’t want a pat on the back, I’d just like to know that I’m not wasting my time!

End of rant.