“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” Ferris Bueller

Ferris could have been talking about websites just as easily. The recent changes at the top of CarteretWriters.org will have been obvious to those who visit the site regularly. But what may not be obvious is that changes to the website are ongoing and have been since August 2022.

“True life is lived when tiny changes occur.” Leo Tolstoy

The key to developing a website and keeping it fresh is to make consistent, small changes, and those kinds of changes are usually content changes. As a result, content changes are a lot of work. Small things, like adding events or writing blog posts, are ongoing and time consuming, but they’re valuable. Many may remember the logo change Pepsi made in 2008 that came with a $1 million dollar price tag.

Maybe I conflated ‘valuable’ with ridiculously expensive. Even so, fresh site content is extremely valuable on a community-driven site that members (hopefully) visit regularly. The relationship between the site and the community it serves is based on trust and accuracy. The best way for that relationship to thrive is for the community itself to be involved in the site and its content development. It also makes it more likely the community will feel a sense of pride and ownership, which is what we want because this is your site if you’re a member of Carteret Writers. It’s even kind of your site if you’re not a member but you read the blog regularly. Like the way Reed’s might be your coffee shop or Captain’s Table might be your lunch spot.

ChatGPT? What’s That?

“If we all did the things we are capable of, we would literally astound ourselves.” Thomas Edison

Here’s where we are then: The site is up, stable, and effective.

Now we need to decide how we’re going to move forward.

• For some of you, your support will come in the form of visiting the site, filling out your profile, and commenting on blogs.
• Others may want an opportunity to write articles, manage event listings, and other content-type stuff.
• And finally, some of you may want to help run the site itself, either out of curiosity or because you run (or want to run) your own author site. This is a great chance to refine existing skills and learn new ones.

We’re putting together a Technology Committee to ensure we can be responsive to all the people who will soon be helping to make the site wonderful, and we’ll be talking more about it and the site’s newest features at our May 18 meeting. I hope to see you there.