CWIRE Blog

Critique of CWIRE sections and rejected ideas

Robert — Mon, 22 May 2006 05:10:15 +0000

As we move along, some ideas will “stick” and others won’t. This is a place to ask questions, speak-out on issues, and knock-down sections of CWIRE that you don’t like. Also, use this thread to argue against ideas or trends before they take hold on CWIRE. (Keep it modest, please — nothing “bleepable,” thanks.)

Think Tank

Robert — Mon, 22 May 2006 05:04:17 +0000

What should we add to CWIRE? The more pages and the more links, the better we can cover the community. There’s no end to what we can cover — only limited resources. The mroe popular the topic, the more local people we’ll draw. And the more local people, the better.

Community Networking

Robert — Mon, 22 May 2006 05:01:05 +0000

Have you ever come across great examples of community networks on the web? Can you point us to examples of “best practices” out there? What would you like to see?

CWIRE Content = $$$

Robert — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 01:31:55 +0000

Think content. Think collaboration. Think local.

Your CWIRE pages are now raising money for local causes.

What are those topics for which you and your neighbors search on the web but don’t find? That’s what CWIRE wants to post. Or maybe it’s just spread-out all over the web? CWIRE wants to gather-it-all-up into simple easy-to-use lists.

If you have a hobby or a business that you’d like to write about, let us know: CWIRE is “a good place to start.”

We’ve given dozens of organizations a boost on the WWW by giving them a presence on CWIRE for free, years before they had their own website. We continue to deliver web traffic to local charities for free. We’ve had visits from hundreds of thousands of people around the world.

At it’s peak, CWIRE had over 30K unique visitors each month. That traffic was driven by lots of unique content – articles about local people, places, and events.

Over 80% of CWIRE’s traffic now comes from search engines. As we add more content, it will be picked-up from search engines and we’ll get more visitors.

The number of pages on CWIRE has decreased: instead of 10K+ pages, we’re now a little over 2K pages. So naturally the traffic to CWIRE is much lower. But now we have revenue based on our web traffic. We can build the web traffic back to our previous levels fairly quickly: there are more people using the web these days, and search engines do most of the work.

You can help CWIRE to help the community and generate revenue by creating new content. You can gather listings, write articles, freshen old webpages, write reviews and/or summaries of other websites, write about your favorite local restaurants, merchants, or hobbies. Your content on CWIRE will attract hits from local people, will help to publicize CWIRE, will help to promote the Local Organizations Directory, and will generate new revenue.

How that revenue gets used is up to you. You can use CWIRE as a means to “work from home,” or you can dedicate your efforts to helping a certain charity, or both. The sky’s the limit. Let’s roll!

WWWolunteer roster

Robert — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 00:44:26 +0000

Add a comment to this message to indicate your interest in helping-out. Let us know:

Your name (or handle, nickname, whatever you want to be called)
The part(s) of CWIRE in which you’re interested (i.e. Burbank schools, Glendale restaurants, sports, calendar, etc.)
Where you are located (city & state)
Your web experience (web novice, writer, PHP programmer, graphic artist, etc.)

What’s new?

Robert — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 00:35:00 +0000

One of the biggest things to happen to CWIRE in the last four years is Google Adsense. Suddenly CWIRE has a steady stream of revenue (small, but steady). This changes everything! We’re now in a position to pay for new content and/or slice-up the pie and make donations to local charities based on the popularity of various sections of CWIRE.

Local businesses are able to take advantage of Google ads.

Welcome back, WWWolunteers!

Robert — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 00:27:12 +0000

Greetings, CWIRE WWWolunteers! I’m so glad to be able to start-up this group again — there’s so much to be done! This blog site will be a place to discuss WWWolunteer projects, set goals, find help, plan and track projects, and coordinate efforts.

Greetings, neighbors!

Robert — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 20:38:00 +0000

Hello! This is my first foray into the blogosphere, folks. I’ve put off creating a blog on CWIRE for fear of being over-run with junk/spam postings. I can’t tell you how many millions of spam messages I’ve trashed over the years. What a waste of time! Hopefully this blog will provide a way to “share the microphone” with other local residents and yet keep a “hook” nearby just in case. I hope that this tool will encourage new participation, spark some creative direction, and help to build some momentum. Cheers!