Hi,<:LINEBREAK:><:LINEBREAK:>My site is http://www.wisdomkeepers.org. It originally started under a private email name on AOL. It grew quickly enough that one of our Board members donated space and the bucks to buy our domain name. Within less than 1.5 years of originally opening our pages, we were on our own .org address.<:LINEBREAK:><:LINEBREAK:>Starting on AOL accomplished two things - it gave me free tools (albeit very limited) to learn basic web design, and it was a fairly simple (albeit one file at a time) FTP protocol.<:LINEBREAK:><:LINEBREAK:>We made all the appropriate mistakes the first two goes - overly heavy graphics, non-professional appearance, etc. We did manage to avoid annoying things like sound files and early java applets, though!<:LINEBREAK:><:LINEBREAK:>By the time we did our last site upgrades (we do all this ourselves as we are currently unfunded and have no paid staff), many things had changed. HTML was more versatile and flexible. Sites had sprung up that offered already debugged coding for java and DHTML. Other services had come along that allowed us to expand our reach (like PayPal, iGive.com, etc.). Still other services came along that allowed free "critiquing" of sites (like web site garage).<:LINEBREAK:><:LINEBREAK:>I also had time to learn more about graphic design, tweaking pages for a more polished, more professional appearance, and marketing a non-profit organization.<:LINEBREAK:><:LINEBREAK:>Now our pages feature original graphics with a few licensed professional graphics here and there. We're in the process of getting Safe-surf and Bobby approval on our pages. The page load times are greatly improved and we usually get a "good" to "excellent" rating from the critiquing services. The number of sites linking to our web-based resource pages grows daily. We're improving our use of META tags.<:LINEBREAK:><:LINEBREAK:>We still do all of this on our own without benefit of professional developers but, in a way, I think that has helped us more than hurt us. We went into this with a very open and positive mind about the power of the Internet and what it could do for us. We do keep safety of our viewers forefront on both our sites and our listserves.<:LINEBREAK:><:LINEBREAK:>We're not done developing our domain by any means. We've just begun work on a secured, "virtual boardroom" area as our Board members are scattered across the country and our organization lacks the funding to fly them in for Board meetings. We're also hoping, once we recruit experts in a particular area, to develop a secure, online training area for our field volunteers. I guess in a way, we are planning a WAN - it's called the Web!!

Hi I'm lisa I have my personal site htmlsdc.zopesite.org and i'm helping with www.teamtechdc.org the site for the vista project I'm working on. So far our biggest challenges have been agreeing on a design (upcoming) and finding and creating content. I happilly babel away on any subject but the need for useful information and the time to update the information is overwhelming.<:LINEBREAK:>Both sites are using zope so I'm working with the others on separating content from structure. This includes the use of css and zope's structure so that we can reuse as much code as possible. I'll further update as the progress continues.<:LINEBREAK:>ps Much of the upcoming site is done using dreamweaver although I still prefer handcoding.