If you haven’t visited the Ocean Beach MainStreet Association website lately, I urge you to visit it, bookmark it, or add it to your favorites. Like our own website, it’s grown substantially over the years, and I add more information every time I visit. It’s become a good and reliable reference for Ocean Beach.
Five years ago, when my husband and I bought a house in Ocean Beach and eagerly anticipated our move from Los Angeles, I combed the internet for information on our new community. I was surprised to find that the sites about OB were anemic at best. The Ocean Beach MainStreet Association’s site had the most information, but it was static and offered only a brief glimpse of OB.
In fact, I was so surprised by how scant any information on OB was on the web that I naively thought I might be able to create a vital OB community site myself. Ah ignorance! At the time, I had no idea how much it would take to build a vital website for such an active and diverse community as ours. Now I understand that one person working full time just couldn’t keep up with the information this town generates, let alone improve and adjust the site at the same time. Also, consider how much things have changed in the 5 years since I first looked at the site. Twitter didn’t even exist, Facebook was only 2 years old, and Wikipedia was only 4. That’s a lot for anyone to adjust to, let alone a business association relying mostly on volunteers.
Thankfully, OB didn’t have to rely on me because someone who also saw the need for a better OB online presence was about to come to the rescue. One day, two years ago, Ocean Beach resident and Intrepid Network owner Josh Utley wanted to know what the surf was like down by the pier and checked out the web camera on the OMBA site. While checking out the surf, he found the site, like so many sites run by smaller companies and organizations, badly in need of an overhaul.
Center of the OBMA’s Website
He hoped to contribute his website-creation expertise as the owner of Intrepid Network. This internet development company helps organizations refine usability, interactivity, entertainment, information delivery, and internet marketing; he joined the OBMA as a local businessman. That same week, he attended a promotional meeting at the OBMA.
It was a stroke of luck for the OBMA because, at the same time, their volunteer webmaster, Chuck Schiele, needed to step down as his graphic business was flourishing.
Josh took the reins, aiming to create a site that was easy to update and convenient for OBMA staff, volunteers, and visitors. He was perfect for the job not only because he loved OB as an OB native, but also because of his background and knowledge of two key internet technologies: dynamic websites and open-source software. In the last few years, internet capabilities that once were out of reach have become accessible. While information on implementing complex websites is now available and affordable to all, it still takes time to master this new world of website development. For the OBMA, Josh taking over site development was a coup.
Josh and the OBMA promotion committee liked the design and style Chuck created, but Josh saw new ways the site could grow to serve the community and visitors better. His first task was large and invisible: transfer the site to the open-source content management system Drupal. This would give OBMA a more flexible, accessible platform that could handle anything they might throw at it. Adaptability, as we’re all aware, is a valuable commodity on the web. In fact, according to Michael Nelson, a leading expert on the future of the internet, the internet revolution is only 15% complete!
Given Drupal’s popularity and the number of people contributing knowledge to improve it, it is likely to last for the foreseeable future. Drupal’s website says that it powers “millions of websites and applications. It’s built, used, and supported by an active and diverse community of people around the world.” They say the White House and the World Wildlife Fund use Drupal.
Use Drupal to build everything from personal blogs to enterprise applications. Thousands of add-on modules and designs let you build any site you can imagine.
Drupal is free, flexible, robust, and constantly being improved by hundreds of thousands of passionate people from all over the world.
Although transferring the site took much more time on the front end, the decision to do it, and the time Josh spent, was an excellent investment in the future of OBMA’s online presence. Josh not only built the website to grow, but his expert setup also lets someone at the OBMA office input and update information quickly and easily with minimal training. The site can also add new technologies as needed. Best of all, because the whole system is open-source, it is extremely inexpensive, often free, while being incredibly robust.
For the first 3 months, Josh worked almost exclusively on the site (for no pay), and even after that, he put so many hours into the OBMA website that his business (and, no doubt, pocketbook) suffered. And of course, the web platform wasn’t the only work that needed to be done on the site.
Enter another person central to the OBMA website’s depth, Becca Lyn, who joined the OBMA staff as a part-time project manager. Becca Lyn is a native OBecian and graduated with a degree in International Business but with the talents of an artist. Although she works 30 hours a week for OBMA, she still gets a lot accomplished. One of her many jobs with the OBMA is collecting and posting material on the site. She is also a photographer and writer, so she can help fill out the content when needed. Together, they began the ongoing project of building the website. But the OBMA promotional committee needed to guide Josh and Becca Lyn’s decisions, and they worked hard to make countless decisions to help the site transition smoothly, serve members, streamline OBMA’s workload, and remain maintainable. I asked Josh if it was difficult to work with a volunteer promotional committee like the OBMA, and he said they were awesome.
OBMA people are upbeat, positive, and helpful. The group is better run than some companies, and the promo committee is more productive than some CEOs. I grew up in OB, and I’ve worked in Los Angeles and even in Nebraska, but I like working with people here the best. I find people in OB open-minded and respectful; they have a broad worldview and room for different perspectives and opinions.
It’s been almost two years since the project began, and the promotion committee meets regularly to discuss what still needs to be done, along with the latest ideas, additions, and changes. Because Josh based the current design on an existing structure, some inherited aspects of the site still need work. And, as with any site, things will change as the OBMA scales back from visitors and watches how they navigate the pages.
Josh has had to cut back a little, and the OBMA helped out by finding a way to begin paying Josh a monthly retainer. Still, Josh says he spends about ¾ of his free time volunteering on the site. But he is not complaining; he sees this work as an important contribution to the community.
I couldn’t agree more: a strong internet presence is fundamental to community strength and business health. For many small businesses and organizations, keeping up with all the internet has to offer is too costly or time-consuming, especially when the benefits take time to materialize or become profitable. However, organizations and businesses that embrace and invest in their internet infrastructure now can reach more people more efficiently and at a much lower cost. I applaud OBMA’s foresight in investing its valuable time, energy, and resources in the OBMA website.