New web sites!

I will look back at the summer of 2021 as one of many things. Of course the enduring pandemic will always be a big reminder of this summer, but in my personal life, I've had a few notable things occur. Most of the things I will remember will be related to my VW hobby: getting the WyoLook Bug running, being the guest of a VW hobby podcast, and today's subject, my VW web sites.

Last year myself and a few local VW enthusiasts founded our VW car club, Thin Air Dub Club. With the VW community being so active on social media, I created club accounts for the car club on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. I also used the club as an opportunity to set up a Google Workspace account for the club, which includes an Internet domain name, email address, and potentially a web site.

Now realize that for MANY years I dabbled in the web site creation business. I wrote and maintained (and even hosted a few) web sites for businesses. About fifteen years ago or so, life got in the way and I stepped out of the web site field. As you know, everything about technology changes quickly, so in 2020 when I decided I want to create a simple web site for the car club, I spent some time looking at my options and their strengths and weaknesses.

In the end, I decided that I didn't need the full creative control of a web site that I used to exercise by writing raw HTML, I made the decision to create this web site with the Google Sites service. Google Sites gave me the option to rapidly & easily update the web site with any laptop/Chromebook that I had handy. Sites also allowed to separate the web page into logical blocks that could easily be moved around the site and could be easily duplicated.

In the end the web site has been live for a while now. At the moment the content is kind of sparse, but as with everything I do, I'm always looking for ways to expand and further develop it.

Early in the summer, when I was in discussions about going to be on the Let's Talk Dubs podcast, I made the decision that before we recorded the episode that I need to create a web site with an easy to remember domain name. That way at the end of the episode, when Bill T (the podcast host) asks what way the listeners could get more information and contact me, I could give them an easy path to doing that.

For the last ten years or so, I've been trying to transition all of my VW related business to the VDub Geek brand. With that in mind, I did someone poking around on my domain registrar's WHOIS service and decided my web site was going to be thevdubgeek.com. I spent the next couple of days playing with the web site's colors, layout, and content. Once I had the skeleton laid out, I spent a few days writing text and digging through my photographs to find the best ones for the site.

The web site also fulfills another good role for my brand: it provides a central location for my VDub Geek social media profiles for my visitors to get more information about me and my other online resources. At the moment I'm keeping the web site streamlined so I don't have to do frequent updates, but I'm looking at expanding the site with new content and integration with various social media profiles. Stay tuned!

You could say that this web site was the thing that really rocketed me into the Type 4 engine scene and its resurrection is doing it again! I won't go into the details of how the web site came to be, as that is covered on the site's About page. About 10-15 years ago, I ceased development and hosting of the web site. Life was getting in the way and I just didn't have the time or resources to continue to develop it. Little did I realize the impact had on the community!

So after moving to Wyoming and life was getting to be stabilized, I started tinkering with getting the web site back and modernizing it. Once again, I tinkered with many different platform options, but in the end I decided to go with the easy to use (and easy to update) Google Sites. Once I committed to the platform and to doing this project, I spent my free time getting the old content uploaded, content revised, and adapted to the new platform. 

With this web site back and running, I've rejoined the VW/Porsche Type 4 community. I'm now a moderator on a Facebook group created by Jake Raby (a well known Type 4 engine builder and advocate) and I was invited to be a guest on an episode of the Let's Talk Dubs podcast. A few VW buddies here in Wyoming are interested in the Type 4 engines for their VWs and I even have a friend back in California that I'm going to be consulting with to get his next project Type 4 powered. Its good to be back!!