Category Archives: Services

as many of the loyal readers are aware, this system also hosts the regional dance calendar for events throughout virginia, maryland, pennsylvania, delaware, new jersey, west virginia, new york city, and washington dc.

since putting that together (and it is a bit of a hack job, but… always room for improvement), i’ve had several people get in touch and ask me to add events to the calendar, so let me explain some of the motivation for doing this thing…

the general idea behind the dance calendar comes from a frustration with dozens (ok, hundreds) of individual calendars (like this one) on websites that are generally up-to-date, but only represent one or a few dancers… and a few group calendars (like this one) that cover a large number of performers, but get hopelessly out-of-date quickly because one (or a very few) person(s) is (are) responsible for maintaining everything on the list.

to (hopefully) fix this… i’m inviting people i know (and some i know by proxy) to include their events on the dance calendar. the idea is that if there isn’t a single person (for example… me), that has to make all the additions and changes, and if i can coax the computer into keeping the most-relevant stuff at the top (which it does), then the regional calendar can be the best of both worlds – both current and regional.

i don’t want to stay “in the loop” – if i’m not available to make last-minute changes to an event listing, i don’t want that to mean that the changes can’t be made.

if you’ve got events coming up, let me know and i’ll get you set up so you can add (and update!) those events. the more people we have spending a few minutes on this, the better it is for everyone.

update: trying a new approach to the calendar (more recurring-event friendly, and it looks like a calendar rather than a list). you can play with that version here: new dance calendar. Continue reading →

i’ve noticed that many dancers are hosting on “free” services with piles of ads and really ugly stuff going on. i’ve got a bit of space here and plenty of bandwidth available that i’m not using, so i’ve decided to make my space available for you. this isn’t a lot, and there are some pretty significant limits to what i can do, but i hope this gives some of you a chance to get a “cleaner, more professional” calling card out there on the web.

if you’re a dancer, and i know you, and you just want a simple one-to-a-few-page website that you don’t intend to update very often, i’ll host you in my space without the popups and funky hosting scripts and other garbage that “free hosting” usually involves.

it’s not practical for me to open access on this server to a bunch of new people, so i’ll have to upload and update your pages. this means if i’m not available for a few days, no updates will get done – this is the price of free – it also means it’s not really well-suited if you have a calendar you need to keep up-to-date. i also don’t really want to get too involved in web design on your behalf (but i can recommend some great people), so what goes into your space is up to you….

if you need something a bit more elaborate (lots of updates or lots of pages), i know a small, local hosting and web design place run by a couple genuinely good people – if that’s something you need, let me know and i’ll put you in touch. i think they’re charging about $10/month for hosting (plus design) right now.

of course, if you’ve already got an amazing web presence, just ignore everything you just read :) Continue reading →