Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Exciting News!

WEBSITE!

Thanks to one of our members, Brenda B (Pink Moon Hallow), who happens to be a fabulous web designer (PMH), we now have our very own BJP website!!!


It has many features you'll want to view, including...

1. For any of you wanting to do the project again in 2008-09, you'll find both the rules and the registration steps for joining on our website. Important: everybody must register for the 2008 Bead Journal Project! Even if you were a member in the 2007 BJP, you must send your registration information to the new Registration Angel, Pam T, according the directions on the registration page.

2. The 2007 BJP page offers a wonderful gift to those of us who have completed 8 or more of our pieces for this year's project. Each of us gets our own personal page on the website. In addition to showing our pieces, there is a place where we can write a paragraph about ourselves or our work and display up to four links (to our own blogs, websites, email, etc.) This is a dream come true for me, a way to look at all of work of each person on one beautiful, uncluttered page! And, each of the pictures is clickable to a larger size! Here's my personal page, if you'd like to see it as an example.

YOUR ANGELS!

I am so pleased to introduce you to the 2008 BJP Angel Team... Remember when I wrote a post saying I was swamped and wondering if anybody wanted to take over leadership of the BJP or help with it? Well, there were lots of offers, but four of them in particular seemed especially strong. And so, we formed ourselved into a support team for the BJP. We are listed on the new website, with direct email links. In brief, we are:

BrendaB - web design angel
PamT - registration angel
DianeM - blog angel
SusanK - promotion angel
RobinA - coordinator angel

We will try to do a good job of making the second BJP even more wonderful than the first! I can not tell you how greatful I am for the help!

SPREAD THE WORD

You can help spread the word about the 2008 BJP if you want... you can put a link to our website on your blog and tell your beady friends. Any other ideas to get the word out are welcome.

2008 BJP BLOG

We will have a new blog for the 2008 BJP. Although it is "open" now , I suggest we not use it until mid-August. We will keep this, our current blog, open and we can all use it to post until just before the new BJP starts in September. There's a link to the new 08 BJP Blog on the BJP website for when you need it.

THINKING OUT LOUD...

This is my personal opinion, but I want to comment about the personal pages on the BJP website. Having done website design for my photographer husband, I know how much work it is to do a page with clickable images. Many web designers charge $150-200 to do a single page like this. Pink Moon Hallow originally said she would do it as a favor, but when I considered how many of us there are and how much time it will take, I talked her into adding a "donation request" to the page for any of us who are willing to compensate her. Also the bandwidth usage for our site (as the number of member pages grows) will cost her money. Our contributions will help with that too. So I encourage you to be generous.

Please, if you have friends who are active in the BJP, but who don't regularly check our blog, will you let them know about the website and about the 2008 BJP? I personally know of 5 very wonderful beaders, who are caught up with their pages but don't have blogs of their own and don't ever read this one. I'm sorry that they aren't part of our community and that you all haven't had a chance to see their work. However, I understand that the internet isn't for everybody. Also, if you know someone like that, maybe you could offer to help them get their work posted to the member page on our website.

12 comments:

abeadlady said...

This is totally awesome, Robin. I'll have to take some better pics before I put mine on the website. I finally got a tripod for my camera and I can already see that it is helping.

How fun it will be to have our own pages. With the quality of the beadwork I've seen so far, it should be a well visited one.

Arline

Winter Wanderings said...

Simply fabulous! I'll help spread the word to my friends ... plus it's a great motivator for those Behinders (like myself) to Get Caught Up!!!

KV said...

Very cool, Robin! I looked for the donation request info but couldn't findy anything.

And I am thankful for giving up the opportunity to post for another week since my photos aren't ready yet . . .


Kathy V in NM

Nospoj said...

Oh Wow what an incentive to do BJP 2008. will definately donate, as once being married to a graphic designer I know the cost involved both time wise and monetary

Robin said...

Donation request... There were some technical difficulties with the PayPal button she originally put on the page... so right now there's nothing. She'll either get it fixed or we'll just ask for snail mail donations. Keep tuned. Robin

Brenda said...

Brenda here trying to get the donation button to work.
Would anybody like to test the page that includes the button, all you would need to do is open it up. When Robin did it froze her computer, she had to shut down the internet then open it back up again. That is what you might be up against when you volunteer to help. I have had several friends try it this morning and it worked fine for them.
If you would like to volunteer, send me an email through the Bead Journal Project website, and I will send you the link for the page. You can not get to it from the site.
Thanks
Brenda

vivage said...

Yay! The website looks fabulous and I can't wait to start posting pictures to it.

Nice work ya'll!

ACey said...

Wow the "big" website is awesome and also quite moving It will a joyful inspiration to keep track of its growth - just sent in my first six pages and now have strong incentive to get my "behinder" page for February completed so I can send the next three as well.

Magpie Sue said...

Wow. That's some site! Kudos to all involved. This will give me additional incentive to get my lagging pages done ;- )

Timaree said...

Wow. I've got to get over and see it.

vivage said...

I have a few suggestions:
1. Send email to all current participants to alert them of this post and the new webpage and registration.
That allows all of you to know if there are defunct email addresses and alerts everyone now instead of waiting til they might see this post.

2. You can change the post date of the post to keep it on top. A PITA but seeing there are only 10 comments (and some of those are from the organizers) since the original post of April 2 it might take quite a while for some of the participants to visit. To change the date of the post click the Post Options link and change it to the current date.
That would allow fresh content to continue to be posted and keep the announcement on the top. I'd also date each update like the original with the date of April 2, the next update with the current date, etc. And a note to scroll down to see the most current posts underneath this post.

3. You might also change the header to this years blog to include the Exciting News Website for 2008 as a link to that particular post.

Finally (sorry so long) Brenda, if you still need someone to test your paypal link send me email. I can help out. I use Opera and that info might help you know which browsers work and which don't.

Quilter Kathy said...

Very exciting news! I'm delighted to be part of it!
Thanks again to Robin!