Hello world!
Welcome to the official blog for QuiltGroup.com! We’re very excited to be launching the beta version of this site in the next few days, and we really hope that our initial users will be patient with us while we work out any kinks! The site is still very basic, but we’re adding new features practically daily, and once we get some users it will be easier for us to create functionality that will improve the experience.
We first thought up QuiltGroup in November, 2006. It was supposed to be a quick little project (I distinctly remember something about selling it for billions after we got it up and running… sounds kind of quaint now, huh?), but, as they say, life got in the way. We’ve been working on it in earnest for a few months now, and we’re ready to finally launch to some test users.
We are very serious about wanting feedback: right now there have only been a few friends and family members giving us feedback, and most of them don’t even quilt! We want to make this a simple, enjoyable meeting place on the web, and so we need to hear what you want. To give feedback, please click the suggestions button at the top of each page.
We know that there’s still a whole lot of work to be done. Right now, we’re hard at work improving the profile search functions: this will make it a lot easier to find people you already know, or who have similar interests and tastes. Our biggest project is to get the “resources” section up and running. This will be a unique comprehensive resource on the web for quilters, offering:
- individual profile pages for shops, where they can not only provide information about themselves but communicate directly with customers. You can search by zip code to find stores near you, or near where you’ll be traveling.
- information about fabrics, books and patterns (some of them free), supplied by the manufacturers, publishers, authors, or designers.
- updates about classes, tours, festivals, and other events.
Since we’re a small operation, the bulk of this information will hopefully be supplied by our user base, or by representatives of the stores or organizations. We’ll be offering easy-to-update templates, and the store owners that we’ve talked to have been enthusiastic about the prospect of free publicity. Even though we don’t have the Resources section running yet, we hope that you keep its existence in the back of your mind, and keep a running tally of stores and organizations that you might be able to broach to tell them about QuiltGroup.
Some of you may be wondering how we plan to support ourselves. We will never, ever, EVER sell your information. I absolutely promise that. It is, however, a pretty graphics-intense site, and it will cost some money to host. Once we get an initial user base, we plan on selling some tasteful, subject-related ad space. We didn’t go into the project to be rich (the plan to sell the site of billions was dropped pretty quickly), so we will basically do just enough to cover our costs.
We hope that you enjoy your QuiltGroup experience, and bear with us as we make this site the #1 resource for quilters on the web!
