By Administrator Account on 12/20/2008

I recall the original concept for GulfCommunity.com was born in late 2003 after a rough trip to a local restaurant.   Food poising coupled with bad service from a local establishment led me to want to create a non-biased, uncommercialized place on the internet where locals could scold poor performing businesses and more importantly share stories of positive service experiences.   I fired up my work notebook one evening, worked through the night and had a rudimentary site published within a few days.

Along the way, it was always my intention to keep from "Selling Out", as it were.    The web space was cheap or free and my cost of ownership for the site was limited to annual domain fees and occasional expenses related to adding features or changing the page layout. Some friends and I posted on local forums, announcing the new site and quickly a group of fun locals began to populate the forums and an online community was born.

I recognized the need to provide content aside from the various user-driven...

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By Administrator Account on 1/11/2007

To ring in the new year, we have some exciting new things in store.   Here's what's coming this month.

1/15/2006

GulfCommunity.Com EmailStarting this month, we will begin offering free email accounts, powered by Google's Gmail.  You will recieve a 2gb email account with all of the features of Gmail, in the format of somename@gulfcommunity.com.  You can choose to use your new email account from your favorite email software or through our branded webmail interface.   Initially we are limited to a few hundred accouts so get yours quickly.   If you are interested in a gulfcommunity.com email account, you can learn more about it, here.GulfSpaceIn the site survey, many the second and third most popular entries were photo-sharing and family sites.   Enter: gulfspace.   Think myspace with a local flavor.  It's free, and it's coming this month.  Create your own profile to share your interests, hobbies...

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By Administrator Account on 6/19/2006

Hiya All,

I appreciate the feedback recieved over the last few weeks and I was excited about the results of the recent Press Release - Gulf Coast Web Portal Hopes to Aid in Post-Hurricane Community Information Sharing.   From what I'm told the Press Release was picked up around 50,000 times by media outlets and online news readers.  Unfortunately, the resulting membership increase was less than stellar but we will continue to push forward nontheless.  

This week & last, we've added a few more features from the old site including:

Community Sound Off Community Gas Locator NOAA Hurricane Tracking Feed Real-time Chat Next week we are working to add enhancements to forums and blogging so that topics from the forums and blogs can appear on other parts of the side (read: homepage) as well as information about becoming a local sponsor.

Also last week, we began to advertise via Google Adwords and are now showing Google Adsense advertising on select pages in hope to raise money that...

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By Administrator Account on 5/29/2006

It’s funny how motivation can come from the most unlikely places.   In February of 2004 I remember experiencing a number of disheartening experiences with local businesses.   One was a case where practically my whole family got food poisoning from the same restaurant.    After recovering, we called the restaurant, not wanting free food but wanting them to be aware that a problem may exist so that they may take action.   I was greeted with a general indifference.   I believe the words spoken where “So, what do you want me to do about it?”   The problems continued, be it myself, my family or my friends, everywhere I looked people were being slighted in some way by contractors, doctors, their employers (my employer) and even church-affiliates.  Aware that these hassles are present in everyone’s lives, I recall sitting at dinner one day wishing that I could do something to give people a voice to share positive and negative experiences about local businesses.   Whether poor service at a restaurant or some retail associate...

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