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 anomaly on 1/23/2007 10:30 PM

Recently, I was reading on John's dated series on how he hates the world and thought it would be good to post something a little more positive.   You caught me, I'm generally pretty optimistic.  I'm outwardly cynical but generally have a positive outlook on things - I just don't take the world or people in it too seriously. 

With that said, my friends would be happy to back up that I am the world's worst consumer.  When I walk into a business, people should run the other way.   Not that I'm going to cuss them out, yell, scream or throw things but I do have some basic expectations with regard to customer service, experience and the representation versus reality of products and services I subscribe to.

I am the guy that once called Dateline on my local Wal-mart and made the store manager personally deliver a new lawnmower to my house.I am the guy that had the owner of Daphne Honda personally sell me a car and negotiate the price because of snide tones about my age.I am the guy that, when working with...

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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 florky on Friday, June 23, 2006 10:54 AM

Let me start my fist blog on this website by saying how good this site is!  This latest release has really shown the dedication and skills of the webmaster ( Hey Bill :) )  There is alot of very useful information available here, and alot more to come.  I can't wait to see what comes next!  I would like to see some advertising and support from the users to help defray the costs associated with this site.  Although the hosting is currently being donated, there are other costs associated with running this site.  Different modules like the blogs, forums, classified, jobs, and others are not free.  They cost money, and must be maintained, upgraded and modified.  This website is not going to make anyone rich, but with some help from the community and businesses we can all help to make it bigger and better! 

Bill --  setup a paypal account for GC, and add a DONATE button to the website. This site is easily worth $25 per year for the info on it --  you'll have mine as soon as its ready.  I'm not saying to charge...

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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 Mad Scientist on 6/8/2006

Next in my series concerning people that I hate, I decided it would be good to blog about the idiots with whom I work.   I noticed on the forums someone bellyaching about the office in which they work so I decided it was time to share my experiences in the matter.

As previously mentioned, I work in a factory and I manage people.   Working in a factory puts me in a position to manage the best and brightest souls that our local slums and trailer parks can muster.   If they've been to jail or are prone to eventually go there, they usually work in my factory.  Those are my employees.   Sure, I have the occassional goon that is clean but just dumb through heredity but for the most part I get to enjoy the company of crackheads, dopefiends, rednecks and the product of our great Alabama judicial  and correctional system.

As much comedic material that the dopefiends and other trailer dwellers provide me through the day, the real winners are the mental heavyweights that make up our office staff. I'll never...

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