neoHOUSTON Turns One

Today is neoHOUSTON’s first anniversary. It’s been quite a year!

In honor of the occasion I thought I’d highlight some of the major changes that have taken place in the last 12 months, and offer a look ahead to what’s in store for the next 12 months.

Site Design:

We started out looking something like this. It’s pretty basic, I know, but you have to start somewhere. This theme is called “Cutline,” and it’s pretty popular because it gives you nice looking text and a customizable header.

We then moved on to the “Journalist” theme, which has wider columns and therefore allows bigger pictures. This was a nice change, and was the beginning of a long series of tweaks to begin developing the blog into something bigger and better.

In March we moved to neoHOUSTON.com. Using our own domain name gave us total control over the site, though it also required a lot more work to maintain.

Our site looked like this from March through June. This design was a highly modified version of the “Vigilance” theme, and we quite liked it. However, as our ideas kept getting bigger, we found that we needed to have total control over the look and feel of the site. So, throughout May and June, Dave and I worked overtime to build a custom platform from the ground up. That’s the web site you see today. The new site has a lot more power under the hood, and because we programmed it from scratch it will be able to do *exactly* what we need it to do from here on out. What fun!

Articles

Of course, the bread and butter of this site is it’s articles. Here are the highlights from the past year:

• Kirby Can be Saved. My first post after announcing the blog, getting this off my chest was the entire reason for creating neoHOUSTON, and remained one of the most popular posts for a long time.
• Should Oil Be Cheap? I wrote this last summer when gas prices were around $4/gallon, and before the crash. How I wish we had instituted the price-floor on imported oil…
• Reasons 1, 2, and 3 why we need transit! This hard look at the financial and health costs of driving was one of the most popular early posts on the blog.
• The Value of Transit. This early look at the benefits of transit systems paved the way for a lot of the later posts that covered the subject in more detail.
• Multiways in Houston. This post was very well read, and has one of my favorite ideas in it.
• ULI-Houston Mayoral Candidate Forum. This early preview of the mayoral race was a neoHOUSTON exclusive.
• Grand Parkway. My conceptual alternative to the Grand Parkway, a vast improvement in service with less cost.
• Common Law, Civil Law, and the Supreme Court. Our first guest post from Apetitus Rationi Pareat, an interesting and very educational read!
• Property Taxes and Home Prices. A real feather ruffler, this was the fastest-rising post on the blog until…
• Comparing Interfaces. This look at effect design has in redevelopment around 3 major Midtown apartment complexes has quickly become our most successful post of all time.

Staff

We’ve already talked about the design changes that took place over the last year, but there were also two critical staff changes that made a big difference.

First, Dave Morris joined neoHOUSTON last winter, and has been a huge supporter of the blog ever since. Dave is a programmer, and he has made a huge effort behind the scenes to get this thing to where it is today. There’s no way I could have done it without him.

Second, Apetitus Rationi Pareat signed up to be one of our first guest contributors. This experienced helped get us set to accept guest posts in the first place, something I hope we’ll be able to do more of in the future. ARP also wrote some great stuff, and hopefully will be joining us as a regular contributor in the future.

Today and Tomorrow

The past year has been great, but the next year will be even better. We’ve got a lot of exciting things in the pipeline, one of which I’m happy to announce today:

CNU-Houston is going to be neoHOUSTON’s first associate organization. You can see the first product of this association with CNU Houston’s redesigned website: cnu.neohouston.com. We’re really excited about being able to help local organizations get ‘connected’ through the web, and really honored that CNU Houston was the first group to take us up on the offer. I’ll post a seperate announcement covering this in more detail later on, including more details about how we can help other organizations.

I’m truly excited about what the next year holds for us here, and I’m grateful to everyone who’s been reading, commenting, and talking with me about how we can make neoHOUSTON a vital part of the community. Stay tuned, and thanks for reading!