Welcome to the new neoHOUSTON

Returning readers will find the site looks pretty different today. Over the last couple months Dave and I have been working a lot behind the scenes to totally overhaul the platform. Today we’re introducing the new site, which we’ve custom-built from the ground up in order to let us do some really great new stuff.

neoHOUSTON launched almost a year ago now, and this first year has been a heck of a ride. When I started writing the blog I had no idea how quickly things would grow, or how much the blog would become an important part of my life. Writing has opened a lot of doors, and made for a lot of interesting conversations, and I’ve enjoyed every minute of it.

The site has grown a lot over the last year. Since last December, Dave’s help has been invaluable. While he’s contributed some great posts, the bigger contribution has been a ton of time working behind the scenes helping with the coding and server administration and so on. Without Dave’s help I think I would have burned out, so major kudos to him.

More recently we’ve been happy to host some great guest posts from Apetitus Rationi Pareat, who I hope I’ll be able to convince to become a regular contributor (and maybe get him to use his real name when he writes!).

Now we’re looking ahead to the future. The point of re-writing the website from scratch is that it allows us to really control every detail of the page, which means we can basically do anything we can imagine with it. This opens up new opportunities for us to use the website not just as a blog, but as a point of connection for the broader community of urbanists in Houston.

We’re now set up such that it is much easier for us to accept guest posts, and potentially to syndicate posts from other blogs. The goal of the blog is to spread good ideas, and as this site has more and more traffic I want to make that visibility available to other people who have meaningful stuff to say.

Other major changes are coming in the near future. We’re working on being able to provide services for community organizations who don’t have the funds or in-house expertise to do advanced web development. Our goal is to become a resource not only for water-cooler conversations but for bringing individuals and interest groups together. Our long term goal is to help serve as a connection point for many different groups of people who have different passions but common values, and we’re excited to take the first step towards that goal today.

If these ideas interest you, let me know! I’d love to hear from anyone who thinks they might be interested in contributing posts to the blog, or any organization leaders who think we might be able to help their organization. Email your thoughts and ideas to andrew -at- neohouston -dot- com, and let’s see how we can work together!

At the end of the day, my great passion is working to make Houston a better and better city to call home. I know that most of the people reading this share that passion, and I’m excited to look ahead to see how we can work together. I believe that neoHOUSTON’s new platform is going to create exciting new opportunities for that, and I hope you’ll come along for the ride! Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy the new site!