How This Site About the Edgewood, New Mexico Area Came To Be

by John Weckerle

The "Beforemath"

Several years ago, the Edgewood Chamber of Commerce was seeking support from the Town of Edgewood for the establishment of the Chamber's first office, and found itself under fire from various directions. Among the attacks were a variety of what seemed to be spurious accusations against the Chamber. One of the criticisms was that the Chamber did not have a web site. Then-Executive Director Lori Harris contacted me and asked if I would be willing to work with the Chamber to develop a new web site quickly, with the idea of expanding and enhancing the site in the future. I agreed to build one for the paltry sum of $400 - a small fraction of our normal rates - and within about a week, the Chamber had a new site. Shortly thereafter, they also had a new office. Until recently, we charged the Edgewood Chamber of Commerce half our normal fee for annual hosting.

As an apparent result of a misunderstanding between the Chamber Board of Directors and its recently resigned Executive Director, Myra Oden, the Board elected to abandon this site, hire a different web developer and create a new site with a new domain name.

This Site

As a result of all this, I found myself with a design and a bunch of graphics for which I had no use, and a site with particularly great Google rankings that was at risk of disappearing. It seemed wasteful to me that the Edgewood community and surrounding area should lose the visibility that came with such excellent search engine positioning. The answer was obvious - use the format to create a site about Edgewood that would keep the community safely in the public eye - hopefully at the same level it enjoyed before.

There are, of course, some changes, and there will be more. First, we will be adding more regionally-oriented content. Edgewood compares well to other towns in America on its own, but is even more attractive when the assets of nearby communities are considered. Second, we have already expanded the list of churches far beyond that given in the previous site, and that seen on other regional Chamber web sites. This an issue on which I have always disagreed with the Chambers, which only post "member" church information; Chambers are supposed to encourage and facilitate tourism, and visitors often need to look for places of worship. Now they can find them here, on our Area Churches page. Third, we thought a weather report on the home page might be nice. We'll also be adding some photo slideshows before long.

When the Moriarty, New Mexico Chamber of Commerce disappeared again in early March 2009, the idea for a series of local promotional web sites to create greater visibility for the local communities and provide low-cost internet advertising for small businesses began to evolve. In March 2009, we developed a sister site - Moriarty, New Mexico and the Surrounding Area (not affiliated with the Moriarty Chamber of Commerce), which provides the same kind of information on the Moriarty area as is found in this site. The Moriarty site also provides opportunities for local businesses to advertise on the web. As with this site, businesses can purchase text links, full-page ads, and even multi-page "mini sites." As a result of these developments, our Not The Chamber Of Commerce^TM line of websites was born.

For more information, including rates for either or both sites and plans for future Not The Chamber of CommerceTM sites, please contact us by e-mail or by phone at (505) 286-4278.

WeckTech
Edgewood, NM 87015
(505) 286-4278

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Photos by John Weckerle of WeckTech