Lansing Web Meetup

A few weeks ago, my friend Shane started talking about how cool it would be to do a meet up in Lansing of all of the web developers/designers. Not too long afterwards, we ran into a few guys at our local coffee shop aka "the office" and ran the idea by them. They also thought it would be a cool idea so we've decided to go ahead and put one together.

We have set up a new website just for this purpose at HackLansing.com. Right now, it's just a splash page where to collect the email addresses of interested parties, but within the next month we should have had our first meet up. If it goes well, we plan to develop the site out further (afterall, that's what the meetup is about!) and feature various members, information, etc.

So if you are in Lansing and do web design/development or even internet marketing or blogging, get in touch with us at HackLansing.com and let's meet up!

Contrbute Your Lansing-based Site!

Firstly, let me apologize for that last post that went out, that was an accident and had no relevance to Lansing per se... so my bad.

Nextly, I wanted to let you know about a pretty cool site for Lansing-based websites called Lansing Link Directory. It's a website that lists and categorizes Lansing-based websites of nearly any varierty. If you live in Lansing or are from Lansing your website is welcome on the site!

Eventually, the link directory will likely show links from a plethora of categories including government sites, schools sites, Lansing bloggers, Lansing businesses, Lansing news, and many other categories.

You are free to contribute Lansing-based sites that you enjoy even if they are not yours as well! To submit a website click here. Also, feel free to share the site with any other peeps from the 517. I'm sure they'll appreciate it.

 

Introducing There is a Theme For That

I know it seems like I start a new website every week or two. That's because I do :)

This weekend, I finally decided to embark on a project I've long been meaning to get started. It's a website that is all about using Wordpress do things other than blogging. There are so many themes available that I almost every site I've thought up can be built using a theme already in existence with a few tweaks and/or plugins. Anyway, the website is called, "There is a Theme For That" and I just wrote my first post comparing the four local business directory themes for WP.

The website categorizes WP themes based on what they can be used for and also captures creative uses of Wordpress themes the larger WP community. And by "creative" I really mean anything other than a personal blog, or better yet, any theme that was meant for one thing that was used for another. Okay, so I may need to rework the definition a bit, but hopefully you see where I'm going?

There are themes that can be used from everything from Classified ads, to auction sites, to Groupon clones, to review sites, to directories, to cataloging information, to wiki pages, to just about anything else. I'm trying to aggregate this information into one place that focuses on answering any question about makeing a website with, "There is a theme for that."

PS ThereIsAPluginForThat is coming soon! As is the rest of a Wordpress network that I've been stewing over. O internet, how I love you.

Lansing's New Small Business Directory

Lansing now has a new website directory for small businesses. It's like a Yellow Pages, only it looks better, has some better features, and is exclusive to the Greater Lansing Area. The directory is called ConnectOrange.com and is the brainchild of Lansing-based internet marketing and web company Scepter Marketing.

The site boasts over 1900 small business listings in the Greater Lansing Area. Here are just some of the categories:

• Lansing Restaurants
• Lansing Automtoive
• Lansing Financial Services
• Lansing Pet Supplies
• Lansing Dentists
• Lansing Florists
• Lansing Churches
• Lansing Plumbers
• Lansing Attorneys
• Lansing Photographers
• Lansing Storage
• Lansing Roofers
• Lansing Gyms

With a total of over 275 categories of businesses, there's no way all of them could be listed. Check out ConnectOrange.com to start connecting with businesses in Lansing