…but sometimes I just can’t help it.

If you know anything about me, you know that I run a local information Web site called wickenburg-az.com. I started the site back in the late 1990s (1998 or 1999?) as a way to provide the people of Wickenburg and visitors with a wide range of information about the town. I created a few interactive features using FileMaker Pro databases. I offered one of them — the Calendar of Events — to the local chamber of commerce, which couldn’t keep its poorly designed Web site up to date to save its life. The benefit of my calendar was that it automatically deleted old events, so the calendar was never stale and new events could be added by anyone with an Internet connection and the correct access information. (Local radio station KBSZ uses the calendar for its site.) Although I offered to do this for free as a service to the community, the chamber turned me down. They were already in bed (so to speak) with their current Webmaster and were perfectly happy to pay him for his substandard work.

So wickenburg-az.com remained a completely separate entity, and I continued to build up the site by adding illustrated articles about the town and things to do in the area. There’s quite a bit of material on the site now, thanks in part to contributors like Jim Cook (whose “Journal of Prevarication” has spawned two books of tall tales) and John Aabbott, who actually took over the job of Webmaster for me for a while. (I’m trying to get him to do it for me again, now that he’s back in the area, but he’s very reluctant this time around.) I also wrote a lot of opinion pieces, encouraged by John, who reminded me that if you don’t speak out about the things you think are wrong, you’re doing a disservice to yourself and others. Some of those articles weren’t very popular — some people just don’t get it — but most of what I’ve done on the site gets lots of praise. In fact, many people seem to think that wickenburg-az.com is the official site for the town because they can’t seem to find any other site with as much information.

Recently a site visitor made not one but two monetary contributions to the site, using a donation feature I’d added a few months back. The visitor originally e-mailed me looking for a Webcam. I’d taken our cam down when we moved the site to a new computer, and the only reason I couldn’t put it back up was because my only compatible camera is sometimes needed for video conferencing. But what the heck? I put the Webcam back up and promptly got a donation that paid for half of a new camera. This gentleman’s second donation, which came just the other day, made me wish there was something more I could do for supporters. And that got me thinking, which is sometimes a dangerous thing.

I decided to create an online store with custom merchandise that would appeal to the people who visited the site and Wickenburg. I created a line of “I Love Wickenburg” merchandise with prices starting at $2.99. There are pins, magnets, mugs, t-shirts, bumper stickers, license plate frames, and even a BBQ apron. Then I realized that not everyone might be interested in such flashy merchandise. So I created some postcards, greeting cards, and even a Christmas card using photographs I had in my enormous stock of digital photos. I hope to add more to this collection soon.

Of course, I customized the shop as well as I could to match the look and feel of wickenburg-az.com. Then I put it online. You can find it at www.cafepress.com/wickenburgaz/.

The merchandise in the store is affordably priced, but a small amount from each purchase goes to support wickenburg-az.com. I’d like to upgrade the server to Mac OS X 10.4 Server (when it comes out next year) and the cost is enormous. If the store does well, I can do the upgrade. If the store doesn’t do so well, it’ll still help me do things like add a few Webcams around town and add a public blog.

I don’t make much money as a Webmaster because I really don’t try to be one. I don’t make ANY money at wickenburg-az.com. The site is a labor of love, a place I can try out new features, share information, and voice my opinions on public matters. Its also a place where other Wickenburg residents can share information with others — although few people other than Jim and John have done so. But I am committed to the site and committed to the town. So I’ll keep building it and keep adding features to tweak it.

Once a Webmaster, always a Webmaster, I guess.