Eclogiselle Notes
I have just restored The Niche I am Looking to Fill and added a note stating it's out of date. It currently has 19026 page views, slightly less than the roughly 20,000 page views for Policies that Make the Poor Less Poor.
A piece titled Service Area and Focus has 1468 views and says:
Eclogiselle aims to serve the Pacific Coastal Region of Washington State as its core focus, followed by the Pacific Northwest and the Western United States.I'm no longer in Aberdeen, Washington and no longer own r/CoastalWA and the sample site for Downtown Aberdeen has been gutted. I'm not comfortable republishing this information on Eclogiselle and I have no idea how to update that information.
Map by Stamen Design. Used under CC BY 3.0. Map Data by OpenStreetMap, under ODbL. Edited by D. Traylor.
Eclogiselle provides digital, technical and informational resources for community planning and economic development work for small communities. It is aimed at incorporated small towns, unincorporated areas, local business people and other concerned parties in small communities and rural areas.
Small communities typically have very limited resources. One of their biggest limiters is a lack of local talent. There may be no one locally with solid skills in areas like map work and website work.
This creates a digital divide between big cities and small communities. This deepens the problems faced by small communities trying to do planning and economic development.
Eclogiselle aims to help close the digital divide for people in small communities trying to do development work. It is intended to be a compendium of technical, planning and economic development resources and services that fit certain parameters, including:Eclogiselle is making it affordable to up your game starting with making free maps available under a Creative Commons license. See this post for instructions on how to legally use most of the maps on various websites by Doreen Traylor under a Creative Commons license: What does a good economic development website look like?
- Affordable.
- Professional quality.
- User friendly.
Sample website in question full of maps, most of which are free to use under a Creative Commons license, so long as you properly cite your source: Downtown Aberdeen. See also: Maps Tutorial.
There is also a free Mid Century Modern Style Guide on a site with lots of other pertinent info and tips for where to look for other inspiration to write your own style guide if Mid Century Modern doesn't fit the existing building stock of your community.
I imagined I would work with locals in Aberdeen, Washington and develop my ideas for making websites for a price and maps for a price by working with locals and they would organically promote my work to others in nearby small towns. That didn't happen.
I killed Eclogiselle for a time, then began redeveloping it but repositioned it as more like a blog than a business site. I don't recall my exact thinking at the time.
As of 2018, there are 19,495 incorporated cities, towns and villages in the United States. 14,768 of these have populations below 5,000. Only ten have populations above 1 million and none are above 10 million. 310 cities are considered at least medium cities with populations of 100,000 or more.
Last I checked, the Main Street America program had around 1600 members, which really isn't that much out of ~19,500 cities and implies on the face of it that it doesn't work.
That's not including unincorporated communities, which are potentially clients for Eclogiselle. Silverdale, Washington is unincorporated and has around 20,000 residents. It's best known as the location of the creator of Dwarf Fortress.
Eclogiselle has a surprising amount of traffic for a site not really being promoted via any channel other than a Patreon account with around 14 members last I looked and the interface has changed and now seems to say I have either fifty paid members -- AH HA HA, no -- or nine active members.
Anyway, I have no engagement whatsoever and I'm not active on any kind of social media or forum, but even recent posts tend to have at least a couple hundred page views and I have absolutely no idea why.
Today, I finished the site archive and clean up and the navigation thing I want to add is not essential. I have no idea how to turn this into a viable business, but that was the original intent before crazy people derailed my efforts very intentionally for reasons I don't understand.