What is Forrst?

For those unfamiliar with the site, Forrst is a private community for web designers and developers. A place where we can go and ask questions, request critiques, share ideas and seek inspiration. Each user has a profile and can create posts. Posts are divided into 4 categories: questions, snaps, links and code. If posting isn’t your thing, you can respond/comment on other peoples posts contributing your knowledge and experience to the community.

The site revolves around a forum architecture where users can post interesting content/questions and other users can comment or contribute to the conversation. I’ve never really participated in forums before but there is something about Forrst that has me hooked. Not sure if it’s the sites focus or just that the site isn’t inundated with tons of users yet, but I find myself checking in several times a day and contributing when I have something useful to add.

Although Forrst is mostly about posts it’s important to note that there’s more to this community than just sharing content. They have partnered with AppSumo to offer special software package deals to members, users can create their own forrst.me profile pages and there are plans for a job/gig board in the near future. With these and other planned features Forrst is quickly becoming the place to be for designers and developers on the web.

How do I join?

I think One of the secrets to the sites success is that not just anyone can join. Each month existing members get a certain number of invitations based on their participation in the community (max 5 per month I think). Members then browse through those people who have applied for membership and invite those who they feel have something to contribute to the community. The interesting thing here is that your participation in the community then has an impact on the member who invited you. This forces members to be somewhat choosey about those who they extend invites too. It’s an interesting approach to a pretty common social networking feature that I think helps contribute to a great community of web workers.

If you would like to become a Forrst member, visit http://forrst.com and fill out the membership form. For those of you that are already members, share what you like/dislike the most about Forrst in the comments below.

Image by ~MVI~ (scrounging for photos) via Flickr

Big changes on the horizon. September will mark the end of 4+ years at my job in Rochester, NY and the beginning of a new job in our nations capitol Washington, DC. Yep, I’m taking this show on the road and will be moving the middle of September. New place, new people, new job… it’s all new and I think that’s what I need. Sometimes you just need to mix things up.

Things will most likely be quite for the next month or two as I do the actual moving and get situated in a new place, but I hope to get back to work shortly thereafter.

http://sign-up-sheet.com

• sold BadgeTracker to a great bunch of folks back in January
• kicked off re-development of Sign-Up-Sheet.com in January… relaunching next month (hopefully)
• been desperately trying to keep up with the personal MBA business crash course (to no avail)

Mostly I’ve been trying to work on my new outlook, or master plan, that I mentioned in my last post. So far so good… very excited about relaunching Sign-Up-Sheet.com next month. And thanks to Sign-Up-Sheet I have a bunch of new things to share with you right here on the blog in the coming months.

Keep your eyes out for new posts as well as some other bits and bytes I’ve been working on. Stay tuned!

More soon!

I’m just as guilty of this as the next guy… your number 23 on hold for phone support or your routine has been disrupted by product changes or something you have no control over and you fly off the handle at anyone or anything without thinking. Like SitePoint I recently made some modifications in one of my programs that users didn’t quite understand and instead of engaging me in open and civil dialog I received a number of very pissed and clearly unhappy e-mails. Why is it that when these sort of things happen we rush to anger instead of calmly and collectively reaching out to the person or companies involved to see if there is anything that can be done to correct what we see as a problem?

Your thoughts?

“The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) has been instrumental in improving the recovery rate from 62% to 96%.” – NCMEC Timeline

The NCMEC is the nations resource for child protection and is celebrating 25 years of service in 2009. In this day in age when kids can log onto the Internet and befriend anyone with a screen name it’s more important than ever that we have organizations like the NCMEC to aid in the recovery of lost children and prevention of child exploitation. That’s why I’ve chosen the NCMEC as by cause to blog for. You can learn more about the NCMEC by viewing this promotional video available on their website.

This blog post is part of Zemanta’s “Blogging For a Cause” campaign to raise awareness and funds for worthy causes that bloggers care about.