Virtually a Hobby

Since September of last year, I have been working, as time & energy permitted, at redoing my personal website, herbswanson.com.  My skills at this sort of thing are rudimentary at best, but with the help and encouragement of my new website host, Mr. Brad Zehr, owner of zehr.net, I have pretty much completed the task.  I should explain that the original host, Khun Tanawut Buayen, did an outstanding job a decade ago in designing the website, and I've carried over a lot of what he did into the revamped website.  The problem was that the website was aging, while I had moved away from Thailand and found it difficult to maintain regular contact.  I was also not able to work directly on the website—or, at least, never figured out how to do so.  For six long years, I generally neglected it, and what I've been undoing is the neglect.  I am, in any event, very thankful for Khun Tanawut's help and his kind patience with a virtual novice.

With the assistance of Brad, I can now work directly on the website and make changes and corrections myself instead of working through someone else.  It has been a long haul, but I feel that I've been able to correct a lot of the problems that had crept in over the years.  Documents are easier to navigate and simpler in style.  Errors that I couldn't correct directly are getting corrected (altho, inevitably, I've created some new ones).

The website contains a large sample of my research in Thailand, including both my M.A. thesis and doctoral dissertation.  It also contains an extensive bibliography of resources for the study of Christianity in Thailand, which I add to from time to time.  There is a good deal of other material, mostly by me but also from others, on the website.  I have to admit that by the standards of the Web it is a humble site, getting maybe only 40-50 visitors a day, most of whom are quickly in and quickly out.  But, occasionally, I hear from a user and take some comfort in the fact that those who need such a tool find it very useful.

Truth is herbswanson.com has become a hobby.  Who woulda thunk?