Welcome to the New and Improved ''How I Built My Own Swimming Pool'' website!
Date: Saturday, May 15 2004 @ 11:50:00 EDT
Topic: News and Updates
Well, its been over a year since I promised to update the site, but its finally come to fruition! Welcome (back) to the new and improved website that I promised so long ago.
This site has come a long ways since I posted my experiences in my personal www.bschoi.com website. You'll notice that I've beefed up the entire site. The biggest thing you should notice is that the site now runs with a CMS (Content Management System). This is something I should have started with from the get go, but I had no way to foresee that it was going to get this big.
I've gotten tons of emails and comments and suggestions from a lot of you out there and I've incorporated most of it into this new site that you're now sitting on. Many suggested that I write a book, but I decided instead to open up a membership-based website. Most of it is still free, but some of the information is pay-access. It was a tough decision to do that but after considering how much time was put into this website, I want to see if I can get back some of what I put into it.
I've finally put up my financial information along with an all new pool ad analysis section that a lot of you will find interesting. Also in here for you Arizonans thinking about doing your own pool is a list of my subcontractors and all my documentation from the project. I've scanned in all my paperwork so you can see exactly what I got, how much I paid, etc, etc. I've also put up a ton of information from the city agencies that you'll need to deal with when you go apply for your permit. This was one of my biggest headaches during my project, so doing this section gave me a lot of satisfaction. Hopefully, it will help some of you in AZ to not go through what I went through dealing with these rascals.
A couple of things I'd like to add over the horizon is:
- a full-blown bulletin board/forum where owner/builders can share their stories and come for help from other owner/builders. I've got most of the software and I've been piloting it with some users. Its not ready yet as I need to consolidate this site's database with the board's database. I'll be using phpBB with the popular vBulletin look-n-feel for the skin.
- a subcontractor ranking/rating system where people can input/provide comments to their experiences with their subs and rate them in terms of quality of workmanship, professionalism, responsiveness, courteousness, etc, etc. I'll put this all in a database that will make it easy for people to do research on their subs. Look for that soon.
- I'd like to also create a user's area where other owner/builder's can share their own stories so that other people can follow on with their journey and learn from their experiences. It will be formatted in a way that people will be able to input their experiences phase-by-phase. It will serve as a journal, but also possibly a way for them to blow off steam after a hard day of working with the subs. This will help them and also all of you who are thinking about going the owner/builder route yourselves.
All of this takes time, and time is something that I don't have a lot of. So for now, I'll have to leave that in my ToDo bin and get to it when I have time.
In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the new and improved site. As always, please feel free to email me with any comments, gripes, suggestions, or praise :-)
Pool on!
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