QueerGeek.com BETA

OK, I've been working on this for a bit now, and I think I'm ready to pre-announce it: QueerGeek.com, a community/resource site for... queer geeks.

The project began as a random thought. I'm starting a new job where pretty much everybody's a geek, so I figured I'm probably going to be perceived there as "the queer one". But when hanging out with the artsy types at school, I'm usually pigeonholed as "the geek". I have other aspects to my personality (I hope), but those are the two that define me the most. I'm a queer geek.

A light bulb went on just above my head. "I wonder if that's been registered...?" To my surprise, it hadn't! QueerGeek.com was still available (along with the variants in other TLDs like .net and .org, but those are mostly for also-rans). I snapped it up.

Then I got to thinking about what to do with it. Setting up a community message board seemed like a good place to start. I decided to start with phpBB. It does most of the things I'd want to do and it uses PHP. That second part was important, because my server already tends to bog down running Perl for this blog, and because I want practise using PHP.

So I've been hacking away at phpBB, trying to extend it do the things it doesn't already support. It's still not ready - I'm calling this an "open beta" - and I may yet make some major changes to how it's set up, looks, etc. But in the meantime, I'd love to invite any other queer geeks out there to sign up, put the software through its paces, give some feedback about features, and - most importantly - help warm the place up a bit.