One of the most common complaints - or rather, comments - I hear about the Cre8asite Resource Library is that folks just don’t get it. The common reaction is that its just another directory like the thousands of other ones that are scattered all over the World Wide Web. Yet, when one goes to submit to our directory, the submission process is more complicated than those others that it is “just one of.” Why, then, is it worth your time to learn a completely new and unique submission process when, in the same amount of time, you can submit to 3 or 4 other directories?

Well, the answer is both complex and simple at the same time. So, as I go about preparing to add a whole slew of new features to the Library, I thought this would be a good time to go into a bit of history and look at what makes our little resource different than the rest. I’m fully aware that most folks will forego reading through this (with the exception of the staff and the handful of loyal visitors we have garnered over the past year), but it’ll make me feel better if I can get it out there. At least then, no one can come up to me a year from now and say, “No one ever told me how freaking cool, unique, and useful that place is!”

So, if you’re interested, grab a cup of coffee and come on in for a look inside the Cre8asite Resource Library

The Birth of An Idea

As with most ideas in life, they start off as one thing and evolve into something far greater - especially when you have a whole slew of folks as innovative and creative as the staff at the Cre8asite Forum.

For me, the idea started as I was considering the strengths and weakness of web directories vs. search engines. Directories are great because they are highly organized in a way that you can start with a general idea of what you are looking for and then mine down into them to find more focused information. The major drawback with them, though, is that they take you to the front page of a site. Once you’ve homed in on your topic, you still need to browse through the site you clicked on to find what you are really looking for. And, there are no gurantees that the site will even have the answer for you.

Search engines, on the other hand, go deep into a site and find the specific page that is relevant to the specific question you are seeking answers for. There’s no more guessing as to whether the site may or may not have the info - the search engine takes you to the specific page. And, even if the page isn’t what you were looking for, you didn’t have to navigate in from the front page to learn that it’s not going to serve your purposes. But, with search engines, you are often stuck with spammy type things along with a lack of categorization. A search for “Paris Hilton” will have a mixture of hotel listings and naked pictures of that blonde girl everyone’s drooling about. Had you gone in via a directory, you’d at least know that the listings there were going to be hitting the proper broad theme.

Meanwhile, back in the backrooms of the forums, there were a couple of discussions going on. One of them was about the inevitable future when our gracious hosts at Just Ask Them needed to start charging us actual money to keep the forums in action. The second discussion was about one of the inherent flaws of forum software. You see, forums are great at being able to find news and information about current events - the discussions are new and active and stay atop the list of recent posts. But, what happens when you have a great post that contains all sorts of timeless information that will be useful for years to come? Things like The Basic Rules of Copywriting or How to Host Multiple Servers on Apache. The questions come up again and again, and the useful threads get lost in the mix.

And so, my mind clicked into action and I turned a couple of simple problems into a gigantic solution that is now known as the Cre8asite Resource Library.

The Structure of a Directory with the Power of a Search Engine

If you browse through the various categories in the library, you’ll notice that there are very few home pages listed in there. Virtually all of the listings are deep linked pages that contain a specific answer to a specific question related to the Web Industry. If you are looking for web sites that deal with SEO or web programming, or graphics, or whatever, you’re better off going to the DMOZ or another directory. But, if you are trying to figure out how to establish and develop your brand, you can come here rather than sifting through the Google search results that show you commercial services offering to do it for you, show you discussions about how Mozilla Developers are supposed to use the word “Mozilla” and not “Firebird” and so on.

In short, our directory doesn’t list every Internet Development Resource on the web, but you can be sure that the ones we do list are going to be useful.

The Bigger Picture - The Cre8asite Network

Yes. There is a lot of information and knowledge required to run a successful business on the World Wide Web. To add to that, everything changes so quickly, its a full time job just to keep up with what changed in the last week.

Because of this, Cre8asite has branched out into three different sites - each designed to help you keep in touch with what’s going on.

The Directory: As talked about above, the directory keeps track of the more “static” concepts - the “How To…” type things that don’t change very much. Sure, the importance of having links to your site may vary from search engine to search engine and from month to month, but the basics of link building concepts aren’t going to change a lot.

The Forums: There are thousands of variables, plenty of unique situations, and gobs and gobs of things that can’t really be answered with a simple article or tutorial. By having a place to discuss concepts as they arise and to see how each element has an effect on the other elements of the process, we can open up new ideas and concepts and explore them to great depths.

The Blog: Sure, we’d like to think that between the forums and the directory, we can cover all the important issues going on relating to our fast paced industry. But, it’s simply not the case. There are hundreds of news sources, other forums, and information coming directly from the Search Engines and other companies that affect our industry. And, of course, what of the people who can only drop by the forums once a week or so? A topic that was hot at the beginning of the week may die down by the weekend when you visit and you won’t ever spot it because it’s moved down the list of “new threads” too far. And so, as our Cre8tive Flow blog grows and we figure out just where our place is in the grand scheme of things, those of you who can’t follow everything on a daily basis can have a place to come and see what’s important and noteworthy right now - both from our Forum, but from many other places on the web, as well. We don’t ever think this place will have all the information you need, but we’d like to think that it’ll make a good starting point for you.

The Future And Beyond

What you see before you now is just the start. We’ve got a whole bunch of tools and additional resources in the works that will undoubtedly blow your mind (I know they’ve blown mine on occassion). Here’s a little hint for those of you who own forum sites and are running up against the same wall we were at cre8asiteforums: Start submitting your useful threads to the resource library right now. I’m working on a whole suite of tools that’ll help you keep those important and useful threads organized on your own site so they are right there for you to point your visitors to.

And, of course, there are the more super-secret type things I’ve got up my sleeve that you’ll start to see appearing in the coming months and years! It’s a good time to be alive. It’s a better time to be in the Ineternet Industry. It’s a great time to Cre8asite!