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A Puslinch Diary January 2002 The One Year Anniversary of puslinch.net Puslinch.net was launched one year ago. In that time the site has received over 3,000 visitors. As would be expected the majority of visitors came from Canada--52%. The country with the second largest number of visitors was Australia. That may be because that country also has a community called Puslinch and because Australia--as in "Frebis and Duane in Australia"--is prominently featured on the home page. Interestingly, the country that had the third largest number of visitors was Portugal, followed by the UK. Most of the other visitors came from other European countries. Two came from Saudi Arabia. Only 3 visitors came from the .US domain, however, 4 visits were paid from the US Dept. of Defense using the .MIL domain--Big Brother clearly has an eye on the Township of Puslinch. The response to the web site has been overwhelmingly positive. Puslinch is a small community and when residents discover that there is a web site devoted solely to that community it is understandable that they are interested. Perhaps this comment best sums up the response: "I never knew Puslinch had a web page, and now that I have been here am I ever glad we have something like this. All sorts of information to be found, and a great place to share ideas, and complaints." I have worked for years with individuals with disabilities, so as April was disabilities month I asked to have this site approved by CAST (Center for Applied Special Technology) as being accessible to users with disabilities. And with some revision the site was approved. I was pleased. Unfortunately, that very positive experience led to my only negative interaction with a site visitor. I relay the following in hopes that it doesn't occur again. I received an e-mail asking me to link to a non-profit site--I did so immediately. Several weeks later I found that the site had linked back to puslinch.net, but that the link was within a frame--which is a poor web design technique and it presents barriers to users with disabilities. I e-mailed back politely asking to have the frame removed. This individual was quite indignant and promptly had the link to puslinch.net removed, but the link to that non-profit site is still on this site. The year ended on a positive note as in December puslinch.net was awarded a Superior Resource Site Community Award. Just in case you missed it on the home page I have put a copy of it at the bottom of this page. I would like to thank all those who e-mailed comments and queries to puslinch.net, there are too many of you to mention here--but you know who you are. A heart felt thank you also goes out to the regular contributers: Frankie Shaw, who even with her computer challenges always manages to send in her Lines From the Library; Hedely Dimock who has been following the Proposed Corwhin Development from the beginning; and Brigitte Dimock who submitted a number of special interest articles and has now committed to a monthly column called "The Kitchen Gardener." If anyone has an idea for an article or a regular column please send me an e-mail. Let's all have a healthy and prosperous year in 2002. Paul
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