About ASPAlliance
History
Since its foundation in 1997, ASPAlliance has undergone several notable
changes. In 1999, Steven Smith took over ownership and operations of the site.
From 1999 to 2003, ASPAlliance served as a shared hosting site for
distinguished ASP and ASP.NET professionals to publish content on their own
mini-sites, kind of an early form of blogging. Much of this can still be viewed
at http://authors.aspalliance.com.
In September 2003, ASPAlliance moved to a centralized CMS in order to provide
readers with more consistency in their experience of the site. Initially, the
transition entailed bringing over as much content as possible from the
mini-sites, while still accepting new content. Also in 2003, Michelle Smith
left veterinary practice to support ASPAlliance and its advertising network
full time as vice president of operations.
In May of 2004, Steven Smith was called upon to serve in the
US Army's operations in Iraq. In response to this, he asked J. Ambrose Little
to take over managing ASPAlliance's content and development. Ambrose accepted
the offer and has been working to gradually improve the editorial process and,
consequently, the quality of the content on the site.
In June 2005, ASPAlliance made a drastic change in its
compensation model, moving from a strictly royalty-based system to an honoraria
system based on article type and length. With this change, the article proposal
and submission process was greatly simplified and streamlined and the editorial
process has become more formal and interactive.
The latest change, in September 2005, is the diversification
of ASPAlliance's content. In response to the increasing popularity of .NET and
its easing of all kinds of development (from web to Windows to other devices),
ASPAlliance, formerly targeted specifically at Active Server Pages (ASP) and
ASP.NET developers, diversified to include topics of interest to .NET
developers that are not specifically web related.
To better signify this change, ASPAlliance rebranded itself as
the Active Software Professional Alliance. We will keep the ASPAlliance
moniker, but instead of that indicating a specialty in ASP and ASP.NET topics,
it will serve to indicate a more general focus on professional software
developers, particularly those interested in .NET and other Microsoft
technologies.
All of these changes have conspired to make the reader
experience on ASPAlliance as valuable and enjoyable as possible.
Who We Are and What We Do
Apart from the obvious publication of quality content, the
site also has spawned several related sites including
Lake Quincy Media (formerly the ASPAlliance Ad Network) and the AspAdvice
Mailing List Community. As of August 2005, the site has over 350,000
unique users per month and shows over three million page views per month. The
site's weekly newsletter has approximately 15,000 subscribers between its plain
text and HTML editions.
Many people contribute to the success of the site. Michelle Smith manages
financial and most of the business operations. Ambrose Little directs content
and development. Cindy Brucato leads development, implementing changes and
improvements to the CMS. Brad Kingsley, Scott Forsyth, and the rest of the
ORCS Web team make sure the site's servers are kept up and running
24/7.
In addition, ASPAlliance works with a few editors who help to
keep the technical and textual quality of content on the site high. They are
Christiane Little, lead copy editor, and Anand Narayanaswamy, lead technical
editor. Thomas Johansen and others provide help with the site's layout and
design, and Thomas also provided us with a code highlighting component. Our
advertisers and supporters ensure that we can continue to provide these
services. Our authors provide helpful articles, tutorials, reviews, and samples
to share their expert knowledge with the community.
Finally,
you
help to make ASPAlliance a leading .NET community through your input and
participation. Please tell us what you'd like to see so that we can continue to
improve the site and serve your needs.
|