History
Henrik Wallin has run the non-profit site Elftown (www.elftown.com) since 2002-02-06 on the Heddate platform. Bugs and problems have been worked out, even for this site that has more than 10 000 users that log in every week.
The company is built on more than 10 years of experience of Linux, and an extensive and deep understanding of the basic protocols and webserver technology which makes it possible to build much more secure and efficient solutions than quick PHP-modules can offer.
Offers
Heddate combine extensive software expertise with deep understanding of community user behaviour and demands to meet the exact needs of the site. The content and marketing of the sites are provided by third-party individuals, organizations or companies.
Consulting
Heddate sells consulting regarding search engine optimizing (SEO) and Internet advertising. The company policy is to use safe, honest and friendly methods, and no evil (as defined by Google) tricks that might backfire on you will ever be used. contact Heddate for more information!
See also:
CV for Henrik Wallin
Site building and joint-ventures
If you are interested in a joint-venture, contact Heddate! Unfortunately Heddate has to ignore all proposals that lack a well prepared plan for how to attract users to the community, but both professional and hobby partners are welcome.
For student and other non-profit organisations, you might get free hosting for your site without some of the limitations a webhotel would force upon you.
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A site in a week
If you have a marketing campaign on the way and you want a community to be there to catch your target-group, the best solution is to order the site-in-a-week product. This offer includes:
- A site set up in which you can search for other members, read and write in forums, let the members gather their information on wiki-pages (freely editable pages) or in a more searchable archive and there are functions for the administrators' news and questions. See Heddate features for more info about the technology.
- The site will be hosted by Heddate. As long as you generally have less than 200 members online at the same time, it's no problem. If you pay 600$ extra per month, you can have 2000 online members on a dedicated computer. If you need more than that, contact Heddate! Estimation: Elftown has 17000 different users visiting every week, and that is the same as a maximum online number of about 1000 users. If your site contains mostly serious information and not so many users that click around a lot, you can probably have 100 000 users without a problem.
- You will get support "as soon as it's possible". Not 24 hour-support, but the site will run at least as smoothly as the other sites have done for years now. During the start-up you will get invaluable help in learning how to operate and start an Internet community.
- In the unlikely case that things don't work out, you can just stop paying, and you will get the data on the site as raw-MySQL database files (Which is enough to at least extract members' email-addresses and important things written in the wiki.) and can start working on another kind of site, without losing any big investment. Trying Heddate for 2 months is both cheaper and faster than having meetings and hire consults to create a site in any other way. If you want extended rights to the software, it can be arranged.
Cost for site-in-a-week
- Pay $600 a month (Heddate is open for other deals too, like sharing income from ads, but then you have to have a good case.)
- You have to put some work into specifying how you want everything. It's just a few hours of work for you and everything will be done by someone who has expertise in what works in an Internet community.
- * Specify what public forums you want and their descriptions. You can always add more later!
- * Specify what attributes members should have. You can add attributes for "years of PhD-studies" or "Expertise in what kinds of plants". And you can always add more later!
- * Do you want one or more special searchable areas where people can upload things? It can be photo albums, music, scientific papers, product catalogs, computer programs and so on. You can always change or add this later!
- * The entrance-page-text and layout have to be worked out. It can be anything from "Write 'A site for experts in neurosurgery', and put this image of a brain there!" to a long discussion about what colours your company wants to be associated with. Make sure that you know what you want though! You will get limited help with creating customized graphics, but only if you know what you want!
- * Decide some small things like if you should need an invitation to the site, and if you want some special feature.
- * If English isn't your preferred language, then you have to provide or make a deal about the translation.
- * You need to have beta-testers and report minor problems.
- You have to keep an eye on what is happening on the site and you have to make people use it. You will get help on how to administer the site and answer technical questions about it.
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Examples of Heddate sites and their features
www.elftown.com 
Elftown is a non-profit site for fantasy and science fiction lovers from all over the world. The members share images and stories they have made with each other. It has (2005) 17 000 active members and is the biggest site running on the Heddate software. It has 26 GByte of messages and 6 GByte wiki-data.
www.elfpack.com 
Elfpack is a site hosted by Heddate where people can fool around and have fun and meet new strange people.
www.cathug.com 
Cathug is a site hosted by Heddate for people interested in cats and talking about them and looking at huge amounts of cat-images.
www.linkmeet.com 
Linkmeet is a site for academics around the globe. A well written presentation is required to be accepted as a member.
www.musmakers.com 
MusMakers is a site hosted by Heddate for people who write music and want to share their songs and talk about them. Even people who aren't members can download the members' music-files from there.
writersco.heddate.com 
A sister-site to MusMakers that is for writers. Here you can download short stories, poems and novels.
More info about the sites can be found links.html
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Heddate Internet Communities