Alright guys, so here’s a blog post. I want to offer an apology to those of you who are following my journey, and haven’t really had much to go on so far. I’m trying my best to relate back what I can, while using technology in an appropriate way and still respecting the security/privacy concerns of my hosts. It’s been 3 weeks since my last post, and that’s too far in my book. But enough of that. Let me tell you what I’m doing right now.
Right now I am currently in Mae Sot, a (relatively) small border town on the eastern edge of Thailand, pressed up against the border of Myanmar. Myanmar has had huge amount of internal, often violent, conflict over the past 60 years. Due to this conflict, there has been a significant exodus of Burmese people over the years. Mae Sot is one of the many locations Burmese refugees have fled to during this extended period of time, and consequently a large portion of Mae Sot’s population is made up of Burmese refugees.
Aside from all the signs being in Thai or Burmese, Mae Sot reminds me more of a dusty town on the U.S.-Mexico border than what I would picture for a city in Thailand. There’s not a whole lot of foliage, most of the buildings are pretty low lying and painted in pastel colors, dogs are everywhere, and the streets are packed with vendors selling everything from a papayas to live frogs. A full meal at a hole in the wall restuarant not only costs less than a dollar, but is also pretty darn satisfying. That’s where I am.
This month, our ministry host is a group called The Outpour Movement which seeks to establish and grow businesses in Mae Sot as a platform not only to provide jobs and teach business skills to Burmese and Thai youth, but also to support other ministries in Mae Sot specifically aimed at providing homeless refugees with a place to live. They’re also telling people about Jesus and spreading the love.
Right now The Outpour Movement currently has one public facing businesses: Famous Ray’s Cuisine. They did have a bike shop, but since changing locations the bike shop is closed until sometime later this Summer or Fall. That’s actually where my team steps in. Our ministry hosts have asked my team to do a variety of things, but most of them are centered around design. We were asked to help realize the vision for the interior of the new bike shop, which will actually sell more than just bikes, come to life. This ranges from making a chandelier, to a bookshelf, or designing a new logo and branding the shop. So that’s what most of my team is focusing on. I was asked to redo the websites of Famous Ray’s and the new bike shop. I’m still working with my team and supporting them, and they’re supporting me, but for the most part that’s where my daily efforts have been.
Right now the two sites are some pretty lame 2011ish era WordPress based sites. It’s been like 100 Internet years since they were made. Let me give you guys a little pro-tip. If you’re thinking of launching a new website, and don’t know or personally employ someone who knows what the phrase “phpinfo()” signifies, then don’t use WordPress. Don’t do it. There’s better out of the box options out there today.
Just don’t.
Wanna write a blog? Medium.com. Want an online store? Shopify.com. Want a portfolio for your artwork? Dropr.com. Don’t mind spending a bit time developing or spending a little money? Squarespace.com, Weebly.com, or Wix.com. WordPress, assumes you have way more content than most people can provide and always serves up that content on a web page that looks more or less like a blog post. But that’s enough ranting.
I’m using Squarespace, which is pretty cool, to develop the two new websites. Definitely better than WordPress for the amount of content and style of sight that we’re making. The websites are pretty limited in scope, thankfully, so I think I’ll be able to get them both done. I don’t know really how much I can go into detail about it without boring ya’ll, but I’ll be sure to post some links when I’m done.
Until next time.
