I got laid off in February. Shortly thereafter I met a developer who was doing destination travel sites for a marketing company that catered primarily to the hospitality industry. We’ve since done sites for hotels around the world. I’ve been webmaster for St. Pete Pride for several years now and this work that i’ve done has colored much of the work on the new 2010 St. Pete pride website. I began to think of Pride as a destination travel event. Remember that 90% of the people that view your site have no connection to pride other than the possibility that they might come to the event. I started looking at the travel sites we’ve done over the past year… some 30+ of then and began to codify the things that they have in common. I found I agreed with my previous efforts on the pride site and completely disagreed with others. I started with what I believe to be the primary goal of any pride website: Get people to the event. It seems silly to say it this way, but your pride website should make people want to come to the event. Many sites, in an effort to provide information, ONLY provide information. People will look at your website and decide in less than 10 seconds whether or not they want to come to the event. Make them want to come. I hope to get the new pride website up by Feb 1. I’ll try to get in several posts before then. More soon.