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At the beginning of 1996 we were the only company making websites for independent schools. We recognized that the web was becoming an important enough communication resource that schools would eventually look to outside sources for help. A lot of other companies eventually arrived at the same conclusion, and of those I'd say that three became truly excellent providers of web communications services to the NAIS community.

It's been three and a half months since we launched Newschoolyard at NAIS, and here's what we've learned thus far:

Newschoolyard is engaged in the Drupal community. I have been in the independent school website business for fifteen years, or 180 months, and this past month has been, by far, the coolest and most mind-boggling of all. Newschoolyard's Platform Architect, Jason Pamental, is headed to San Francisco for DrupalCon next week and my only regret is that I am not going with him. We joined the Drupal education community some months ago, and we are excited to make face-to-face contact with those whose voices we have only heard electronically.

Newschoolyard is pleased to announce two more independent schools have signed-on for our open source web service; Nantucket New School and Soundview Prep. Nantucket New School is a co-educational day school serving students in pre-school through grade eight. Soundview Preparatory School, an independent, coed day school for grades 6 – 12, is located on a 13 acre campus in Yorktown Heights, New York in northern Westchester County.

This post is about paying for web-based functionality--plain and simple. We hooked up with all sorts of third-party solutions to get our site launched yesterday, and the cost was ZERO! In the spirit of full disclosure, in the case of two items on the list below, we have limited free trials, but even then the monthly subscription is less than half the cost of your school's admission application fee.

What’s new? This blog post, that’s what. This is the first whatsnew post and man, plenty is new. I will never forget an idle moment in the exhibit hall at NAIS in Montreal six years ago when one of my counterparts from another websitesforindependentschools company approached me during a lull in the action and asked, “Hey Mark, what keeps you up at night?” I said something about rising blue cross premiums and making payroll. “What about you,” I asked.