Background edit
Josh Benson is the current webmaster for the Young People's Socialist League. He joined the League in 1998 and was an active local organizer for two years. In 2003 he was contacted by the League's National Secretary Mary Loritz and asked to create a new website. In 2005, he submitted an amendment to the League's Constitution to make his position an officially recognized national officer under the title of Secretary of Technology. This position would be an elected one, and subject to a vote every year at the League's annual National Convention. The amendment passed at the following convention and Josh was officially elected the League's Secretary of Technology. He has subsequently been re-elected once in 2006.
The Perl Necklace edit
The first website he designed for the League, codenamed Perl Necklace, was based on WebApp, a Perl-based CMS. The site incorporated several key innovations that would enhance the League's outreach and organizational capabilities:
- A bulletin board system where site visitors could interact with other visitors and post discussion threads.
- A dynamic content system that allowed users to submit articles for publication on the main page.
- An online form allowing visitors to submit an application for membership to YPSL.
- A calendar of League and related events.
After extensive recoding and remodeling, this site functioned well for three years, eventually acquiring a user base of over 300 active members. While many of these users were not actual members of YPSL, they actively participated in the online discourse and organizational activities. The site received nearly constant modification and maintenance, and towards the end of its life consisted almost entirely of original code.
Eventually, the site began to suffer from hacker attacks and a failing server. Josh was asked to move the site to a new server. He instead suggested that due to the aging look of the site and the changes in standards and conventions since its creation, the adoption of a new site based on a different framework might be in order. The old site was abandoned, but still exists in an archive on Josh's personal computer.
Camelback edit
The new site, codenamed Camelback, was based on PHP-Fusion, a PHP/MySQL-based CMS. Several weeks were spent completely redesigning the site's structure, look, and functionality before it went "live" in August of 2006. The new site built on the features of Perl Necklace, and added a few new features:
- Broadcast of an RSS feed of the site's news articles and statements.
- Incorporation of news feeds from other independant media organizations.
- A live chat room for online meetings and general member use
- A community subsite system allowing site members to operate their own homepages, calendars, and blogs incorporated into the site's main interface.
As of January 2007, the site has yet to regain the active member base the previous incarnation enjoyed, despite several enhancements to the look and useability of the site.
The Future edit
Despite a measure of success, the League's site has failed to generate other design work for Josh. He maintains an active search for other contracts to develop community and mobilization-focused websites. He is also currently developing two future projects involving the web:
- The Southern Freethinkers Union - A discussion and activist group for progressives in the Southeast region of the United States.
- The Leftist Unity Project - A web-based organization to collect information from "mainstream" radical progressive organizations and present a centralized encyclopedia of progressive movements and a social network of activists.
Josh and his family live in South Carolina, and he currently works as an automotive mechanic. He has stated plans to concentrate on web design in the near future, and to research ways the internet can help further the cause of social activists and organizers.