Good morning folks. I've seen several new members here recently asking about this site's history and the original founders intention and goals. I don't have time to go into great detail right now as managing and adminning c99p has become a full time job, although I do plan on eventually writing a complete history of this site, that started as a spark of a dream, moved in and out of many iterations, and culminated in caucus99percent.com as we see it now.

The original intent of this site was sanctuary, a lifeboat, an alternative to the manipulative culture that had devolved into shake and bake blog war click bait tribalism. A place where thoughts could be expressed, debated, nurtured, and tossed out if need be, without the fear of a big brother blog nanny swooping down like a flying monkey and carrying you off to some PC dunce corner complete with a pointed hat Time Out or worse yet, ostracization for thinking freely.

Our original intent was to let c99p evolve into what it would be, organically. What that evolution came to be was a site where issues took precedent over electoral politics, certainly elections and political figure heads were discussed, but generally took a back burner to the issues that face our country, our world, our planet. Caucus99percent harbored very little love for DNC style politics and the Party at large. I would venture to say that about 95% of the active members were/are Bernie Sanders supporters, but he was very seldom discussed. We tried to keep it about issues. But c99p was never a rigid platform, it will continue to evolve and will move as the membership moves, but issues should remain as the core.

And more than anything, c99p was a tight nit community, no, a family, of friends that share each others life endeavors, the good and the bad. That in and of itself is some of the best that c99p had to offer, and we present that to our new members as well.

With that said here's an excerpt from an Open Thread of mine from 4/12/15, almost a year ago. It tells, in very short fashion, of how the site itself that we know as caucus99percent came to be. It will give you some insight of how it was built and why on a personal level it was built. I'll have much more to say about this at a later date, after things calm down a bit.

Sunday Open Thread 04-12-15

This site has been live for a little over 3 months, since Jan. 7 to be exact. At the moment we have 75 members. This site was built with Drupal, an open source software package that can be downloaded for free. It is a widely used CMS (Content Management System) with many sites large and small using it across the web.

Last winter I decided I would teach myself the Drupal system and build a site. I created a local developmental environment to learn the program. What that means is I downloaded and installed a bundled package of software onto my personal computer to learn from rather than do it all on an actual web hosting account. The bundled software package included the Drupal program, an Apache server program and a MySql data base program, everything that's needed to run a Drupal site. It took a couple of days to install, troubleshoot and get it up and running. It then took a couple of weeks of pretty intensive study to learn the ins and outs of building an actual site or blogsite to be more accurate. There were many hours of trial and error, head-to-desk contact and saying the hell with it and almost giving up a couple of times, but I muddled through it and eventually figured it out.

After getting an operable site up and running on my personal computer, the time came to upload all of it to a web server and go live with it. That took about another two weeks as there were many new hurdles to jump over, bugs to work out and several hours on the phone with the web host. Finally it all clicked and came together and it was time to invite some folks in to do some beta testing. It took a few days to get it operable enough to actually function as a blog. Some of you will remember those beta testing days. Fast forward three months and here we all are.

An estimate was obtained last fall to build a caucus blogsite and if I recall correctly it came in a little over $4,500.00. After going through the rigmarole involved to build this one, I have to say that that is reasonable. What did I charge to build this site? Well the software cost $00.00, my labor came in at $00.00 and the web hosting cost under $100.00, paid for by a few generous members. Why did I do all of this for nothing?

I'm a staunch leftie that believes firmly in the cause. I admittedly am not much of a writer, so this was my way of doing my part for the cause (more about the cause in a bit). I honestly get a kick out of seeing folks enjoy this site. Seeing that makes it all worth while for me. My work is seasonal, that's why I pushed so hard over the winter months to get this place up and running, I have a lot of spare time in the winter and I truly enjoy learning technical computer stuff, everything I know tech-wise is self taught, so taking a month or so to get this built gave me something to do. Even though it was hectic at times, I enjoyed it. Sometimes I pinch myself over it's initial success, I had my doubts during the building process but pushed on none the less.

Whose site is this? It's your site. I built it and maintain it for free, but it's your site, it's our site. You guys and gals make it what it is, I'm just the nuts and bolts guy. We're going to need this place in the coming months and I hope it keeps growing. The trick to growing a blogsite is content, content, content. That's where you guys and gals come in, I supply the platform and you supply the content, for the cause, and so far it seems to be working rather well and I thank you all for that.

Now about that "cause" thing. Now that it's built and operable, where do we want to go with this site? How do we want to use it? What are it's goals? And most importantly: How do we use this site to affect the upcoming election? Since this is your site, our site, I'll open the floor for suggestions. Thank you all, you are great folks.

I hope this may help answer a few questions in the brief time I have right now. Thanks folks.