How a Catastrophe Ushered in a New Era
Getting your website attacked by hackers isn’t usually a good thing. |
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Imagine, hundreds of files damaged, trojan horses installed everywhere. We had no choice but to shut wholewoman.com down to protect our friends and guests.
The cleanup was going to be monumental.
But the hackers actually did us a favor. Let me explain.
In 2007, my husband Lanny and I were driving back from California and we started talking about the future of the Whole Woman site. Over long hours of driving, our brains were buzzing about what we could do to change the world of women's health. When we got home, we wrote it all down so we wouldn’t forget. Our vision document ran eight pages and about 2500 words.
Lots of great ideas.
But also lots of pressure from many other directions in our lives. The Whole Woman site was aging, but overhauling it just never made it to the top of our priority list.
Until now.
With the old site in a shambles, we had a choice: rebuild or bulldoze it and build our dream. As painful as we knew it would be for us and our friends to have the site down for a couple of months, we felt it was worth the price. We might never again have this kind of opportunity, where the urgency to get it done would overpower all our other priorities.
What you see here is the result of that work. Even if you’re not a technology oriented person, I think you can appreciate the hours and hours of design, illustration, programming, brainstorming and late nights and weekends that have gone into it.
Is it glossy and flossy? No. Would IBM build a site like this? Hardly.
No, it is a site about, by and for women.
It’s a Village where people know each other, smile at each other and say “Hello”. It’s a place to come and be for a while each day, to check in with the neighbors and see what’s going on in their world.
It’s a place to learn.
Here's what we've built so far:
- The Whole Woman Village Post - a newspaper with articles about women’s health, a column from me, the founder of Whole Woman, and a review of a scientific article of interest to women.
- The Village Library - a growing collection of articles on women’s health and the living arts. Have an article, poem or artwork you would like to submit to the library? Your can read the Editorial Guidelines under the “Submissions” tab.
- The Village Theater showing The Whole Woman Solution to Pelvic Organ Prolapse and Urinary Incontinence (sounds like Oscar® material doesn’t it?) We’re calling it Whole Woman 101 for short. But it covers the basics of what you need to know about Pelvic Organ Prolapse.
- Our beloved Forum is back all gussied up. (We have almost 4,000 members.)
- The Whole Woman Store carries our books, DVDs and other products important for women.
We’ve also built some things that we’ll be finishing in the next couple of months:
- The Village Café will have a chat room for more immediate and intimate interaction
- The Village Tavern will have video chat and music which should be fun
- Seedcraft, our herb store will be a store for the herbal remedies we have been developing
- Christine’s Home, will have a regular series of short videos on raising, preparing and preserving food in “Christine’s Kitchen, videos on sewing projects in “Christine’s Sewing Room” and Fireside Chats, short videos from time to time on issues of importance for women.
- The Village Theater will have a monthly feature of interest around health and other related issues including a number of interviews with prominent women and men.
- At the Whole Woman Center, you’ll be able to do the Whole Woman Workout™ with short videos so you can learn the program step-by-step or the long video when you are up to speed. We’ll also have guest teachers in from time to time.
And that’s just the beginning. There are many more features we will be introducing in coming months. |
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All this takes time and costs money, so for the first time we’re offering a membership package. A lot of things will remain free: the Forum, Whole Woman 101, the Library and Village Post. But most of the additional features will be for members only. This will help cover some of our overhead and pay for some of the content creation. Our primary source of revenue will still be selling books and DVDs, but Village membership will make your Whole Woman experience much more rewarding.
We want membership to be within the reach of almost all women. So we’ve set the annual membership price at sixty dollars (US) or one hundred dollars for two years, a twenty percent savings. That’s five dollars a month or less than sixteen and a half cents a day. About a dime a day for the two year membership.
We’re doing all this because since I put up the Whole Woman site in January of 2004, almost four thousand women have registered on the forum. Many thousands more “lurk” or read and monitor the forum, sometimes for years. Lasting friendships have been formed at Whole Woman that transcend geographic boundaries.
All I set out to do was keep women out of the operating room and let them know there was a better way to deal with pelvic organ prolapse.
But along the way, Whole Woman has become so much more.
It’s become a Village, a home away from home for thousands of women. We’ve watched friendships blossom. We’ve watched women climb from despair to jubilation as they learned from me and from each other that we can take charge of our health and not be run roughshod by the pharma/medical/government complex.
So now we stand on the brink of a whole new incarnation for Whole Woman, the result of what you have brought to it.
I’ve always wanted to live in a Village, to be surrounded by people I’ve known all my life and trust. Where food comes out of the ground, not out of a plastic package, where skies are blue not brown and clean water flows freely from the tap.
Alas, the physical world isn’t that way. More and more of us are crammed into the planet and ironically, that makes us increasingly isolated.
However, there is the miracle of the Web. Now we can connect and build relationships around the world in real time. We can find our kindred spirits and create a virtual world that is all to which we might aspire, not to hide from the real world, but an oasis, a sanctuary for community, and refuge when life’s slings and arrows get to be a bit much.
There are more than three billion women on the planet. Many of them are not having a good time. The Village is a place where we can be of service to our sisters.
I hope you will join us.
Here’s an “ethical bribe” for encouragement. Become a Charter Member of the Whole Woman Village.
We’re targeting July 1st to open regular membership. But for those who know, believe in and want to participate in creating the future of Whole Woman, instead of $60 US for one year, $100 for two years, between now and July 1st, you can become a Charter Member for only $75 for two years.
As a Charter member, as we bring the new locations, activities and systems online, you’ll be the first to have access to them. You’ll be on our priority list for anything new we create or discover. In short, if you’ll be there for us, we’ll be there for you.
Thank you for your time and interest and enjoy your visit to the Whole Woman Village.
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Sincerely, |
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PS. Remember, this is a limited time offer. July 1st, the regular membership program starts and the full benefits will be available to everyone. As a Charter member you'll be able to enjoy each new feature as it comes on line over the next three months and get significant savings on your membership for the next two years. Thanks!
CAK