I have been busy over the new year period creating this new site. More than 150,000 people visited the old site in 2012, prompting me to improve the site to offer more features, more information, and hopefully an even better resource on social capital and related concepts.
The popularity of Social Capital Research has surprised me in recent years. The site was first published in 2004 and has gone through a few redevelopments (one of the benefits of being a web developer is I can improve the website when ever I have some spare time). In 2012 the site was receiving about 15,000 visitors per month with most people interested in the page on the definition of social capital.
This new site is a WordPress site, using several plugins to provide additional functionality. The old site had a long reference list, but didn’t have a quick way to see the reference details on-page. One of the big benefits of using a system like WordPress is the ability to use a plugin to provide this type of functionality. It was a big job to add all the details in for all the pages, but you can now see footnotes for all the references on each page.
I used AcademicPress plugin to look after the footnotes. It is also capable of building reference lists, but I elected to use it for it’s footnote capabilities on this occasion.
I also installed Jetpack, an internal link building plugin, an SEO plugin, and various social media plugins. The result is a clean, professional, and information rich website on social capital that I hope you will all like, use, and contribute to.
I’m planning to publish an extensive review on social capital and community participation in the near future and start to promote social capital events and publications.
I’m a regular Twit, so follow me on Twitter to receive regular updates about social capital and related concepts.
