The End of a Project

If you follow me on twitter or if you follow me on Google+ then you may recall a few posts I made a while ago about a project I was working on.  This project was a website to teach people to program in Java.  I have recently decided to discontinue the project.  A number of factors lead to that decision but ultimately the reason it was abandoned is due to the desire to refocus my efforts.

I originally set out to write a book teaching people how to program in Java, that book is currently about 90% finished.  The intention was to publish it for Kindle using Amazon Direct Publishing with whom I am a registered Publisher.  The web site was an after thought and took the idea of taking the book content and processing it into an online reference.  I managed to process about 45% of what I had written into content which I published online to a website I built in Joomla.  If you are interested in building a website, Joomla is a free Open Source Content Management System, what that basically means is that its a piece of software that gives you all the functionality of a site like blogger, but in a fully customisable way.

One of the contributing factors to discontinuing my project was the financial aspect.  I weighed the cost of the doamin and renewal, the cost of a few services that went with that to host the site, against the amount made in advertising, then factored in the time and effort and maintenance that was needed to keep the site running and in the end it all amounted to a loss in more ways than just finance.  So refocusing my efforts back to the original plan I have decided to scrap the site, and finish the book, then publish on kindle as was the first intention.  This route amounts to zero financial cost to me, simply time and effort.  The book once published will have a low price, which can potentially make a greater income than the advertising from the website could have supplied in the first place.

This whole experience was certainly a learning curve, this was the first real website I built and maintained, beyond third party hosted sites like this blog and beyond the trivial small sites I built for college and university etc.  I am quite pleased with how it went, I am not disappointed at all by the fact I have closed the site, it has actually made me consider starting another in the future, as for what it will be centred around, that will remain a secret for now, I'll share it with you closer to the time.