As you can probably tell, I’ve not been posting as usual, and there’s a simple reason. Last year I became disgusted with all of the social sites and decided to open my own. I searched for a usable domain name and found one in Phrind.com (my wife says its pronounced P-H-RIND and not like Friend, but I disagree). My goal was to start a site based on, what else, WordPress using the BuddyPress social site plugins. That didn’t work out at all, mostly because I couldn’t get WordPress MU installed as a sub-site on my hosting account, so I gave up. Later, I tried to make it a purely mobile site, but that didn’t work out, either, so the whole project just fell by the wayside.

Then one day I had an epiphany, and it was a simple one (as everyone know, the best kind). I was talking to a friend of mine about my daughter’s Autism and how it effects her ability to understand and work with social cues and general socialization, and that’s when it hit me. I would develop a website which would be a social network for the Autism community. It was honestly revelatory. I knew exactly how it would work from end to end in the blink of an eye. Thusly, PHRiND was born. That is, indeed, what I’ve been working on these past weeks. I already have the core site up, hosting of which was kindly donated by Bluehost (it was my opinion that they were the best hosting service before their kind generosity, by the way).

So, if you’re curious about what I’ve been working on, you’ll have to wait a bit longer. As part of the site’s security, you must be invited to join, so you can’t even go look at it right now. We’re also in closed beta, so you can’t even see what it looks like. Hang in there, though, as I’m working on a public-facing site which will have all kinds of helpful information about PHRiND and Autism, as well as resources for non-members. Once I get that site up in the next week or so, I’ll post the link here.

Now, wish me luck. I’m going to need it.

Purchase this and related items at Amazon now: