Connect Del Rio Launches!

I'd first like to say big thank you for the support from my mother, family, friends and businesses that have either supported or encouraged this project. A huge part of the reason Connect Del Rio has launched today is because of your support or encouragement. I'd also like to thank the community of Del Rio, TX for watching today's live event and visiting our website! We hope to not disappoint you today. Should we run into issues, please be patient with us as we will be working all day today to ensure a safe and stable launch.

This blog post is being written on Sunday, January 28, 2024 at 2:47 AM... most of the nights in the past few months have been dedicated, like tonight, to ensuring the smooth and successful development of Connect Del Rio. By now many of you have seen our first CDR Keynote Presentation. If you're reading this, the keynote has not even been filmed yet! However, I am aware of the information I won't be able to fit into the presentation and would like to share some intricate details on the development of Connect Del Rio. Join me as we view the timeline of events that lead to today!

September 13th, 2023 8:32 PM

Back when I was a 6th Grade student at San Felipe Memorial Middle School, I would finish my assignments in typing class within about 15 minutes from when the class began. After I would log on to a website editor and just design and make websites for fun. Fast forward to September 13th, 2023.. I began working on this tool for the community; it started out as a fun project dedicated to experimenting with design. As I worked on it, I started playing with some assets that the web hosting service provides. As I tweaked and adjusted colors, shapes and measurements of the design, I slowly began to realized that what I was working on was something I had been wanting to do for about 8 years now.. A news blog site. However, there remained an elephant in the room. I could not run an entire news blog site by myself. I work a full-time job and create videos for clients on the side occasionally. I quickly realized that this couldn't be the only thing this site has to offer and started to think back on some of the biggest issues in Del Rio.

• I wish it was easier to find food trucks.

• Why is it so difficult to find some professional services?

• Do people struggle to find themselves part of our community when they move to Del Rio?

• Something to show visitors and our own community members what our local organizations can offer!

• We need to centralize local apartment/house listings.

You'll notice that some of the bullet points are questions and some are statements. I was sure about three things, Food Trucks needed to be easily accessible online, local non-profit organizations needed more exposure for all the great work they do and as someone who rents, we NEED to solve the issue of how difficult it can be to find apartment/home rentals in Del Rio. The others were questions I had to work and experiment find answers to. Here is 4 of the 5 bullet points were solved today.

• Food Truck Central

• Find a Professional

• Discover Del Rio

• Local Events & Get Involved

• Project Next-Home (coming soon)

November 13, 2023 1:34 AM

By now I had already presented the website home page to multiple friends and family. Everyone loved how friendly and welcoming it was. At the time of designing the home page, we put in place some temporary blog posts that acted as concepts.

It started as a blank canvas and grew into what you see in that screenshot.

Now that the base was in place, it was time to focus on design. Every space, every color, every size I carefully chose what you'd expect to see in an important website. From this design alone, you can already see the problems. While the layout is wonderful, some assets should be moved and adjusted in design. I spent the next 2 months working on improving the design little by little.

As we moved into January and February I started to build a team little by little. The team helped contact many businesses that would be willing to list with us and food trucks that we can partner with! Contacting the businesses wasn't as easy as it seems though, we contacted over 80 businesses in Del Rio and the outpour of support we received from the businesses was AMAZING.

March 2, 2024 @ 10:30 AM

Connect Del Rio finally launches with so many features to offer the community! We hope you enjoy it!