About our site

We’ve received inquiries from several organizations asking how we created our website. The tools and hosting services we used to create this site are completely free and are accessible to virtually anyone with a little website design and development experience. How do we do it?

We use the WordPress.com blog platform as the foundation of our site. WordPress.com is the most powerful do-it-yourself blog platform in the world today. It was designed for blogs, but has features that enable you to create a more conventional looking website. We have discovered that it is a great platform for an association website like this.

WordPress.com is a hosted service. You do not have to download software, pay for hosting, or manage a web server. It is configurable and flexible, with a huge set of features that make managing your site a breeze. There are dozens of templates to choose from to customize the look and feel of your site (page layout, titles, menus, columns, colors, fonts, etc.). We selected a standard theme called Contempt which gives our site it’s unique look and feel.

19 of 30 Every feature you see on our site (photo galleries, newsreel, widgets, comments, embedded maps, embedded videos, pagination, polls, etc.) is part of the WordPress.com feature set, and new features are being added all the time.

WordPress.com also handles all of the important behind-the-scenes technical tasks like file management, domain name mapping, site statistics, spam control, site backup, version control, search engine integration, etc.. We use all of these features and don’t have to custom program a single thing.

But the best part about WordPress.com is that it’s so easy to use by those who create the content for your site. Mere mortals who are not computer geniuses (sound like people in your organization?) can easily learn how to use the WordPress authoring tools to create web pages, photo galleries and news postings on their own. Once they’re familiar with the tools, they don’t need much support. We love it.

Separately, we use a few external tools that enable us to easily communicate with our users. These are optional, but they’re completely free too.

Google Feedburner to automatically distribute our news postings via email and RSS feeds
Google Apps to provide custom email addresses using our domain name (e.g., admin@gulfcoastsblacksmith.com)
Google Docs for the feedback form on the Contacts page
Google Translate to display the site in more than 50 different languages
Polldaddy to manage embedded opinion polls.

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Lastly, we use the tools provided by the top three web search engines to enhance the visibility of our site in search results. Yep, all free too.

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October's Meeting in 2014

John Perilloux demonstrated how to craft tenons with a guillotine tool at October's meeting. To read more and view videos of the demonstration, click here.

Discoveries

Glen Wesley, a longtime member of the Gulf Coast Blacksmith Association, has been diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease (ALS).

As the disease progressed he began having difficulty feeding himself. He asked Sid Gale to help him design a device that would enable him to continue feeding himself without assistance.

They discussed it, made a few sketches and headed out to the shop. Discover how they designed and developed an Assisted Eating Device.

The 2012 Brian Brazeal Tool Workshop in October was a huge success. Watch as he makes tooling and forges a hammer head from round stock.

Chuck highly recommends Peter Ross' insightful Keynote Address at the 1998 ABANA Conference on the emergence of "machine mentality" over "hand mentality".

Ross was the Master Blacksmith at Colonial Williamsburg from 1979 to 2004.

See our coverage of Fire in the Swamp 2012, a one-stop shop for demos on forging, iron and pewter casting, and pottery crafts.

Did this creature crawl out of the bayou behind Buddy’s shop? See Sid Gale's Gator, featured at our February meeting.

GCBA provided demonstrations at the 2012 Arboretum Day.

A leaf key ring begins at the end of a bar.

Watch Brian Brazeal show us how it's done at our January meeting.

See Phil Love demonstrate the craft at Colonial Day, an annual event at St. Edward the Confessor School in Metairie.

Students dressed in period costume and took part in various events reminiscent of early America life.

Watch our GCBA demonstrators do their magic at the 26th Scottish Highland Games & Celtic Music Festival.

Discover some very interesting metal art at one of the most unusual festivals in the country, the Bush Tractor Festival.

Chuck recommends the article Of Iron & Stagecraft by Trenton Ty, from the current edition of The Iron Trillium, a publication of the Ontario Artist Blacksmith Association.

Let renowned metal artist Valentin Yotkov introduce you to the ancient art of Ornamental Chasing And Repoussé: The Magic of Sculpting in Metal.

This excerpt from his upcoming book is an excellent primer on adding Repoussé and Chased items to your work.

GCBA President Chuck Robinson was profiled by the Picayune Item newspaper in an in-depth article, Local Blacksmith, Chuck Robinson, on the Art of Blacksmithing.

Read the Craftpersons Profile of GCBA Chairman Larry House in the Folklife & Folk Artist Directory of the Mississippi Arts Commission.

Read the biographical article on GCBA member Glen Wesley, featured in Neighbors—The Lifestyle Magazine.

Check out Tim LeMien's creative restoration of an antique fire pot.

Check out our unique collection of Period Sketches, Paintings and Photos depicting blacksmithing throughout history.

Discover The Legend of The Iron Worker and King Solomon and the extraordinary metal engraving by John Sartain depicting the blacksmith who challenged the great artisans at the dedication banquet of the Temple of Jerusalem.

Browse our collection of Vintage Art styled after the classic American poem, The Village Blacksmith, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Check out our ABANA page for links to current ABANA News Topics and sections of the ABANA website most relevant to GCBA members.

Chuck Robinson recommends the new Bronze Casting Manual written by Olivier Duhamel of New Zealand, on low-cost bronze lost wax casting of small projects.