The Haysville Times
By Patricia Barkley
Haysvilleonline.com is the face of Haysville’s online community. This month is the six-year anniversary of the website, and a lot has changed during that time. When its virtual doors first opened, the address was locojoe.com/haysville. That was on October 10, 1999. In June of 2000, the domain name Haysvilleonline.com was purchased. The site was really starting to put itself on the map.
The creator, designer, and administrator of Haysville’s online meeting place goes only by the name Randy. Randy, who previously ran a “bulletin board system” called Alphabet City, came up with the idea for Haysvilleonline after seeing the City’s official website. He felt it was “static and didn’t provide a lot of the information I thought a city’s website should.” He made some suggestions to the webmaster at haysville-ks.com but never saw any of them implemented.
“I then decided to create my own interactive unofficial Haysville website with a large portion of the content, like news, photos and events, being provided by the residents themselves,” Randy wrote in an email. “I also wanted to create a meeting place where residents could voice their opinions, whether positive or negative. Throw in what I knew and could find about Haysville’s history, a few fun things, and Haysville Online was born.”
The website boasts all sorts of information on Haysville and links to the City’s official site, the Haysville Chamber of Commerce, and the Haysville Community Library. It also has information for visitors who might be considering moving to Haysville. There is a directory that lists businesses and churches, a section on schools in USD 261, and lots of photos and facts on Haysville history, as well as local events and a city map. There are Haysville-style games, classifieds, coupons, contests, local weather reports, and an HOL gift shop. Visitors can send in their own photos and information for inclusion in the history section or the photo album or add upcoming events to the calendar.
The two things on Haysvilleonline that have sparked the most interest over the years are the news items and the message boards. In May of 2001, the Haysville Times published an article, written by Johnna Harris (now Crawford), on the excitement that was keeping the message boards busy with posts from Haysville residents, mainly concerning the recent election and the addition of Seth Konkel to the school board. Both residents of USD 261 and elected officials were voicing their opinions. An excerpt from the story can be found in the scrapbook section of the website. The month before it was published, Haysvilleonline received roughly 10,000 hits, but the highest numbers for that year would come in August (about 13,000). Since then, October has become the site’s biggest month, with over 20,000 hits in 2003 and over 21,000 in 2004.
Websites like “Kansas Travel and Tourism” and the radio station B98 FM have linked to Haysvilleonline, and comments from viewers have said things like “Those pretty Haysville pictures are enjoyed by my family in Switzerland. Keep em coming!” and “I have been deployed for the Air National Guard for the past two months. Every once in a while I enjoy coming to this site to see what is going on back ‘home.’” On average, the site still receives about 10,000 page views per month, and the site’s newsletter has over 180 subscribers, both inside and outside Haysville. As one out-of-town viewer wrote, “I have enjoyed your newsletter so much that I almost feel like a member of your community!”
In April of 2005, the Haysville Times appointed Haysvilleonline as its official website. There is a subscription page on the site, and the Times provides some of the local news stories every week a day before publication in the paper.
The future of Haysville’s online community looks bright as both Randy and local citizens add more content.
“The only agenda I have is to keep my hobby of providing an online service alive,” wrote Randy.