For the last couple of months I've been working on building my new Traces of Texas forum, here: https://forum.tracesoftexas.com/
On March 3, 2036 Texas will be 200 years old. On that date I'll be turning over the forum and its contents to one of the big state archives. I'm still negotiating with three of them regarding which one will get it. The forum will be preserved online in perpetuity ---- my permanent legacy, a gift to Texas and to future historians, geneologists etc..
For those of you who are unaware, I've been creating Traces of Texas for the past 12 years on Facebook and, more recently on Twitter. During that time I've written millions of words regarding Texas history and culture and posted more than 30,000 photos, about 62% of which come from readers of the page. Some of the photos I post are photos that I've taken. Others come from archives like the Library of Congress, the Portal to Texas history etc.. What I'm trying to do with this forum is to do what I've been doing on Facebook and Twitter but in a form that I can leave to the State of Texas and also that readers can have more direct input into.
One of the big focal points of my new forum is my one million Texas stories project, here: https://forum.tracesoftexas.com/forum/4-a-million-texas-stories/
I'm trying to collect one million stories about Texas or about Texans between now and March 3, 2036 in order to present them to whatever archive ends up getting all of this. To this end, Marc Consulman is donating a 500 dollar gift certificate to his store, The Texas Boot Company in Bastrop, to be awarded at the end of this year to whomever posts the best Texas story. For those of you who don't know about Marc's store, it is awesome.
Because it's not just a story forum but a photography forum, we're doing the same thing for the most beautiful photo of Texas posted in the Beautiful Texas forum, here: https://forum.tracesoftexas.com/forum/11-beautiful-texas/
In other words, whoever submits the most beautiful photo of Texas between now and the end of the year will get a 500 dollar gift certificate to the Texas Boot Company. You can use it for boots, jeans, hats ... whatever you want. They've got a ton of great boots there.
I'd be might obliged if all of y'all would consider signing up for an account and posting. I'd also appreciate any feedback regarding the signing up process, the way the forum looks, features that I can add etc... I have big plans for it.
The forum operates pretty much like any forum on the internet. It's keyword searchable etc... So far, I've been pretty much the only one who has posted but a few others have already found it, signed up and posted, for which I am very grateful. Given the amount of content that I still have to move from Facebook to the forum, my work is cut out for me.
The only real rules are 1) only mild profanity 2) no partisan politics 3) no personal attacks on other readers 4) No porn
The Traces of Texas Facebook/Twitter pages are used by 4th and 7th grade Texas history classes for ideas etc.. and, out of deference to them, I'd like to keep it relatively clean.
Other than that, it's going to be a sober examination of all aspects of Texas, including the bad stuff (lynchings etc...). I'm trying to tell the story of Texas in the truest way that I know and, of course, the story of Texas isn't all BBQ and cowboys and good stuff.
Thanks, amigos.