The Launching of Hawkapalooza

Our involvement with Hawkapalooza began by feeding an addiction for Hawkeye information.  Like most mornings, I was reading Iowa Hawkeye news while waiting for the caffeine to kick in, as I have found this to be the best way to start off the day.

One morning, the student newspaper for the University of Iowa (The Daily Iowan) posted an article about a newly formed Student Committee on Athletics whose purpose was to encourage Hawkeye Pride.  The committee had a brilliant idea called “Hawkapalooza,” a pep rally and concert with the goal of the event to drum up excitement before the football team’s home-opener with Northern Iowa on September 5.

Being the web nerd I am, and having a fair amount of domain instinct, I checked the availability of the hawkapalooza.com domain after reading the article.  Sure enough, it was still available.  I quickly purchased the COM, NET and ORG versions of the domain and then sent an email over to the committee letting them know they were secured.

My purpose in acquiring the domains was not to profit from them or use them as leverage.  Rather, it was to assist the student committee and contribute to a good cause.  I used my nerdness for good to help support my beloved Iowa Hawkeyes.

After contacting the committee, I agreed to help even further than handing over the domains.  They were very happy I secured the doman names, and since I displayed that I knew what I was talking about, they asked if I wouldn't mind helping them setup the site, too.  So, I agreed and volunteered the services of Brice Cheddarn Development to help them setup a site and organize their social media efforts.

Since the University only offers 10MB of space and no database access, we set hawkapalooza.com up on our of our servers using a free WordPress installation and template.  From there, we tweaked and branded the template with a custom tigerhawk logo, added in a lot of helpful plugins exclusive to WordPress and setup usernames/passwords for the committee members.  Now the committee can update the site when and as they see fit.  They will post videos, photos and information to help spread the word. 

Hawkapalooza will likely become a yearly activity, so the committee now has the domains and webspace to continually promote the event.  Going forward, they will use the site as a tool to organize Hawkeye Pride.

The Hawkapalooza pep rally and concert will be help at 6:30 PM on September 3, 2009 in University of Iowa's Hubbard Park.  If you can't attend, definitely show your support through their new website.

Note:  We didn't go with Mango or CF on this one, due to the need for some of the plugins in WP.  Due to time constraints, we didn't custom build anything for this other than a few design elements.

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