About Me
Personal
I’m 23 years old and I live in Harbinger, North Carolina, U.S.A. I was homeschooled for all grades right through high school and have been using computers since 1993 (our first computer was an Apple Macintosh Centris 610).
I’m into sports, investing, writing, gaming, reading, music, TV and more. I’m a big fan of the New York Yankees and Miami Dolphins. I’ve been watching the stock market since I was 10 and I’ve had stock since I was 11. I’m a big Nintendo fan. But, I enjoy gaming in general and love playing America’s Army online when I can. Of currently running programs, I watch Family Guy, The Simpsons, Prison Break, 24 and House.
I listen to a lot of music. I’m a huge fan of Diddy and Bad Boy Entertainment (The Notorious B.I.G., Danity Kane, Total, Yung Joc, Jerome, Dream, Black Rob, Mario Winans and others). But, also “Weird Al” Yankovic, TLC, Jay-Z, Will Smith, Fabolous, Kanye West, Nas and others.
Professional
I own the iFroggy Network, an internet network featuring content, community and e-commerce sites covering various interests. I’ve never really held any sort of job, working for anyone else, where I wasn’t considered an outside contractor. I’ve run my own company as long as I’ve been working.
I started professionally developing websites in 1998. After a while, I decided that I wanted to run my own website. After playing around on Geocities and Angelfire, I bought my first domain name, ifroggy.com, on January 1, 2000. I developed iFroggy.com into an everything portal, of sorts, as I was and am a big fan of Yahoo! I didn’t really see myself running additional websites, I don’t think, at the time. But, as I worked on that site, I was coming up with ideas for other sites, as well. I launched a couple of them and called it The iFroggy.com Network. Eventually, I discovered that I preferred sites that had a focus, a niche, rather than just trying to cover everything, covering few things well.
So, I abandoned the portal idea, keeping the name, eventually shortening it to just the iFroggy Network. It started to take shape in 2001, with the launch of phpBBHacks.com and KarateForums.com. I continue to launch new websites as I am able.
I wrote a book, Managing Online Forums, which was published by AMACOM (the publishing arm of the American Management Association).
In the course of my work, I do a lot of writing as well, whether it be articles, blog posts, editorials, reviews, interviews, website copy or something else. Besides serving as an Editor/Blogger on this site, the iFroggy Network Blog, YanksBlog.com, ManagingCommunities.com, MicrosoftBlog.com, DrGregHouse.com and Bad Boy Blog, I have contributed many articles to SitePoint. Outside of my network, I run MarianoRivera.com, the first and largest unofficial fan site dedicated to Yankees pitcher Mariano Rivera. I have also contributed to a number of books. Besides writing the foreword and serving as a technical reviewer on Building Online Communities with phpBB 2 (Packt Publishing), I have also served as a technical reviewer or reviewer on phpBB: A User Guide (Packt), Blog Marketing (McGraw-Hill), The PHP Anthology, Volume I: Foundations (SitePoint) and The PHP Anthology, Volume II: Applications (SitePoint).
I am a member of staff at SitePoint Forums and the Top Hosting Deals Forums. Previously, I hosted The Community Admin Show, a bi-weekly podcast covering internet community management and related issues.
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