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About VisaRus
Why do English teachers all build websites, and who on earth would call his site 'VisaRus'?
Well, it all started in summer 2002, in the computer lab of a Finnish college near Helsinki.
An English teacher from Russia was working at a language camp and came up with the idea
of selling visa invitations over the internet as a way to make enough money to get home,
hence the 'visa' part of the domain name. For a short while it was home to a budget travel
project, but lack of time and resources meant that the site became a personal homepage,
and selling visas was put on the back burner.
In late 2004, the idea of making a 'contact' service that would bring teachers and
students together led to the first version of the current VisaRus site. Many long nights
were spent drinking coffee and poring over Russian php and MySQL manuals, and
soon a test version of the site was born.
It turned out to be more popular with people abroad looking for work in Russia,
(never underestimate the value of asking people why they register on your site!)
so development moved toward creating services more useful to jobseekers.
Building the site was a steep learning curve for someone whose language
repertoire
didn't include computerese. The learning curve was steep, but the satisfaction of finding
that people were already using the site provided enough stimulus to overcome the challenges, even
when, at an early stage, the entire site was accidentally deleted from its server.
The site is best described as a labour of love. It has no commercial value (yet, anyway)
and takes a considerable amount of time and money (expect a PayPal 'donate here' button
to appear any day soon :), although the number of emails offering to buy the domain for a four-figure
number is quite surprising.
So, what are the plans? Well, there's plenty more work to be done. New features are always
being investigated, although as things grow more complex the learning curve gets steeper and
the time taken to develop and test new ideas grows exponentially.
Then there's the continual updating of old parts of the site to optimise security, download time, etc. which
can be a real pain when you realise that you made a mistake right at the start and have to update 683 files...
At the moment the main priority is to work on the school directory, which is growing
steadily. Future developments? An option to download the entire school list in one file
will appear soon, probably accompanied by a PayPal button ;) A job directory, CV library and
accommodation database are all in the pipeline for testing and development. A bit of light
advertising is also on the horizon.
And it's funny how often things come round full circle. There have been enough enquiries about
visas to make it worthwhile returning to the idea. At last, the domain name might finally make sense...
As to why so many English teachers build websites? Beats me.
Updated, September 2007: Reading through this page brought back some memories of the Good Old Days :) The school directory is now (in my opinion) the best on the 'net - it has Google Maps to show you where schools are, you can PM member schools, review them... oh, things have come a long way since it started.
But still, there's much to be done. The priorities of the site gradually change over time - at the moment my personal agenda is to make the site pay for the time and effort put into it. But one main principle always remains - VisaRus is here first and foremost to protect the interests of the teaching community.
If you want to help support VisaRus, there's an e-book I wrote about teaching in Russia on Interlingua Publications (another of my sites, for anyone who might get confused). I was too proud to put a PayPal 'gimme cash' button, but if you want to put something back into the site I would be more than pleased if you bought a copy of the book. If you want to put a lot back into the site, you can always click the 'add to cart' button twenty times before going to checkout :)
If you'd like to support the site in kind, rather than financially, then the best thing to do is simply participate in the community. Join in on the forums, make people feel welcome, answer questions if you can, review schools where you've worked and generally spread the word about VisaRus. Thanks for visiting my site :)
For all questions regarding administration of this website, please use the contact page.
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