We are into March 2010 and well behind schedule of finishing off alpha stage. Marketing and SEO are the main hurdles with not attracting enough new users. However, our review in February got us onto creating a newsletter.

While there are some great service out there with great names ranging from Monkeys to Zebras, we are working on a Drupal based system / module and this takes a lot longer than hoped for. Why - because Drupal is open source?! Could the inventors of Windows or Google do it quicker? Probably, but only with tons of resources and cost not being a concern.

We took the last month to develop our SEO and marketing strategy in conversation with some great minds. While we share the ideas about marketing and the need for SEO technology we have not (yet) succumbed to the business model of a mass market, click-driven website. It will be interesting to see if we can maintain this.

We also leaned that there is a World out there in cyberspace were the idea of marketing has not just a new jargon, but also uses technology and models reflecting the evolution of a new generation linked in and connected permanently.

The New Year started with work on the directories for the Check-your-Salary and the global Malls Directory.

Attracting more enthusiast by word of mouth has been slow.

We are on the learning curve of understanding how people actually use these online services.

A big item on our agenda is now SEO and online marketing to get the fundamentals right before we role out this service.

And we have the usual set-backs of modules screwing up content s and then rebuilding it - all that boring stuff in the background of all that gloss and glitz.

We are working on setting up the Check your Pay feature.

This involves a lot of research of salaries paid to Centre Management functions. We have taken the roles of Centre Manager, Leasing, Facility, Secretarial, Security and General Staff.

Eventually the system will be based on user input. We expect to have the listing databse ready at the beginning of January 2010.

Merry Christmas it is indeed.

We are in week 6 and managed to implement the first phase of our mall directory. We have already more than 5000 malls from around the world recorded. They are ordered by country and can be found here.

Next step is setting up the demo site and adding a service to check your pay - pay check.

Well, 4 weeks on and we are making little progress in boosting the numbers.

In fact we have taken a step back to evaluate the site in its current state and we are reviewing the responses we received ffrom users and experts in the business.

Result - there are so many little things to consider and they all take longer than anticipated.

We are into week 3 of the project and have sorted out most of the little teething problems as far as we found them or as they have been reported.

We also managed to start the mall directory with adding the first two lists - USA and UK. Other lists - including Germany - are in the making.

It is interesting to see that the take up is slower than we expected and thus the site is not filling as quickly as we anticipated with contents.

First Members are joining and we are sorting out minor hick-ups that are showing up only when a site is running life.

In the meantime we are preparing the frame work for listing malls from around the world. USA, Australia and the UK are in the pipeline.

And we are starting to learn how members are using such a network - though we are in the early days and nothing is really representative yet.

m&m's first week online was a quiet start.

A good selection of people have been told about www.mallsandmore.com and some came for a visit.

And thus we are reminded how little time people spend on any website - seconds mostly.

Logging in to the account is easy enough - but adding the basic profile is already one click too far.

It's alpha stage and we are learning.

So, finally sorted. All sponsor pages will load their images to the right place and be instantly visible once a sponsor has added it.

We will invite now First Members (FM) and Sponsors. There will be no champagne as this is an alpha stage launch and thus a soft start. Hopefully, we can celebrate the beta stage before too long with some bubbly.

From now the alpha blog will turn into a weekly summary and you guessed it - alpha w1 will be the next blog entry.

Finally the path settings are sorted and we are ready to go life - almost.

How strange it should be our own Sponsor's page that would still not behave and follow the path settings. Why, well our IT guys are on to it. So, almost there.

Well, ready - just waiting for the path correction due on Tuesday.

We are ready - well almost. So, not ready.

The path settings need to be fixed and then we are off to go life.

The site has been transferred to the server. Test data has been removed and the counters have been set to 0. All points awarded during testing will be wiped.

An initial user list has been created to allow invited members to join quickly.

Well, the path settings will delay us - our IT support is located around the world, but in two geographical regions we have a long weekend and the launch date turns out to be on that bank holiday weekend.

So, at least we have a bit more time for testing and adding a little bit of content.

To be on time is quite relative. So by not announcing a deadline the start day of m & m is not really fixed.

External causes have taken resources away from this project and we have to shift the start date. But we are close and starting with the alpha stage also means not everything has to be finished. In fact a website with growing content and social networking will never be finished. It will be different every time a user logs on and reads a message or leaves a note.

While the site is being transferred to the server all the images disappeared.

Some long faces down in IT.

Well, not for long. "They are all there, mate."

"Just use the right path!"

Some more serious jargon follows and a bit of "We will do this with shell access - but don't change it again, mate."

Images are back - thanks IT - great guys and so generous with their time.

Hick-ups: Company House in the UK changed their registration software.

So, our registration was sitting in a queue and only came through yesterday. Therefore we needed to delay the work on all aspects related to the company name.

In the meantime the site takes shape on our server in the UK as it is transferred from the test bet server in our offices.

The menu is ready and agreed.

1. Testing of the menu and browsers.

2. Menu and site consistency testing.

3. Content creation to be tested.

4. All test content has to be cleared.

This means we are 7 days away from the launch - 19.10.2009.

Malls and More Ltd has been registered and the pressure is on to finish the website.

Hard to know how much work is really left.

All looks fine and the main task is tidying up.

Fingers xxx