The INDIAN Community |
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| Developer(s) | INNOBATE |
| Stable release | 1.0 Beta / April 7, 2005 |
| Preview release | "Beta" / April 7, 2005 |
| Available in | English (1) |
| Type | Web Portal, forums, Online newspaper, virtual community |
| License | Proprietary |
| Website | http://www.theindian.co.nz |
The INDIAN is New Zealand's most successful virtual community web portal for the diverse Indian community living in New Zealand. It caters for all Indians living in New Zealand, be it whether they are from the African subcontinent, Middle East, Europe, the Indian subcontinent, East Asia, the Pacific Rim and the Americas. It contains many useful articles for the community.
It is in the top 500 websites for New Zealand. It on average receives over 160,000 visits a month, and growing. The site has a community portal, where members of the public can conduct discussions in its forums, read News articles regarding the Indo Kiwi community. The site is also where the term Indo Kiwi was first coined by its founders.
The site is also in an E-Zine manner, a recipes section, with a chat room, a Online newspaper, free classified section, and a free events section where any community based event can be added, subject to approval. The site was primarily created to inform the Indo community on how to be a better Kiwi.
The site was started in 2002 to cover the Dipawali (Diwali) Asia 2000 festival, and cover the on goings of a dance group the Heart Throbs. Since then the site has gained momentum and grown into its number one spot as a web portal for all things Indian in New Zealand.
Its creator had the idea for a while as he did see the need for an online Indian community portal back in 2000 but did not have the resources to start such a project until 2002. At the same time he was working as a Business Solution Developer, and in 2001 was given the role to re-develop and manage a boat brokerage site.
The core development of the site occurred on labour weekend of 2002, and was officially launched on the early hours of the morning on dipawali 2002.
Over the New Year period of 2003 a number of interesting developments occurred, as an online MP3 player was designed and developed by its creators. In order for the site to be successful, its creators had developed a plugin architecture, which allows html plugins to be bolted onto the site.
In Easter 2003 the News section was added to site. This section of the site has been in constant evolution since. It is now semi-automated with future plans to be fully automated. The MP3 player was a huge success, and over the 2003 - 2004 period the site would have 150 000 mp3 streamed a month, however concerns over bandwidth and copyright issues soon surfaced. Due to concerns over copyright issues the mp3 media player now has an inbuild geocoding ability and will not play copyrighted material in copyrighted regions. This work was done, over the christmas holidays of 2004.
In 2005 - 2006 countless modifications, and enhancements have been carried out to optimise the site for its bandwidth capacity. As a result a technique known as Ghost Caching has evolved due to the development efforts for The INDIAN.
The site is even the subject for anthropology research regarding the migrant Indian community in New Zealand, and has regular discussion on immigration, migration issues for the community at large.