Why is it that when a voluntary or free project comes along, you just can’t say no! Over the last month i’ve been building a series of new web applications for Escouts, an online community that provides free hosting for Scout Groups in the UK.

I’ve taken on the role of the lead developer / organiser, and have a team of about 8 people working on the projects with me. The team are fantastic - they are a bit inexperienced, but they’re so enthusiastic to learn and improve their skills we’ve got on really well, and i’ve seen a huge improvement in the skills of some of the team over the last few months.

One of the main specifications which we drew up for the applications is to have them all integrated together, so they share user sessions and information. To do this, I suggested we use Jamdora, my web application platform. After typing up a few pages of documentation and letting the team loose at it, the feedback coming in, and they all loved it! I knew I was onto something when I came up with the idea for Jamdora!

The applications we’re currently building are a hosting/order system, a search engine, an awards system, a helpdesk and a server status site. So far we’re about half way through the build, but now the team have got the hang of coding in Jamdora development speed should increase rapidly. I’ll keep posted on this over the coming weeks, the end product should be very interesting!