If I knew who they were, then I’d be happy to give them my business.

Sometimes things just stick with you. The elderly lady who said that to Glen Chancy in late 2006 really meant what she was saying.

She was looking for a contractor to do repairs on her house, and she wanted very much to have an Orthodox Christian do the work. Not because she was prejudiced against non-Orthodox, but only because she felt like that would be a great way to give back to the Orthodox community.

Trouble was, even in a small parish, like St. Stephen the Protomartyr in Central Florida, most folks had no idea what anyone actually did for a living.

That prompted Glen, a full time business analyst in the software industry, to start thinking about what to do to correct this situation.

As he thought, he also remembered how he’d worked long hours on a grant proposal for the Orthodox Christian Network just a few months before. He’d slaved away for hours, completely unqualified and overwhelmed by the task.

Two days after submitting it, he found out that one of the ladies he knew in his parish was a trained grant writer.

This kind of experience was all too common among Orthodox Christians.

And it was time, really time, to do something about it.

After hours of discussion with other Orthodox Christians who were in business, the outlines of what is needed became clear.

Orthodox Christians need to:

• Find each other on the Internet
• Network effectively
• Learn about each other’s businesses
• Work together when possible
• Get more exposure online to the non-Orthodox community
• Leverage online communication technologies like podcasting and RSS

The needs were clear, but doing something about it seemed daunting to say the least, even for a professional Web designer.

The Mission of Orthodox Biz

With the help of great partners like Cameron Thorp of Thorp Design and the team at Corfun, Glen was able to build Orthodox Biz to help serve the needs of the Orthodox Christian Business community. It wasn’t easy, and it’s still very much a work in progress.

Orthodox Biz is envisioned as, primarily, a way for Orthodox Christians to connect and to market – both to themselves and to the wider Web audience.

Orthodox Biz is not meant to replace Orthodox Circle, or other Orthodox Communities on the Internet.

Orthodox Biz is built on the Joomla Content Management System platform. Unlike the technology that powers Orthodox Circle, for example, it is primarily a Web publishing tool, not a community-building application.

What does that mean? Simply that networking among Orthodox Christians is secondary to Orthodox Biz’s mission.

Our primary goal is to use the unsurpassed power of Joomla CMS to extend the marketing reach of Orthodox Christian businesses and ministries on the Internet.

For that reason, you’ll notice that everything happening at Orthodox Biz is exposed to the public. We’re here to be found, and to reach out.

That is Orthodox Biz was designed to offer services like:

• Web publishing
• Blogging
• Business Directory
• Mini-sites
• Newsletter Management
• Podcasts
• File Storage and Download
• Photo Galleries
• Project Planning Software
• CRM Software

and that’s just for starters. Check out the Membership page for a run down of everything.

What we aren’t trying to do is a lot of are things like chat rooms or other types of social networking. That angle is already covered nicely on the Internet by others.

We’re here to help you. Please shoot us an email, or sign the Guestbook and let us know if you like the site and what else you’d like to see.

Thanks!

Glen Chancy

Publisher, Orthodox Biz