EUGENE, OR – Dick Hunter is a man of many talents. His humble adult roots reach back to the late ‘90s during which time he worked in what is euphemistically called “audio text” by industry professionals and “phone sex” by everyone else. While still indulging in all the aural sex he could handle, the self-confessed “porn junkie” created his first “rather pathetic looking webpage” for a dating line. Not too long after, he delved into the world of AVS sites and has been hooked on the internet ever since.GayWebmasters.com is Hunter’s latest online project and, unquestionably, his most ambitious. Having parked the domain until the day he could fully develop it, Hunter took time during the first few years of the new millennium to cut his professional teeth on sites including QueerFetish.com and RateARod.com, the latter of which features a unique “Hot or Not” rating system by which visitors can vote for their favorite erect or flaccid cock. RateARod’s single-minded dedication to the phallus caused such a stir that radio shock jock Howard Stern once joked to his sidekick Robin Givens that his own photo should be included in the site’s Hall of Shame.
Not quite ready to go the distance with GayWebmasters.com, Hunter decided to try his hand at more traditional gay porn fare and produced and directed “An Army of Fun” before turning his attention back to his pet project: developing an extended and extensive online community of special interest to gay webmasters.
“I’ve owned the domain name for a long time,” he explains, “but I held off on developing it because I knew it was an important project.” The importance, according to Hunter, is the fact that GayWebmasters.com is a site specifically “for gay webmasters, by webmasters.”
Although being gay is not required in order to be welcome on the fledgling community site, having an interest in running a gay website or providing services to those who do is an important part of the site’s networking and information sharing potential. All members have the opportunity to reveal their sexual preference on their registration form, which both allows members to get an idea of where each person is coming from and to connect specifically with webmasters whose backgrounds are more likely to be in line with their own needs and interests. One of Hunter’s primary goals is to see webmasters who deal with gay content succeed. In order to help make that happen, he believes that they need to find common ground where they can share their expertise and experience. Forums, directories, blogs, and news feeds provide members with the immediate tools necessary for such a task. Long term community building, which Hunter sees as a desirable goal, will result from return visits from webmasters who, Hunter hopes, will ultimately come not only from within the adult industry but from the larger mainstream world of webmasters, as well. His reason for this is simple. “I believe it’s important that all gay webmasters have a community they can call their own, regardless of what side of the internet they work in.”
Hunter himself is a resource for his fellow gay webmasters. “Being a ‘Jack of all trades’ has always been one of my strengths,” he points out. Having not found being an employer to his taste, he learned as much as he could about website design, development, and promotion so that he now can say “I don’t know everything about anything, but I know a little bit about a whole lot of things.”
One thing he knows a bit about is what motivates webmasters, regardless of whether they’re on the adult or mainstream side of the dot com: money, which is why he’s giving away $1,000 each month to random site members who’ve signed up for free accounts and posted at least one blog entry, forum post, or directory listing. Although initially focusing his attention on developing things for his more explicit online brothers, he plans on expanding his focus to the “webmasters with a clue” on the other side of the zipper, whom he believes are often curious about the adult industry but not sure where to go for good information.
That path goes directly to Dick Hunter’s GayWebmaster.com “I’m here for the long haul,” he declares. “GayWebmasters.com isn’t going anywhere. I’m not interesting in turning a quick profit or having the flashiest website. I just want to grow the site and earn the respect of the webmaster community.”
