About PetersburgIL.com

PetersburgIL.com is the original web site to be focused on the historical city of Petersburg, which is the county seat of Menard County, Illinois. Our web site began publication in 1997 under the management and editorial direction of David Crosnoe. [ View Archive ] Starting in August of 2009, PetersburgIL.com has created a new web presence under the direction of our new publisher.

The following is a partial description of the new changes already implemented within PetersburgIL.com:

• New Menu Structure emphasizing County-specific content areas
• Uniform navigation elements with a consistent visual look across all site pages
• New menu categories for Communities, History, Shopping, Tourism, and especially our new Online Business Directory
• Use of new software tools for implementing cutting-edge web standards and technologies

Our new publisher is Larry Dale. A resident of Lake Petersburg, Larry retired from the University of Illinois at Springfield in 2002 as the Director of Media Services and Instructional Design, where he was also an adjunct faculty member of both the Communications and Management Information Systems academic programs.

Mr. Dale has been very active in local sporting organizations, and has served as the founding Chapter President for both the local NWTF chapter "New Salem Longbeards" and the Quail Forever "Prairie Rockets" chapter. He continues to serve both organizations as a Chapter Committee member and still performs the role of webmaster for both organizations. (www.NewSalemLongbeards.com and www.PrairieRockets.org)

He also currently serves as the IDNR Master Hunter Safety Instructor for Menard County, and is actively involved in a new state-level initiative to combine web-based instruction with a local "field day" experience to broaden the hunter safety certification options available to the local hunting community. Larry also holds a Federal Firearms License (FFL) and is the owner of New Salem Firearms, which is a local gun shop on Highway 97 specializing in supporting gun auctions and firearm transfers.

Larry has also created web sites since 2004 for several local businesses, including web sites for Tallgrass Prairie Auction & Real Estate (formerly Aspen Auction Company,) the Shipping Point Store, and Ken's Auto Repair. Larry's projects outside of the local area include serving as the publisher of IllinoisHunter.com and TurkeyPro.com for the past 6 years, and he is currently developing a web site for the Ridge View Winery in Mt. Sterling, IL.

We are well aware that several other web sites have come into existence since 1996 to serve various internet-based needs of the local community. In particular, web sites for the Menard Tourism Council, the Petersburg Chamber of Commerce, and the City of Petersburg provide highly needed local information. However, PetersburgIL.com has been designed to address an even wider range of internet-based local information publishing needs. For example, not all visitors are tourists, not all local business owners are members of the Chamber, Lake Petersburg residents live within Menard County but not in the City of Petersburg, and the web-based needs of local clubs and organizations go significantly beyond the focus of these useful sites.

The broad-based focus of PetersburgIL.com allows us to concentrate on topics and categories where we can make the most difference, and our management has the willingness to provide external web links and otherwise refer to the other local sites when appropriate - hopefully helping them leverage the content that they do so well!

Once Phase I of our web site re-design is completed, we plan to launch several services and educational initiatives designed to assist the many local businesses and organizations that still do not currently have a viable web presence. Tentatively code-named "Web Design On A Dime," this PetersburgIL.com project will demonstrate that building, marketing, and maintaining a simple web site can be both relatively easy and very inexpensive. Stay Tuned!

For questions or comments regarding PetersburgIL.com, please send an email to: info@petersburgil.com

Written correspondence can be directed to:

PetersburgIL.com
Attention: Larry Dale
552 Lemon Street
Petersburg, IL 62675