How often do you do updates?
I do it as I have time and as new info comes that can be placed on there. I wouldn't go more than a couple of weeks without doing something to TP.


What motivated you to start the Tara Parenting?
That is a great question! I had been living too far from a centre to visit for about 4 years and had begun using the internet to bolster me in my practice both as a Buddhist and as a Buddhist parent. There was plenty of info out there, but it was spread all over the place rather than on one site that I could go to. The parenting thing was really important to me and so I decided to stop complaining about it and create the site that I wished was out there. I don't know if Tara Parenting has done that yet, but it's growing toward it.


Why Tara?
Tara is of course the embodiment of Buddha's female qualities. Compassionate, kind, ready to jump up and help those who need her. How wonderful if we could move toward parenting (and living) in a way that Tara would! It seemed fitting, and also, I had a personal connection to Tara.


Would you share a bit about the journey from concept to full website?
Well, initially I knew nothing about web building (this was perhaps 1 1/2 years ago). I chose a free program on the internet that was easy to work and made a really unattractive site with links and very little content, but it was a start. It was quite difficult to use behind the scenes though - really time consuming to make updates. So I then switched to a free blog site.

The blog was easier to use for me, but as our content grew and grew (as people have been quite generous in allowing us to place their articles on the TP site) then the problems began. TP wasn't really suited to a blog style - you couldn't organize the content properly. So we knew we had to move again.


How is your third changeover going?
Really well. The worst part was knowing we had to do it. I had learnt quite a lot about web design through other work by this time, so I was able to set up a much more user friendly site. No doubt there are still improvements to be made, but slowly, slowly. With each move there has been a short lived slump in the numbers of people looking and it takes time to build that up again. All the content has been moved now, plus more added. The most important new edition being the forum. We don't know how that will go as it's only been going for a few weeks, but we'll see. I hope it will be helpful for people.

Q & A Tara Parenting Coordinator continued here.

Tara Parenting ~a Review