Reclaim Hosting's Women's Showcase
Last month, we asked folks in our community to show us what they’ve been building, and you delivered! We received a wide range of thoughtful, creative, and impressive projects from women across our platforms, and we’re excited to share some of them here. Check out some of the awesome work women in our community are building below:
Feminist Digital Center
Co-curated by Dr. Julie Shayne and Denise Hattwig (University of Washington Bothell)
About the Project: The Feminist Digital Center is an incredible example of what can happen when you create space for student voices to lead. Built as a hub for feminist scholarship at the University of Washington Bothell, the site brings together archives, zines, exhibits, and student writing into one curated space.
Projects at the Feminist Digital Center are far reaching, including the Feminist Community Archive of Washington, Feminist Archive Exhibits, Badass Womxn and Enbies in the Pacific Northwest zines, student reflections, public writing, and more.
We’re especially excited about how this project centers collaboration, including faculty, librarians, and students, and makes that work openly accessible. It’s a reminder of how much important, meaningful work is happening in classrooms and how impactful it can be when it’s shared on the open web!
The Feminist Digital Center is built on University of Washington Bothell's Domain of One's Own service using Omeka as an application. You can read more about the project in their recently published article in the Journal of Feminist Scholarship, where the creators describe their vision for the project, their process, and end with a call for readers to attempt the project at their own institutions.
WonderCat
Created by Mary Isbell (University of New Haven)
About the Project: WonderCat is one of those projects that makes you stop and say, “this is so cool.” It’s an experimental tool for discovering books and creative works based on real reader experiences. WonderCat is built to offer an alternative to traditional reading lists and algorithm-driven recommendations.
When asked about the project, Mary tells us, "I wanted my students to be able to see the connections between the things they already love and the things we (literature faculty) want them to discover." She recently described the experimenting this project took and the people who helped her make it in a presentation at ReclaimOpen titled "WonderCat: An Alternative to Recommendation Algorithms", which you can watch on the ReclaimOpen website.
WonderCat started as a big idea. It took a lot of experimentation, persistence, and collaboration to bring it to life, which is exactly the type of project we love and encourage here at Reclaim. So how can you turn your project idea into a reality? Well, in Mary's words, "I would say to anyone frustrated with the limitations of existing technology...make an alternative yourself. Oh, and if you don't know how something works, just ask someone to explain it to you. The fear of sounding ignorant is the enemy of learning."
WonderCat is built using a variety of technologies integrated into our Reclaim Cloud service, including WordPress, Shiny, Wikidata, Visual Studio Code, GitHub, PHP, CSS, HTML, R, and Python. Mary also gives a shoutout to our support team, writing, "I know of no other hosting company that offers such robust support from thoughtful human beings who want to help people like me build ambitious projects (even when those people don't yet know how all of the technology can/should fit together)."
SNC Kid Books – A Collection of Stories
Created by Krissy Lukens (St. Norbert College)
About the Project: SNC Kid Books brings together a collection of original children’s stories created by preservice teachers at St. Norbert College, complete with illustrations and even choose-your-own-adventure paths. It’s playful, creative, and rooted in the kind of hands-on learning that sticks.
When describing the conception of the project, Krissy writes, "What do you do with a box of CDs containing the amazing creations from all of your students? It was killing me to have these sitting a box without anyone else to see." And that's what we love about this project! What makes this one especially great is how it gives new life to student work that might otherwise sit unseen. Turning a box of past projects into a living, accessible website is exactly the kind of magic we’re always excited to see here at Reclaim.
Krissy has a few people she'd like to shoutout in the project: "With an incredible thanks to a student research fellow, Vicki Watkins, '21, we were able to showcase this collection of work for others to enjoy. Additional shoutouts go to alum Chelsea Faase, who continued this project with her 6th grade students and shared her teaching resources. Last but not least, many thanks to St. Norbert professors emeriti, Dr. Susan Landt and Sr. Mary Alyce Lach, who were the best partners in this collaborative project. Their love of children's literature made a lasting impression. I'm forever grateful for all of these amazing women!"
SNC Kid Books is built on St. Norbet College's Domain of One's Own service using Wordpress as it's application in conjunction with HTML 5.
The Hub Blog
Created by Autumm Caines, Belen Garcia, Carla Veccholia, Chen Wang, and Jessica Riviere (University of Michigan–Dearborn)
About the Project: The Hub Blog is such a great example of what can happen when you create space for people to share their teaching stories. Run by a team of women at the University of Michigan–Dearborn, the blog brings together reflections from both staff and faculty on teaching and learning.
When asked about the project, Autumn writes, "Our work as a teaching and learning center straddles both formal and informal university structures and silos. We needed something more creative and long form that would allow us to feature our own voices and the voices of our faculty. We also needed a space to highlight our unique identity and allowed us the freedom to offer faculty a space of their own to share teaching practices."
That’s exactly the kind of thinking that resonates with us. So often, online pre-curated spaces come with limitations, templates, structures, or expectations that don’t always leave room for experimentation or voice. Projects like this remind us why Reclaim exists in the first place: to give people the freedom to build spaces that actually reflect who they are and what they want to say. When you step outside those constraints and create something that feels truly your own, you’re not just building a website; you’re reclaiming your space on the web. As always, we hope you keep on Reclaimin' too (see what we did there?).
The Hub Blog is built on Reclaim's Shared Hosting service using Wordpress.
Cathy Davidson’s Blog & Book Project
Created by Cathy N. Davidson
About the Project: Serving as a digital home for her upcoming book, this site is all about supporting educators through challenging moments in higher education by offering ideas, encouragement, and a path toward constructive change.
Cathy Davidson’s site is a great example of how Reclaim can support work beyond traditional institutional projects. While it serves as a home for her upcoming book Faculties, it’s also a broader platform for her ideas, writing, and ongoing work. The site brings together blog posts, resources, and reflections in one place she fully controls. When asked about her site, Cathy writes her site and book are built to give "hope, advice, suggestions, and inspiration to others feeling defeated in this demoralizing, debilitating anti-intellectual, anti-arts, and anti-science time... I donate my royalties to a book fund for new authors so, for me, this is about constructive, inspiring change".
We also love this kind of project because it shows how a personal site can double as a professional and public-facing space. Reclaim is about creating a home for your work on the open web, on your own terms. Even though we work closely with higher education, projects like this are a reminder that Reclaim is just as much about supporting individuals, independent scholars, and anyone looking to build something of their own.
Cathy's site is built on Reclaim's VIP Shared Hosting service using Wordpress.
Maren Deepwell's Blog
Created by Maren Deepwell
About the Project: Last but not least, we couldn’t not include our very own Maren Deepwell in this showcase. Maren has been blogging for nearly 20 years, and her site is a beautiful example of what it means to truly own your space on the web (something she’s been championing alongside us for years).
Her blog is more than just a collection of posts, it’s a record of her thinking, her leadership, and her journey over time. We love this one not just because it’s part of our community, but because it reflects the heart of what we’re all about: showing up, sharing your work, and building something that’s entirely your own. Maren writes, "My blog is my domain on the open web and its an important part of my identity, my practice and my leadership approach... I started blogging as a student... Little did I know that less than 10 years later I would become the CEO of the leading professional body for Learning Technologists in the UK, and that blogging would become a key component of my leadership in service of that community of thousands of members. Now that I run my own small business, my blog has become even more important in sharing my work, archiving my experiences and celebrating milestones - I'm blogging #4life".
As our fearless leader Jim Groom likes to say, “Blog or Die!”. We’ll soften that just a bit, but the spirit holds: having a space to write, think out loud, and share your experiences is at the core of what we hope everyone builds here at Reclaim.
Maren's Blog is built on Reclaim's Shared Hosting service using Wordpress.
At the end of the day, Reclaim is what our community makes it: we are our people. Getting to see and share the work you’re building is one of the best parts of what we do, and we’re always inspired by the creativity, care, and experimentation that shows up across our platforms. Thanks to everyone who submitted and shared their work with us, and as always, keep an eye on the blog! We’re always looking for new ways to highlight the amazing things happening in this community.
