A LOCAL WEB SITE called fdale.com probably won't ever launch one of those much- talked-about Internet companies that rocket owners to billionaire status overnight. But the two Farmingdale homemakers who founded and maintain the fdale.com site are generating their share of local buzz just the same.
It's a very local buzz, befitting the very local nature of their site, which serves as a primary stopping point for the Web-savvy among Farmingdale's 30,000 residents-and for Farmingdale ex-pats who log on from around the world.
"Who'dathunkit?" wrote one such fdale.com fan from Los Angeles. "Little ol' Farmingdale hit the information superhighway, eh? Amazing!"
Others have checked in from Israel, Malaysia and Croatia, but most surf their way to the Web site from much closer climes-from Farmingdale's Staple Street, Maple Street or Motor Avenue.
A year ago, they wouldn't have had anywhere to go on the Web for information about their village. The founders of the site, 40-something moms Darlene and Fran, started the site just over a year ago as a clearinghouse of local links for their fellow mothers who were new to the Web. (The women go by their first names only, because they work from home and, Fran says, they have received a few troubling e-mails from "weirdos.")
But what started as a project meant to turn their friends on to the Internet quickly turned into a full-time job for the two women as the site began to grow and attract more visitors.
Now, the site features one of the most active online forums for local issues for any community on Long Island. Most Long Island Web sites that have an area set aside for local residents to discuss their community attract a message or two a week; fdale.com attracts five or more a day.
The discussion topics range from contentious issues, like the noise from Republic Airport, to requests from schoolchildren for recipes to bring to class for foreign food day. And one politician, recently elected Town Councilman Tony Macagnone, himself a Farmingdale resident, regularly answers constituents' questions on the online forum under the nickname "Tony Mac."
"The Web site is great," said Macagnone, who checks it every night before he goes to bed. "I can get the opinion of people who are active in town, and find out what they're thinking, or if there's an activity coming up that I might want to go to."
Elsewhere on the site, graduates of Farmingdale Senior High School post their e-mail addresses so that other members of their graduating class can find them. One Bellmore man said he was looking for his friend Antone from the class of 1933.
The site also features a weekly column from another Farmingdale mom, Rosey, who writes mostly humorous articles about her children and her daily life -- although a recent piece dwelled on the need for women to do regular breast self-examinations. "Some people find our site only because they've heard of Rosey," Fran said. "She's the Erma Bombeck of Farmingdale."
FDALE.COM also offers listings for many businesses, provides links to other Farmingdale Web sites and posts announcements of community events.
Taken together, it's a one-stop shop for all things Farmingdale. And while critics of the Internet often complain that the Web serves only to isolate people from their community, Fran and Darlene said their Web site is bringing the community closer together.
One Farmingdale restaurant manager who has paid the two mothers to feature his restaurant on the site agreed. "It's fantastic," said Andy Teger, who works at Perkins Family Restaurant & Bakery on Hempstead Turnpike. Like every business that's linked to the site, the Perkins Web page includes a prominent picture of Teger and his employees. "People see the picture, and they can say, 'I know him.' They learn to recognize the face behind the business. They realize there's a real person here." And learning to recognize their neighbors can only increase the already strong sense of community, Darlene said.
Of course, there is also the occasional Web surfer who is a Farmingdale community member in spirit only. A priest in Italy recently sent Darlene an e-mail asking her to find out if a film actor from the 1940s and '50s, Brandon De Wilde, was buried in a Farmingdale cemetery. He was, and the priest later came to visit the grave.
The Web site does have one thing in common with those Internet start-ups that have Wall Street buzzing: It's not turning a profit. "Not by a long shot," Fran said.
Though the women have designed Web pages for the Farmingdale Chamber of Commerce and a few local businesses, and then linked them to their site, the investment in time (10- and 12-hour days) and money that the women have made, has far exceeded the money that's come their way. And this is the case even though the site has recently averaged more than 3,000 visitors a month, and recorded more than 200,000 "hits" a month.
Eventually, the women said they hope to make money off the site, but they don't expect to get rich. "We just want to have enough so that we can take our families to Bora Bora," Fran said. "Is that too much to ask?"
