July 26, 2026
Our Village. Revitalized.
Welcome to a revitalized Northern Village where we are implementing changes to improve our processes. Our core pillars remain the same -- websites, software and being in business as a force for good. However, we are pulling the three closer together than they ever have been.
The catalyst for this change is our new website software -- Web Village -- the tool that we always wished existed! It is an easy to maintain website, while also being completely customizable. Web Village also allows us to build solutions for our websites and our software to really work together seamlessly.
This is now reflected in our new tagline - Building community.
Web Village - a tool for building community
Web Village is made in Guelph and shaped by everything we've learned working with mission-driven organizations.
For years we have tried to keep ahead of the curve -- providing web software that was easy to use, and software for unique projects such as logging software for the community radio sector and helping organizations provide gifts for children at Christmas.
To date, we have integrated some community building technologies into Web Village including Qatom micropayments processing and Qomon civic engagement / election campaign software and are most excited by our exploration of a new way to do social media.
Meeting your community where they are
Northern Village believes that your website is the most important part of your digital strategy. But the world has gotten away from that. The people you serve are spread out — across inboxes, apps, and a dozen corners of the internet. More and more, reaching them means renting your own audience back from a giant platform that can change the rules whenever it likes.
We don't think community should work that way. So a growing part of our work is helping your website connect to the wider world on your terms. First through your website. This is where you can put the true, unfiltered you. Then, you can connect with others through what's called the Fediverse. If the Fediverse is new to you: it's an open, community-owned side of social media — thousands of independent servers that all connect to one another, with no single company in charge. It's a fitting home for a community built on doing business differently. Follow us there and our posts come to you directly, wherever you already are.
In plain terms, here's what it already means for a Web Village site:
- People can follow your blog directly. Ours lives at @blog@northernvillage.com — post something, and it arrives instantly in your followers' Fediverse feeds, with no algorithm deciding who gets to see it. (Prefer RSS? That works too.)
- You can bring other voices onto your site, so your pages reflect the community around you instead of standing still. Pull any number of Fediverse and RSS feeds into a your own feed. We are working with B Local Ontario to bring their members' feeds into one place for what is going on in the B Corp community in Ontario.
You may not have heard about it, but stay tuned. This is only the beginning. Ideally we are hoping to have it so that your website, is the hub of your online communications. For those that are familiar with the Fediverse, we're working to let the conversation flow back, too — so you can see the likes and replies. We would love to see how we can connect the organizations we work with more closely to one another. We're building it carefully, and in the open.
Working in this space? We would love to hear from you. Contact us for a conversation.
If you are interested in trying out the Fediverse, you can find several Canadian servers at https://thesocialweb.ca/.