To be the best, you have to want to be the best.

A site that has always typified that swagger is my high school’s Web site. It has the audacity to want to be the best in the world, and it has succeeded for years. When I was a junior in high school, it was named the best k-12 education site by Cisco and Education World.

The very next year, while I was co-student Web master, we set out to redo the Web site. That’s the thing about wanting to be the best — you have to believe that nothing is good enough. So, we redid, and it completely and utterly blew our award-winning site out of the water.

That designed stayed for six years, and is probably still the best k-12 site anywhere, but today my high school launched a new version. It’s bigger, it handles content better and it certainly is more audacious.

Why did they redesign a Web site that gets 30,000-40,000 visitors a day? Because they could.

Why do people climb Mount Everest? Because they can.

Kenston has between 1,000-1,200 students, and yet manages to attract more eyeballs than most daily newspapers’ sites. How is that possible? Simple.

About 15,000 people or so live in the school district, and all of them know about the Web site and many check it religiously. Alumni like myself check the Web site at least several times a week, and relatives all over the country can see what their family members are doing.

Plus, high school’s all over the country come to the site for inspiration. Want to know how to build a great Web site? Just go the Kenston site and you’ll know all you need to know.

So, what are the keys to success?

1. Content
The site is filled with content. It does a much better job of covering sports teams than local papers do. Want to see several hundred photos after every football game a few hours after the game is over? You can. If your son got on the field, even just for just a play, he will almost certainly be on the site.

Why pay for prom pictures, when your son or daughter will be on the Web site the next day?

Every class, club and team is covered on the Web site in varying degrees. The site is loaded with content. Some of it is certainly much better than other content, but they are at least trying to cover as much as possible.

2. It’s the place to go for info
With great content comes great information. Want to know the football team’s schedule or stats? Go to the Kenston Web site. Want to know if a softball game is canceled due to rain? Go to the Web site. Want to know when the next PTA meeting is? Well, you get the idea.

3. People have to believe
Cleveland, Ohio is not a technology hub. It’s an aging rust belt city. The only way to get a Web site like this going is to transform a community.

The site started with just a faculty adviser, Ronnie Continenza and a few dedicated students. It then grew to incorporate a Web design class. Now, Kenston has hired a second Web design instructor to teach advanced courses because the demand is great.

Imagine having a class that everyone wants to be in. The site regularly has about 100 kids working on it every day. Why?

Because it’s what all the cool kids are doing.

The site itself has no direct budget. Most of the money comes from people in the community who enjoy the content so much that they donate money. The site also has a few sponsors, but it general it is what it is because people believe in it. People believe in the product.

4. You need an impresario
Apple has Steve Jobs. He is the heart and soul of the company. Works hard to make products and to sell his vision.

Kenston has Continenza. He is a tireless worker. He puts in the usual work day as a teacher, but than covers games at night for the Web site, taking at least tens of thousands of photos each school year. He is the glue that holds together the Web site.

In many ways, he is the Rob Curley of Kenston. He may not have the technical prowess that Curley has, but he has at least as much heart, if not more. After Curley left Naples Daily News, the site quickly began to go downhill.

Your site, paper, etc needs an impresario. You need someone so dedicated, so good that everyone around him believes in the site and its future. That’s the biggest problem facing most newspapers today.

There simply isn’t that one person who wills your operation to victory. That one person who can change the mind of the publisher and make top editors believe. The thing is your staff might have one, but bureaucracy and seniority are holding him or her back.

Honestly, how many of your Web sites are run by someone with little new media skills or experience and were long-time print journalists? You need someone beyond just a person who volunteered to take over the Web site because he or she thought it would be a good career move.

You need someone who eats, drinks and sleeps the Web. Continenza is not some Web or computer genius. He’s best skill is photography, which he is quite good at.

But his biggest asset is the ability is to listen and take advice from people who know the Web. He listens to talented students and alumni, which is how the Web site has gotten so good. You can have someone head up your Web operation if they aren’t a Web God, but they have to be willing to listen to others who are more knowledgeable.

When you combine his hard work with his ability to listen to others, it’s easy to see how someone who took over the fledgling Kenston Web site in 1998 almost on a whim was able to make it the best in the country.

Conclusion:
If you want to be better, you have to actually believe that you can be better. You should always strive to be the best. My high school didn’t have to redesign its site and add more technical tricks to it, but it did.

It’s not about blogs, video or x, y, z. It’s about hard work, dedication and doing something not because you have to but because you want to. It’s about believing in the product.

Continual R&D is extremely important to the long-term success of any Web site. Sure, there are some things I think my high school could have done better (utilizing more databases and video for instance), but in general I like the idea that they are willing to reinvent the wheel.

Why?

Because they can.