Firstly before I get all doom and gloom can I say a huge thank you to everyone who has supported the site and the forum since its conception 7 months ago. I think we can all agree that at times its been a complete hoot and we've made some great friendships through our appreciation of JRT. In particular I would like to thank Hells, who although she hasn't been around lately has been an absolute gem to me and has really helped me with the forum and my technophobery.
Anyway,we need to discuss what's going to happen with the site and I'm really sorry I need to wear my 'serious/doom and gloom' hat but there are some issues that need to be discussed. So in a quick list format these are some of the things:
1. Julian is now moving onto other things, it would seem in particular his audio work, this makes it even more difficult to have access to him.
2. Unfortunately despite numerous attempts we've not had any contact from Julian and as stated at point 1 I think it will be highly unlikely that we will get the chance to discuss the website/forum with him.
3. The site is continuing to grow and this of course brings us some wonderful new visitors but also brings us a couple of issues:
a. Its more prominent/noticebale which means we will be far less likely to get away with posting any copyright material, which may result in files and images being deleted.
b. I've had to increase the bandwith again and can't really afford to do so. If I need to do this again, I can't manage it on my own. Some of you may have already noticed that the board has been 'down' a couple of times, if we exceed bandwith again there's no way I can do it as I also need to pay the annual amounts for hosting, domains etc
4. My time. As many of you know the site has been a labour of love for me and has taken up a considerable amount of my time. Although I love doing it and throughly enjoy the friendships on the forum at times we all need to move on.
5. Technical Abilities. As you are all aware my techinical abilities are somewhat limited and if I really want to see the site improve this is something that I either need to work on myself or will need to find someone else who can assist.
Ok so that's all the doom and gloom bit done, but hopefully now onto a more positive note.
Firstly the website and forum will continue for at least the next couple of months, so there's no need for any urgent knicker twisting.
Really I would just like your thoughts/ideas and most importantly suggestions as to what we can perhaps do to ensure the survival of the website and forum.
I know none of you would wish to see this come to an end but I feel we really need to look at the longer term view and what direction we can take the site in.
Once again I want to offer my huge thanks for everyone's support as I couldn't have done it without you all and I am so proud of what we've achieved and in particular the fact that we have such a nice bunch of people of the forum.
Best wishes
J
Between us there must be a way of doing it.
