New blood – and money – required

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After something like ten years of providing server space and administrative time for this site, the time is right for someone else to develop and maintain the village’s online presence.

Last year the Bawming Committee sponsored the site but with all the additional costs they face this year for road closures and insurances they do not feel able to continue for a second year.

Therefore the search is on for:

  • a sponsor who will provide – or pay for someone else to provide – suitable web server space at which appletonthorn.org.uk can be hosted
  • a person – or preferably a team of people -who will take responsibility for the ongoing development and maintenance of the website which from experience means also creating all content.

The site is regularly visited at least 20 times a day and generates a lot more when there is something happening such as around Bawming Day (over 300 hits in one day) and when there is news about the local development plans (76 visits yesterday).

The current site utilises WordPress and is hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS), although there is no reason why the site must be kept on this platform.

This is an important time in the village’s history with so much planned to change over the next few years.

There is lots of potential for development of what the site offers and how it is used. Those managing the site will have pretty much a free hand to do what they think best, so long as village interests are not considered compromised!

If no-one comes forward the current site will be taken down at the end of this month as this is when further costs will be incurred.

The village’s presence as a closed group on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/groups/appletonthorn/) and on Twitter (@appletonthorn) will be unaffected. The independent websites for the village church, school and village hall bar will also continue of course.

If you want more information or will consider taking on sponsorship or maintenance (or both!) of the site then please get in touch by email – or DM @appletonthorn on Twitter.

Lewin Alley

 

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