THE FUTURE OF THIS WEBSITE (Announce)

by Jefff , West London, Middlesex, Wednesday, March 04, 2020, 18:29 (1757 days ago) @ admin

No response to this sentence was received from any of our many subscribers.

Dear Admin,
I very much recall reading this post and being very concerned, in fact only this week I mentioned it while emailing another longstanding future member. In response both myself and others replied with messages of support and encouragement. I and probably others expected to see updates from yourselves as to how and what was needed, none were forthcoming. The fact it was posted on Christmas Eve, one of the busiest days of the year for many of us, may have been an error. I for one admit that despite fully intending to make a financial contribution towards site upkeep, I now realise I forgot to do so, for which I apologise - not helped as my mother was in hospital at that already-busy time.
Since then I've had a particularly difficult and stressful year of my own, I am only too aware of the negative affects of ill-health and old age, last year was an awful one for my family. Perhaps the same has been the case with other forum members ?
I am truly sorry if the Admin team or anyone else have had a similar year to ours.
Sometimes a timely reminder is both necessary and useful for all parties.
I would suggest these are possible reasons why maybe your one post didn't get the attention you thought it should.

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Anyway, moving on, I am worried for the continued future of this website and forum, as I'm sure everyone else it.

Please could you clarify what it is you actually need, both now and in the future ?

On my part I wondered if your concerns were about what seemed to me like reduced activity on the forum compared to previous years ? Some of us are also involved in local history groups on Facebook and suchlike, the existence of which I guess can impact websites like this one. Because I was concerned for this site's future and wanted to help-out, I have deliberately made several postings on these groups promoting this website and forum in an attempt to increase site usage and forum membership. I know other members have done the same.

Without further updates from yourselves I'm not sure what else we could have done.

I would also suggest that as well as posting on the forum you send emails to all forum members, in case they're not currently active on the forum but would still like to help out.

Needless to say we are all very grateful for all the work that's been done and is ongoing to create and maintain this superb website and forum. I suspect I'm not the only one who doesn't know the full extent of time and cost that's required to maintain this site, perhaps some indicators of what's involved would help us to better understand the task ahead.

Thanks again, and best wishes, Jeff.