It’s my birthday this weekend, and I have some news for you.
Please don’t buy me flowers or chocolate. Flowers wither. And, if you don’t know about the fact yet – I don’t eat chocolate.
Over the past 3 years I’ve worked very hard building Chandler’s Ford Today as a community website for Chandler’s Ford.
The reason? Because we need one interactive, vibrant online community website.
Chandler’s Ford Today takes me tens of hours a month to research, write, edit, and source great content from local writers and contributors. This site remains free (and ad-free) for the joy of your reading.
From March 2013 to December 2015, this site has cost me one thousand pounds to sustain.
In the past 3 years, this site received no public funding, community funding, or donation.
In 2013, £500 was spent on setting up the site. I went on a course to start everything from scratch, and I faced some teething problems, which cost me a lot of money. Lesson learnt.
In 2014, the site became stable and the running cost was £220.
If you value what I do, or find any joy reading the website, please consider supporting me with my work for Chandler’s Ford Today.
Where will the money go?
In 2015, the site cost £220 to run, including:
- web-hosting fees
- domain renewal
- Flickr account
Your donation will help me cover the cost of 2015.
In 2016, the running cost of this site may rise to £400. This includes a switch to a powerful theme builder Dynamik (US$79) to improve the site.
I also would like to buy a mini-recorder to help me record interviews.
I also would like to upgrade to the Royale account (US$33) of Photo editor PicMonkey, the free online photo editing, where I edit the majority of photos for Chandler’s Ford Today. An upgrade will give me more tools to enhance image quality and improve visual impact.
I love working on Chandler’s Ford Today. The site contains local history, personal stories, events, reviews, interviews, and news. Chandler’s Ford Today connects people. To show your support, please consider a modest donation, to help me keep this site running, and to help this site remain clean and ad-free. I truly appreciate your support.
Contact me today to send me your donations for Chandler’s Ford Today.
By email: janet@chandlersfordtoday.co.uk
I’ll give you the bank details (for bank transfer), or an address where you could send your cheque to. Thank you.
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Happy Birthday, Janet.
Don’t like to think of you out of pocket because of CFT. It is a great website and run professionally. Who has read it and not derived some benefit?
email me your bank details. Even from Sri Lanka I can make a donation.
Happy Birthday Janet.
I love reading your blog and reading about matters in the community.
We need more people like you trying to make a difference.
Thank you for all the hard work and hours you put in to bringing us all up-to-date information.
Please email me your bank details.
Many thanks and a very happy Christmas to you and your family x
Happy Birthday Janet!
I so admire what you have created with this website and your continual dedication to it. I love the way you gather stories from people when you are out and about. It takes a special kind of person to do this!
And, of course, I find the website really useful too.
I would be happy to make a donation x
Dear Janet – a very happy birthday to you.
I really respect you because you have made a striking difference to the Community by your hard work, long hours, and your enthusiasm for reporting. You have come a long way since we first met.
Please send me your bank details and I will contribute.
I hope you are looking forward to reporting the start of a new entertainment era – yes, Movies at the Thornden Hall.
Have a great weekend, Kind Regards, Roger
Happy Birthday.
Send me the bank details and I will make a donation.
Janet, thank you on behalf of us all for all you do with this wonderful website. Also thank you for giving local authors a say. Donation winging its way to you.
Allison,
You are the one who has done all great interviews with our local writers (well, we have stretched the meaning of ‘local’ a bit – all the way to the Isle of Wight).
I like your unique style in interviews – lots of conversation, useful resources, and you’re great at linking people and events together to form a bigger, clearer picture.
I think we all have learnt something from you through all the writing tips (or lots of Do’s and Don’ts – have you thought of turning them into a poster?), and stories from small publishers.
“Small” is key. Chandler’s Ford may be small (well – when the HSBC robbery happened in 2007, BBC described Chandler’s Ford as a ‘sleepy’ suburb, ‘unheard of’), but we can produce great work, generate influence, and truly make a difference.
Many thanks for your kind comments, Janet, but it has been CFT that has given me the opportunity to write these posts and interviews. Felicity was grateful for the link up. And at least it is easy to get to the IOW from CF! I’ll think about the poster idea (up to ears with other writing work right now and yes that includes my next post for you!). I like the way CFT has brought people together. I would never have, for example, met Mike and Brenda had it not been for CFT and the Extravaganza. Also a whole range of interests is covered by the site, which is great. It really is a magazine for all.
Technology, if we use it well, as we do on this website, can make things happen.
This site is built on WordPress, the most elegant platform in the world.
Thanks to Matt Mullenweg, the co-founder of WordPress, the brains behind WordPress.com and Automattic. His vision in 2003 changed how the world communicates today. In just over 10 years, WordPress has transformed the world, and my life. It has enabled me to connect with the outside world through my windows.
Now WordPress powers 25% of the Web.
I not only want to connect with people through Chandler’s Ford Today, I want to spread the word about WordPress. WordPress makes everything possible. Thank you Matt Mullenweg.
Thank you all – Mike, Sarah, Wendy, Roger, Ruby, Allison.
Perhaps I shouldn’t have felt surprised by your generosity, but I do – and feel very privileged to be working with you throughout the past 3 years.
I bet you have now received my letter to your email. I hope you like the ‘bonus’ in the letter.
Just to say that I also received emails from two readers whom I haven’t met – Howard and Juliana.
“I have only been subscribing to CFT for a few months but think it’s great, and try to spread the news whenever I can.”
“I always enjoy reading your website on Chandler’s Ford and through it have received lots of information about things and events that I would never otherwise have known about! I am more than happy to make a donation for the upkeep of the site as I wish to see it continue and don’t see why you should be out of pocket. You perform an excellent service for the Chandler’s Ford community – long may it last!”
These messages are encouraging. Thank you very much. I know what I do (what we do) is so worthwhile, for friendship, for the community, for building a meaningful network, through sharing posts, stories, resources, and events.
I bet you are curious about what I’ve done today.
Well I received a big box of flowers from my sister-in-law from Germany.
I think these flowers were delivered by the forists in Fryern Arcade.
My husband bought me a rucksack – which I had prompted, and my son got me Bill Bryson’s new book, which is going to make me laugh. It’s a shame both of them didn’t wrap the presents! (“Nah, it’s for you.”)
I bought myself a new origami book yesterday and I’ll be enjoying folding when I have a mental block with writing. I find inner peace through folding paper (when Chandler’s Ford Today gets too hectic!)
The best thing today was finding my cat Billy in the morning from Tuscan Walk. He ran away 10 days ago (2 miles away), to his usual hiding place. Billy keeps running away to the place where he used to belong – that’s his connection to his past, and our job is to retrieve him every time he runs off.
I bought something called a catnip this morning (a small piece of fabric with some herbs inside; £1) as I was told this will drive my cat crazy and he’ll love it. I hope Billy will love me a bit more from today and try not running away again (it’ll be hard for him).
Hope Billy stops running away. Glad you had a great birthday. The bonus was a revealing insight!!! I’ve hidden my “what I used to look like” pictures and for very good reason! (I’ve no wish to frighten people or put them off their food!). Great to have messages of support from new people to CFT. That will keep CFT going so let’s hope for lots more new people reading and writing for the site in 2016 (even though that means more work for you!).
To help this site grow and produce a wide range of topics, we need people of different talents to help us.
I’m pleased to have found an expert gardener Wellie, who now starts writing our monthly gardening series. (I’ve prepared her January post already.)
If you know someone who could help, to write a post, or a series, it would be wonderful.
People could commit to one post, or more in a series. Chances are that once they’ve started writing one post, they might be hooked – it was just what Martin Napier did. He did a beautiful series of Growing up in Chandler’s Ford in the 50s and 60s.
Later Martin was invited to give a talk in Chandler’s Ford Library. Hazel did a review of Martin’s Local History Talk.
WordPress – Chandler’s Ford Today – Martin’s writing – a local history talk in the library – a review — the power of connection is beautiful.
I’m so pleased to tell you that on 15th December 2015, the total amount of donations from 8 people have reached £280.
Thank you Mike, Tom, Juliana, Wendy, Howard, Hazel, Roger, and Allison. Thank you Chippy Minton for setting up a monthly direct debit too.
Thank you for the huge support that you’ve given me and Chandler’s Ford Today. Thank you for writing and reading and commenting.
I can now tell you where YOUR money has gone:
1) You have now contributed to the total cost of Chandler’s Ford Today for 2015 – the amount of £220: web-hosting fees, domain renewal, and Flickr.
2) You have now also paid for the web-hosting fees from January to April 2016 (£60).
You’re incredible people. Thank you for your kind support. Chandler’s Ford Today will be stronger and better because of you.
Happy Birthday Janet!
– May I also recommend the use of Google AdSense to allow a few discreet & relevant ‘Paid’ Ads to be added to this great site?
– I don’t think it would ruin the content or layout but would hopefully enable the site to fund itself assuming enough visitors click on the sponsored Ads?
Either that, or how about some local businesses donating a small fee for a small & discreet advert for their shops & businesses? Or a links page where they can all pay to advertise?
Any money made over & above the annual running costs could be used to grow the site even further & thus attract even more visitors.
If you need any advice on this please let me know – or maybe there’s a local IT firm willing to provide their expertise for free in exchange for a small advert!
Paul,
Many thanks.
1) Google AdSense – I’m worried it may mess up the site. I visited some sites before, and with adverts popping up here and there, it’s very irritating.
I know some sites have used Google AdSense successfully, but I’m still not convinced.
2) Local businesses: it is a very good idea and I had thought about getting business sponsors before, to allow businesses to show their support for this trustworthy community-led website.
3) Chandler’s Ford Today is not a business site – this aim cannot change. However I would love to have support from businesses, as many readers / writers on this site have just done so.
4) Yes I would love to meet up with you to hear you advice about Chandler’s Ford Today. I love to hear what readers from different backgrounds have to say. Let me know.
5) Today I spoke to my bank, and the bank said I could set up a ‘Community’ account for this website. I’ll soon be filling out a lot of forms over Christmas (and I need 2 – 3 signatures). Once it is successful, future donations will go to this Chandler’s Ford Today specific account for accountability.
6) This site is a project – I do it because I love it, and because I can. I do whatever I can and I learn while working on it, sometimes through a lot of mistakes. My basic idea is that as long as the cost (about £400 this year) is covered, I’m happy and this site will be ok. We don’t seriously need a lot of money to run a WordPress site, though with more money, we could have more fun and more features, for example, making it a mobile-friendly site for mobile users. With money, we could invest on creating videos if we want to. But I’m very patient, and I can do without luxury. My main focus is always our blog posts, events, and sharing stories and passions in the community.
Thank you for your support and ideas. Would love to hear from you more. What are your expectations for this site?
So pleased at the result, Janet. We all benefit from this wonderful site, as does the community. Thanks for the breakdown too.