Withernwick Website - Second Birthday
Annual Report - December 2010
Finances
Since the last report, I have removed all payments for services offered on the website, I simply felt that they served little purpose. So to break down the costs (which are approximate) I have detailed the accounts below:
| Item | Cost | ||
| Just Host - Website server | £50 | ||
| Find My Past (97% used for the website) | £110 | ||
| Origins Network (100% used for website) | £50 | ||
| Items from Origins Network | £60 | ||
| Form handling website | £15 | ||
| Photography Competition | £100 | ||
| Other sundry costs | £20 | ||
| Genea Reunited (95% used for website) | £10 | ||
| Total | £415 | ||
| It may seem like a lot of money, but I
think it represents very good value for what we have. Personally I
do not mind the outlay as it also brings me a lot of pleasure, many
hobbies would be much more expensive than this and I wouldn't enjoy
jet-skiing any where near as much. Webpages and services Of the original webpages, some are very little used, particularly the Hobbies and Interests page and the Garden Page; I will leave these for the time being and will try and think of some way of making them more useful and interesting. The use of the For Sale page is still disappointing, I still believe that this is a valuable service for the village and so I will leave it as it is and just say please use it, it is free and it works. Pet's Corner has gained a good few new additions and I hope people keep adding to it. The History page has also grown steadily, there is a lot of really interesting information there about the village and Holderness' past and well worth spending a bit of time perusing. The great successes of the past year are all connected to an area that I never originally envisaged developing - that of family history (hence some of the costs above). I have long known and reported before that we are so lucky that Withernwick is a unique placename and this has continued to be a great help. I have had many contacts over the last year from people tracing their ancestors which has often led to a vast amount of information on the history of the village and its people. When I'm contacted, I use Find My Past and Genes Reunited to find more information and I have also used Genes Reunited to track down people who have not contacted me but have ancestors in the village. This then leads to me being sent many old photographs and some fascianting Tales. Hence the Gallery has grown enormously (forcing me to split it into 5 sections) and also many new articles have been added to the Tales page. I'm not entirely sure most of you think of this aspect of the website as it is not of direct use to you, but it is well worth exploring even if you have no ancestors living in the village. Many of the old photos are wonderfully evocative even the ones that we might consider as family snaps; with having so many, they all link together and really bring the village's past to life. Some of the Tales also record many priceless empheral details of history which vividly colour in the picture of our collective past. Please do have a look through the Photo Galleries and have a good read of the articles on the Tales page, I am sure you too will see the village's past coming back to life. Of other pages and services, the Desert Islands Discs page has grown steadily, but I would still like a lot more adding; it is a bit of fun, so have a think. Withernwick Walter is another fun aspect which I would like to develop more over the next year, I am sure in particular this will appeal to the younger members of the village which, I freely admit, are not well served by the website at present. Future Ideas I have just alluded to one aspect of the website that I would love to develop - ideas to appeal to the younger people in the village. I would be totally dependent for this on young people to tell me what they want and to supply the stuff for the website. It may be an idea to develop an area that is totally the responsibility of the young people, they could create the pages which need not follow the general website theme and simply send them to me for uploading. If anyone is interested in working on this I would very much like to hear from them. I am open to any other ideas people have, I know I keep technical control over the website (I can't think of a better way) but I would love more input of ideas from others. The Future Will the website ever reach a limit? I keep thinking it might and then another big batch of photos will arrive. Withernwick is only a small village, but there have been many thousands of people that have lived here over the thousand years + or so of its existance; all have tales to tell and indeed I believe that history is infinite. So there will always be more old photos and tales. Then of course the village is now thriving and a wonderful example of how to buck the trend of rural decline, so I am sure we will have a continuous supply of new things for the website. I do look around the website of other villages and small towns and, I will assure your that it is not from arrogance that I could claim that out website is as good as any in Yorkshire (maybe further) and especially so considering that out village is so small. Maybe the smallness of Withernwick is part of the secret, maybe the spirit of larger places become too remote from the people and the communities too fragmented. But I would like to think that the main driving force is the collective enthusiasm we have for our village. So please, again from self-belief rather than arrogance, I would like you to celebrate with me the Second Birthday of Our website and let us hope that it will continue to thrive; my enthusiasm will not disipate, and so with your help it will continue to grow for another year and beyond. Paul - 3rd December 2010 Return to Homepage Return to About Withernwick |
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