 |
Community Development Trust |
|
PARISH COUNCIL CHURCHES LOCAL GROUPS |
Using the village web-site more effectively Current Situation The Trust currently has a web-package allowing us to have the www.crastervillage.org.uk domain name and 5Gb (5000 Mb) of storage space; this costs us £2.99 pa for the domain registration and £4.99 per month (£59.88 pa) for the storage space on which we keep the web-site. The site currently occupies 15.65 Mb of our allocated 5000 Mb. Opportunities The Trust is also the owner of the www.crasterhistory.co.uk web-site. This is the site created from the source material collected for the production of the “We Can Mind The Time” book. The site is currently held on the server of Longstone Solutions which is the company that created the web-site. Angus Tait of Longstone allows us to keep the site on his server free of charge although we have no access to the core information of the site and have to ask Angus to make the amendments if we wish to make any changes or edits. Angus is happy to do this while the level of change is minimal but would need to charge if it became a significant task. The Craster Local History Group is also looking to set up a web-site for which they would require to purchase a domain name and arrange hosting. There is an opportunity for the Trust to take over control of the crasterhistory web-site and also for us to offer space to the Local History Group within our existing allowance of space with our hosting company. What would the Trust have to do? The trust would need to carry out the following actions:
None of these tasks which the Trust must undertake are technically demanding or will cost any significant sums of money. We have ample storage space within our existing web hosting package and would incur no penalties in that respect. Once the History Group web-site has been created, there should not be a great amount of maintenance work required. However, I have agreed with Peter Howard that I will teach myself about web-site editing and take over the maintenance of the crastervillage web-site if the maintenance of the three web-sites becomes too demanding. Proposal I therefore propose:
The current costs of the site are broadly met by contributions from local businesses who receive publicity through the crastervillage web-site. Therefore (and again in line with our objective) I propose that we make no charge to the Local History Group for their use of space within our allowance. The Executive Committee are invited to support this proposal as it supports the objectives of both the Development Trust and also the potential new Community Trust. Matters for further debate We would also be able to tidy up domain names if we make the changes. Peter Howard has been looking at the best solution for a Local History Group web-site, for which the obvious move would be a crasterhistory web-site address. As the We Can Mind The Time web-site is currently at www.crasterhistory.co.uk, there would be possibility of people getting confused between web-sites so Peter has suggested moving the We Can Mind The Time site to something like www.wecanmindthetime.org.uk. This would allow the Local History Group to create a new domain at www.crasterhistory.org.uk (.org.uk has less of a commercial inference than the .co.uk address), nominally freeing up the www.crasterhistory.co.uk domain. In the short term I think we would need to retain a 1-page web-site at www.crasterhistory.co.uk with a couple of links for people to click for either We Can Mind The Time or the Craster Local history Group. People using old bookmarks or who mistype the address would not then get lost en route. The benefit is that it would give the Local History Group a relevant address which in the longer term would not be confused with We Can Mind The Time. Overall, this would require us to take on an additional domain address at an £2.99pa until such time as we close down the www.crasterhistory.co.uk address. He has also suggested that the www.crastervillage.org.uk address comes across as geographically restrictive and that we might have an address more relevant to both the Development Trust and the new Community Trust if we take on a new address like www.crasterparish.org.uk and migrate across to that. As the e-mail addresses for both the Development Trust and the Parish Council are tied to the www.crastervillage.org.uk address we would need to have a proper migration plan in place to avoid e-mails getting lost. This would probably mean maintaining the www.crastervillage.org.uk address for a period of time and forwarding e-mails from there to the new site, as well as re-directing visitors to the old address to the new web-site. Again that would cost us £2.99pa until such time as we cease the www.crastervillage.org.uk domain. If we made all of these proposed changes the additional cost would be £5.98pa over and above the basic £2.99pa which the core proposal would cost the Trust. In the overall scale of things, these costs are insignificant, so the EC are invited to consider whether we wish to make any or all of the additional changes in order to have a longer term plan in place to tidy up our presence on the Internet. John Gallon 27 October 2009 |