Why?
Looking on the world-wide-web for information on Christchurch in Dorset with its medieval town centre in 2001 to prepare for a family outing produced only three sites; the town council web-site with half a dozen photographs, each accompanied by a short paragraph; a commercial website with half a dozen photographs accompanied by a sentence each and a plea for advertising; and a web-site produced by Christchurch Priory (which was excellent).
The same search for "Christchurch" produced no less than some four hundred places on Christchurch in New Zealand. This is the second time I find myself living in, what can broadly termed, "Wessex" and what is undoubtedly the "West Country" and browsing around the "web" showed the West Country to be severely unrepresented.
There is so much in South West England which is no less than world class, far too much to list here, and we are very lucky to have it. Those of us who live, work or play there very priviliged; I would recommend anyone who has any doubts on that score to take the ferry from Dover to Calais and drive out to somewhere like Ardes; lovely indeed, but all reconstructed; the landscape (both natural and man-made) having been "ploughed" into a moonscape by the ravages of two World Wars, the last just only half a century ago.
Yes, things have moved on a great deal on the world-wide web since 2001, many counties, towns, villages and areas of the South West have a web presence and there are many excellent sites out there. Unfortunatly there is also much utter garbage out there as a quick search on any of the major search engines will show; a sentence if you are lucky, perhaps even the rarer photograph, and the interminable lists of hotels, etc.
| The long lists, while inconvenient and time-wasting can be considered in many was quite benign - while compiling the page on "Animal Migration" recently, I used one of the major search engines to find some information on that favourite summer visitor to the British Isles, the "Swallow". As to the first item which was listed . . . well, this is a "family site so, if you are curious, try for yourself, but you might not want the kids about when you do (the responsible search engine was Google)! |
Despite the abundance of material available on the internet now, there is still the problem of what we chose to refer to as "fragmentation"; the village site stops at the village or parish boundary, ditto the town or even county. To take only one example, wildlife, every county concerned has a Wildlife Trust and every Wildlife Trust has a website - which stops at the borders of the county. This is, by and large, true of any other field. The South West has little "presence" as a unit on the web and even less of an identity there.
The primary aim of the swuklink.com website is to "shout" about the South West as a terrific region it is and with, well, so much of just about everything worthy of notice. Secondly, but of no less import, to allow the user to move "in" and "out" in terms of detail within the region and its many aspects with as much ease as possible and, thirdly, to provide links to relevant and quality third party sites at every level - to provide a quality guide to the South West with both information and links.
The Near Future
The website is currently run privately as an educational resource and to "plug" the South West as an area. There is a great deal on the site which needs attention, particularly some of the older pages (some of which haven't been touched for years). Rather than do this manually, we are investing the time in providing increasing levels of automation to deliver consistency throughout the site. There will be a number of pages which will be left to be dealt with manually.
Regardless of the technicalities, we cannot have it completely wrong as a comment in our Guestbook that the site was "Brilliant for helping the kids with their homework" (March 26th) was met with "help kids with their home work? i'm doing an MSc and still found it useful!" (March 29th). Despite the shortcommings of the site (and there are still many), the rating selected by most visitors who have commented in our Guestbook have been either "above average" or "very good".
From the point of view of Site Statistics, the site is doing very well. Counting average daily hits, month on month we are seeing an average percentage increase in the low teens and corresponding increases in the number of indivdual users.
While the figures make the site a success, they are equally as much a warning sign; we can expect the number of hits to double every four months! At the levels expected this December, we would have to deliver some 2.4 million pages a year. If the growth continues (as it has done consistently) we will be faced with delivering well over five million pages next year - averaged over the year (we wish!) - about a page every ten seconds.
To deliver such a level of service and continue to maintain, improve and expand the web-site, this leaves us with no choice other than to seek commercial or other sponsorship which we hope will enable us to employ three people full-time (or their equivalent) and ensure sufficient technical resources such as servers to satisfy the demand.
Organisation
To secure the future of the site beyond the capabilities of the individuals concerned in its foundation, we intend to transfer it to a Company Limited by Guarantee later this year.
Having secured commercial sponsorship for the site and made the necessary alterations to it, we will be canvassing interested parties such as the local authorities in the geographical area which we cover with the aim of getting them to each take up part ownership of the company to ensure its future, although not necessarily funding it.
Broad Aims
Because of the broad extent of the web-site, the aims are outlined here for the moment. These targets will be expanded on another page in the near future.
1. To ensure that the web-site has a page covering every city, town, village and parish in the South West and, in the case of widely dispersed parishes, each hamlet concerned as well.
2. To ensure that all districts and unitary authorities within the South West area are likewise covered as well as distinctive geographical areas such as major estuaries (e.g.: Fowey estuary, Fal estuary, etc.), peninsulas (e.g.: Penwith, The Lizard, etc.), Pewsey Vale, Salisbury Plain, etc.
3. To ensure that all features of local interest whether natural or historical are covered by the web-site and that links to them are available from all nearby settlements.
4. To ensure that all pages capable of a geographical association (principally those outlined in the three previous items) carry a comprehensive map of the area which is fully mapped so as to provide links available by clicking on the map, irrespective of textual links. An example may be seen on our broader Cornish pages where these maps have been implemented on an administrative district level.
5. To seek the widest possible involvement of local individuals and organisations, particularly schools and colleges, with a sustained publicity policy including local media.
6. To provide facilites for the publication of material of intrest in the area covered by the web-site which might otherwise be published in a fragmented fashion on "free" webspace provided by various providers, in effect, specialised web-hosting within the framework of the existing site.
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