Why the change?
Don’t worry, all of the ‘old’ materials are here, just click on ‘hipkin.net website’ in the box above, or Here to go direct.
When you’ve read this note, click ‘Home’ in the box above to see the rest of the blog.
When people would ask me how the original website was doing, I usually answered that it was doing OK, especially considering the rather arcane content. However, the ‘hit’ rate was low and the demographic profile of the viewers meant that the number of active readers was set to decline over time.
Since nothing is more boring than reading someone else’s travel stories (except looking at their travel photos!), I constantly tried to broaden the site appeal by including as much external material as possible. However, a major problem has been the difficulty of obtaining new written material and photographs to add to these stories of long ago; although folk are keen to read the stuff, they are generally much less willing to put pen to paper and/or to contact me to start the publishing ball rolling.
So, what to do? Kill it off and take up knitting, ‘freeze’ it (doing minimum maintenance to keep it alive), or adopt some new approach to keep my interest, broaden the scope and attract new viewers?
My own motivations have changed during the eight years the site has been ‘live’. Key drivers have been the desire to archive our experiences from the 50′s and 60′s, plus the opportunity to broaden my understanding of the internet and the effect that it has on all our lives. I’m still interested in these things and I’m also quite keen on the new weblog (blog for short) software, so I’ve decided to move with the times and to put a bit of effort into a blog-based revamp – there’s nothing good on TV anyway!
Blog technology allows for a much more flexible approach to website design and maintenance – the key differences include:
- I can use the format to air my thoughts about almost anything, even to just have a wee rant about things that upset me (grumpy old man!)
- Direct on-line editing means I can add a new article or photo album in just a few minutes
- Visitors can add comments to rebut or reinforce my rants – (don’t worry about having to read loony comments or swear words, all comments will be ‘moderated’ by me before inclusion)
- Search engines will index the site so that it can more easily be found by people running blogs with similar interests
- Other bloggers will (hopefully) link their blogs to this one, thereby expanding the range of topics under discussion
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