With the recent discussion about AWA turning 100 this year I almost forgot about a slightly lesser milestone - this website will turn 10 years old on the 1st July this year.

What started out as a small personal website about my own collection has grown slowly but surely over time to become Australia's vintage radio forums. With this, the original content is seldom turned to these days and indeed whilst all the original pages survive, not many of them are linked to on the current content management system (CMS) as emphasis has pretty much turned towards the forums - where everyone can participate.

With this, there will be some major changes later this year. Whilst it has been my plan for a long time to roll out a completely new website bristling with bells and whistles, this is not likely for another twelve months, mostly due to a lack of time on my part. My plan in the interim is to carry out a bit of a restructure and this will involve shifting the Forums home page to the front of the site. This will involve the front page forums (mostly news items) being abolished.

I will also remove much of the original content and reinstall it on a separate website at a later stage.

What I want to achieve with this is to make the forums what they are supposed to be and that is that they will become the major part of this website.

Once this has been done, I will develop and add the feature everyone has been screaming for - the ability to upload one's photos to one's posts without having to wait for it to be done on one's behalf by me.

I am hoping these improvements will keep this website relevant for a long time to come.

On another note, a discussion regarding the future of the British vintage radio forums made me think about what would happen to this place should I ever (God forbid!) lose interest in hosting it, or (again, God forbid!!!!!) something happened to me, causing the site to eventually fall off the radar screen. It's an issue that no-one wants to discuss or confront but the bottom line is that discussion forums, especially those with a top-notch group of members like this one, become troves containing valuable information which are pretty much irreplaceable.

Out of the four significant vintage radio forums I know of, they being this one, the British, US and Canadian forums, only the latter is not hosted by a privateer so with the exception of the Canadians, none of the radio clubs seem keen on running discussion forums and my guess for this is that they probably see interactive websites as a major competitor and threat to the viability of their operations. This may be wrong but it's the only reason I can think of.

To put everyone's mind at ease, I have no plans on shelving this operation and I am hoping that for many, many years to come Vintage Radio will continue to be Australia's discussion forums. However, what would happen should things not go to plan? The next owner, should that eventuate, would need to either host the site themselves as I do or move the site to a commercial webhost and possess the programming skills to either continue with improving the CMS or migrating to a better one, if such an animal exists. Without being alarmist, I think it's worth discussing such an event and the 'Plan B' that would keep the ship afloat.

Looking ahead, we should celebrate the upcoming tenth anniversary and then look forward to another ten years of operation which will bring us to the 100th anniversary of commercial radio broadcasting in Australia.

Brad
well done on 10 years.
I used to run a website specialising in HF radio transceivers.
I was lucky enough to have the support of a few different people over the years that hosted it for me.
After 15 years on the web, my host was no longer able to offer his support and the website, unfortunately, was deleted.

I clearly remember hand coding pages, updating links, images and files etc and know exactly what you mean when you say you dont have time.

keep it up mate, we may only be a small corner of the world but your work is certainly appreciated


ben

we may only be a small corner of the world but your work is certainly appreciated

Ditto!

I clearly remember hand coding pages, updating links, images and files etc...

Yeah, they were the days. I built my first webpage in around 1997 but it took a while for me to get the hang of choosing a webhost and ended up with my first live site in 1998.

Driving things with a database makes easier work of content management though the time still has to be there for things like wrapping the site in new themes and adding new functions.

I have to say that I still enjoy having this website so that brings with it some encouragement to try and find the time to do these things.

Congratulations Brad, and lets look forward to another ten years of the forums!

Personal hosting is much appreciated, and it allows for detailed customisation to suit the site owner's interests and capabilities.

It is true that no personal site can last forever, and therefore I agree that a Plan B is a wise form of insurance for all the great content and goodwill that this site has accumulated.

Commercial hosting prices are continually falling, and good hosting services provide security, backup, and simple web interfaces for content management and development. Just about any database and interface can be migrated to these services. It can work out cheaper to use a hosting service than to cover the maintenance, hardware and bandwidth costs of a private server setup.

The main argument for a private server is if the owner enjoys running the hardware and software with maximum hands-on.
If that joy fades, commercial or public hosting can be a better proposition.

Maven