Happy New Year everyone.....
What a year it's been for the forum:
New logo (thank you Stuart, thank you Gonzo)
Changed hosting companies - twice, or was that three times?? Thankfully UKC finally stopped crashing.... (thank you 'Q' at Outsrc)
Updated the Boards, archiving some of the more outdated ones (however archived info is of course available to all by 'search') and adding some new ones.
UKC has helped to promote 'Cave Conservation' resulting in lots of rubbish being brought out of our caves and cavers earning some free gear for their efforts. Want to know more or get involved? Click here: http://ukcaving.com/board/index.php?topic=18713.0
Plenty of prizes have been won: from miles of Spanset Gold to The Dalesbridge oversuits, Five Ten Canyoneers, Mountain Equipment & Rab jackets, Inglesport Boxes, Berger books, Duncan Price's 'Potholer' and Gavin Newman's 'The Chamber' DVDs. Thank you to all who donated prizes ....and prizes are already lined up for 2016!
UKC had a stand at Hidden Earth 2015 even getting a banner designed (Thanks Chunky for the photo!), though we found out getting mugs printed isn't as straight forward as we thought - still some left!! Hidden Earth was a great opportunity to meet many forum members in person and thank them for their support. It also gave us a chance to promote UKC to cavers new to the forum - this seems to have been successful as the number of folks visiting the forum has risen steadily since September.
We also attended CHECC in November hoping to promote the forum and support student cavers by giving away lots of free kit!! That definitely worked as again the numbers visiting UKC increased hitting a record number of 931 on Monday 30th November.
UKC now has it's own facebook page with 835 'likes'. Whatever your thoughts on FB, there's no denying many cavers use it, together with other social media. CHECC are a good example of this. However information posted on facebook is not easily retrievable, whereas if you want to know something about pretty much anything on caving either search the forum or ask a question on here and you'll likely get an answer. That's why our FB page will always be secondary to the forum and why hopefully cavers will see the great resource UKC is compared to FB. We're on twitter too.... (Top right, click the bird or click the f)
Recently our modest advertising revenue has helped towards the cost of running the forum. We're often asked 'Do you make money out of UKC?' or 'How do you fund it?'
So in answer....
In our first year we have happily funded the forum from our own pocket. It had previously been owned by two enthusiastic climbers who bought it from the originator (Bubba) as a package with ukbouldering. We felt ukcaving needed to be owned by cavers and decided to take it on and cover the costs ourselves. As well as the original purchase costs, other expenses have included hosting - and experience has shown that this requires a surprising amount of server capacity and oomph!! There are also regular glitches and problems and we overcome these by paying for IT support (....because we are Luddites).
We are grateful to our first advertisers: Mike Moore Books, Inglesport and Starless River for supporting UKC and hope forum members will support them in return. Advertising on the forum will always be kept relevant to caving - no PPI, promise. When/if ever we manage to cover our expenses we will be ploughing any excess back into the site/caving.
To Bubba, Chris, Paul, Rhys and Sam - thank you for your advice and moderation - it would have been a daunting year without you.
...and of course thank you to everyone who posts on ukcaving.com - without you, there wouldn't be a forum! The atmosphere has, thankfully, improved on UKC over this past year and the vast majority have embraced this, thank you
All the best for 2016, Badlad & Pegasus
What a year it's been for the forum:
New logo (thank you Stuart, thank you Gonzo)
Changed hosting companies - twice, or was that three times?? Thankfully UKC finally stopped crashing.... (thank you 'Q' at Outsrc)
Updated the Boards, archiving some of the more outdated ones (however archived info is of course available to all by 'search') and adding some new ones.
UKC has helped to promote 'Cave Conservation' resulting in lots of rubbish being brought out of our caves and cavers earning some free gear for their efforts. Want to know more or get involved? Click here: http://ukcaving.com/board/index.php?topic=18713.0
Plenty of prizes have been won: from miles of Spanset Gold to The Dalesbridge oversuits, Five Ten Canyoneers, Mountain Equipment & Rab jackets, Inglesport Boxes, Berger books, Duncan Price's 'Potholer' and Gavin Newman's 'The Chamber' DVDs. Thank you to all who donated prizes ....and prizes are already lined up for 2016!
UKC had a stand at Hidden Earth 2015 even getting a banner designed (Thanks Chunky for the photo!), though we found out getting mugs printed isn't as straight forward as we thought - still some left!! Hidden Earth was a great opportunity to meet many forum members in person and thank them for their support. It also gave us a chance to promote UKC to cavers new to the forum - this seems to have been successful as the number of folks visiting the forum has risen steadily since September.
We also attended CHECC in November hoping to promote the forum and support student cavers by giving away lots of free kit!! That definitely worked as again the numbers visiting UKC increased hitting a record number of 931 on Monday 30th November.
UKC now has it's own facebook page with 835 'likes'. Whatever your thoughts on FB, there's no denying many cavers use it, together with other social media. CHECC are a good example of this. However information posted on facebook is not easily retrievable, whereas if you want to know something about pretty much anything on caving either search the forum or ask a question on here and you'll likely get an answer. That's why our FB page will always be secondary to the forum and why hopefully cavers will see the great resource UKC is compared to FB. We're on twitter too.... (Top right, click the bird or click the f)
Recently our modest advertising revenue has helped towards the cost of running the forum. We're often asked 'Do you make money out of UKC?' or 'How do you fund it?'
So in answer....
In our first year we have happily funded the forum from our own pocket. It had previously been owned by two enthusiastic climbers who bought it from the originator (Bubba) as a package with ukbouldering. We felt ukcaving needed to be owned by cavers and decided to take it on and cover the costs ourselves. As well as the original purchase costs, other expenses have included hosting - and experience has shown that this requires a surprising amount of server capacity and oomph!! There are also regular glitches and problems and we overcome these by paying for IT support (....because we are Luddites).
We are grateful to our first advertisers: Mike Moore Books, Inglesport and Starless River for supporting UKC and hope forum members will support them in return. Advertising on the forum will always be kept relevant to caving - no PPI, promise. When/if ever we manage to cover our expenses we will be ploughing any excess back into the site/caving.
To Bubba, Chris, Paul, Rhys and Sam - thank you for your advice and moderation - it would have been a daunting year without you.
...and of course thank you to everyone who posts on ukcaving.com - without you, there wouldn't be a forum! The atmosphere has, thankfully, improved on UKC over this past year and the vast majority have embraced this, thank you
All the best for 2016, Badlad & Pegasus