In 30 days time; it has been three years since we took the plunge to delve into the world of paid website hosting, in order to allow for the growth and development of this website.

The cost was approximately £130 for three years of web hosting, and Liam paid for this out of his own pocket in whole.

I'm now older and have a job, so I'd be in a better position to assist Liam with the payment this time. However, I am writing this post to gauge interest in a voluntary donation. I appreciate we have a large number of younger members on the forum who would not be in a position to donate, but we also have a number of older members who would be.

Happy to discuss more via a private message, but I'm just putting the feelers out there to get a rough idea of if we'd get a decent contribution from the site's users. It'd be completely voluntary and there'd be no obligation to donate at all.

A number of you have expressed interest in wishing to contribute to the site hosting renewal, via PMs to me.

We've added a PayPal donate button to the bottom of the page in the right hand side of the grey footer. Click this and it'll take you to our PayPal donation site, where you can donate an amount of your choice. It's fast, simple and secure.

For those of you that don't have access to PayPal but would like to contribute, drop me a message and I'm sure we can come to some form of arrangement in person, given that the rally season is just around the corner.

As part of the renewal of the site's hosting, we are re-developing the Bygone Era section, as we have discussed on occasion in the past. It'll have a new look and feel as a non-forum feature, and hopefully it'll be easier to navigate with search facilities and content filters by year and operator. Adrian is also in the process of compressing some of the large PDF files so that they are quicker to download, with no noticeable loss of quality. I think cbma06 and MurdnunoC have some content that they'd like to add to the Bygone Era, so we'll also be adding that. We're going to add some more modern content for the younger viewers of the forum, so that there's something in there for everyone.

I'll keep you posted on developments with the new-look Bygone Era, but for now, thanks in advance for your contributions.

Dan

Thank you for all of your generous donations thus far - it's much appreciated! I think I've managed to send a PM sending thanks to everyone who has donated up to now - but just in case I missed anyone out!

The donation link will be on the bottom of the website until early next month when we renew the hosting, for those of you who haven't yet donated but would like to contribute. I'll also probably be at the Teesside Running Day on Sunday if you want to give me a shout then.

We have secured the site for a further three years.

Thanks to all who contributed - it's much appreciated.

(13 May 2016, 1:18 pm)Dan wrote We have secured the site for a further three years.

Thanks to all who contributed - it's much appreciated.

Nice one

(13 May 2016, 1:18 pm)Dan wrote We have secured the site for a further three years.

Thanks to all who contributed - it's much appreciated.

=D, glad we have, means we can update all bygone era again, =D

(13 May 2016, 1:35 pm)Michael wrote =D, glad we have, means we can update all bygone era again, =D

It certainly does, and work is under way. Some members may have noticed all the content links are currently broken, which is part of it, I'm afraid! There's a lot of work to do, but we'll get there.

(14 May 2016, 10:45 pm)Adrian wrote It certainly does, and work is under way. Some members may have noticed all the content links are currently broken, which is part of it, I'm afraid! There's a lot of work to do, but we'll get there.

Glad to hear work is under way