I was doing a search, and saw this post from 2010, and thought it would be interesting to compare what was happening then with the state of play as to what's happening now:
____________________________
_____________________
When it comes to sponsors, no one presented themselves. Our hosting is partly paid for by income earned from the sale of membership maps, much thanks Martyn Keen. When that gets thin, I kick in myself. I also thank some good friends who assist (and put up with) me when I am in the Philippines.
Corregidor.Org is more than twenty years old. Given that the average website lifespan is 2 years 7 months (Actually it was 2.66 years which is 2 years, 6 months and 27 days, but close enough), that's an achievement I can be proud about.
The website domain 503prct.Org has done well. It's been going more than seven years now. I am proud that it hosts the 2/503 Vietnam Newsletter, of which there are more than eighty issues. Along the way, I have been recognized, officially, as an honorary member of the 503d Infantry Regiment.
There still isn't a website called "Coast Artillery of Manila and Subic Bays". When it came to anyone accepting the responsibility of creating a domain, nobody stepped up to the plate.
No one was found who admitted any expertise with Expression Web, let alone volunteered any.
I completed the rebirthing of
concretebattleship.org website myself, with the moral support of Richard King and Shawn Welsh who assisted in the transfer of the domain and with mucho images. (I have't added to it in a long time.)
Leathernecks at Corregidor died stillborn.
The offer for permanent (30-year guarantee) hosting made by Roderick Hall / Filipinas Heritage Library/ Ayala Museum looks dead in the water. I won't give up trying, because it means a lot to those who have supported us through the years, and who have been so badly treated by the Photobucket Disaster.
From all of this, what? Well, I believe that the days of the individual 'special interest' website are numbered, if not already in the past. People are so used to getting access to free information, they figure the internet should be free to air. They will put up with all sorts of advertising intrusions, and losses of privacy, in order to get it. (None of my websites uses cookies.)
The sites, all of them, need refurbishing, and at this point I am unable so to do. My priority is transferring their materials into book form. If you are interested in preserving some aspect of what is on my websites, I suggest you copy it all to your hard drive and start getting familiar with self-publishing.
What's all this say about the "personal interest" internet website phenomenon? Essentially, that we have lived through its golden days. Individually developing and maintaining a website that might pass for professional, is no longer possible. Website technology is now too complex for one person to master. As soon as you learn to cope with one web technology, another comes along to supplant it. Or worse, because like the way that automobile manufacturers made backyard home mechanics redundant, the software companies are making individual website creators dinosaurs of their own domains. The pun is intentional.