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Happy New Year

to all our readers!

We know its a bit commercial, but as its midwinter again this should brighten your day!

We hope that you like the new look News pages - the Bishopthorpe blog. The new styles allow us to take advantage of some of the new features of the latest release of software, such as additional pages, and membership facilities.

When you read a story here and in other new-look pages you will see a little speech bubble and a blue star next to the date.

Click on the speech bubble to comment on what you have read. If you have registered as Bish dot net member your comment should appear straightaway. If not it will be held for approval by site editors.

You can sign up to be a member - and comment and even write your own stories (more on this later).

Click on the blue star if you like a particular story - give it a star rating for interest or whatever!

For some time now Bish dot net has hosted a blog written by our local City of York Councillor.

This has been expanded into a web site that is now live here.

Our Bishopthorpe site had a nice mention recently on another web site produced by Will Perrin (who I am told works at the Cabinet Office). He says:

The internet is the first port for new information these days - ask any encyclopedia salesman. The internet can define how places appear to the world.  For cities Google turns up loads of web pages - many of them commercial.  But in the UK search engines turn up very little content by local people for small communities and even large towns.   So good local websites, firmly about a place, frequently updated by volunteers stand out and often do well in Google. The less well known a place is the more a good local community site can rise to the top of popular search engines and define the place online.

A great example is the little village of Bishopthorpe (pop. 3,000) just south of York ... linked to a marvellous community site there run by volunteers. Bishopthorpe is a small village, and the site is only updated a few times a month.  But it is the only substantial online presence for the village and (the) site rises effortlessly to the top of search engines. And it plays a strong role in how Bishopthorpe is presented to the world.

You can read more about this here.

Today this web site recorded its 15 000th visitor, an increase of 5000 since January 1st this year.

More and more people are looking at the site, so get your news on - find out how here.

Our representative on the City of York Council is John Galvin, who stood in the last local election for the Conservatives. Mr Galvin lives in Bishopthorpe, and has recently retired. This will give him more time for local affiars, and for the cacti and succulents that he grows and tends in his greenhouse.

Now Mr Galvin has accepted an invitation from the Bish dot net team to write his own web log on the site. You can read his thoughts here.

Our Bishopthorpe web site has been funded by the Millennium Trust and private donations since it was set up, at a cost of about only £50 a year. All the efforts to keep it going have been by voluntary effort.

Now the City of York Bishopthorpe Ward Committee has made a grant of £500 towards the costs of promoting the site and upgrading its software. This grant is being managed by the Trust.

A small team of local people has been meeting to consider the next steps. One objective is to ensure that as many as possible local businesses are included in the Purple Pages directory. Residents will be able to shop locally, and visitors, who use the site to check on what's on, cn find out what and when is on offer.

Community groups can also have entries on the Purple Pages directory. The Bowling Club is a recent addition with its exemplary entry; all groups are encouraged to get on the site and ensure that they get the publicity they deserve.

Some changes have been made to the layout of Bishopthorpe dot net.

The first is the creation of a new News and Views site (that you are reading now), which also has a new look and feel, and is a little easier to navigate.

Fronting the web site is a new home page that welcomes you to the overall site. This is located at the internet address where you have been used to reading the latest news. 

This means that you will need an extra click to reach the news and views page (unless you bookmark it and go straight to it). To offset this disadvantage, the new home page however will draw your attention to new features that are planned, and will allow facilities that the software used for the news, transport or Parish Council pages makes less easy to provide.

We hope you like the new layouts as they develop.  

 

Yesterday   - New Year's Day - this site recorded its ten thousandth visitor to the home page.

Happy New Year to all its Readers!