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Official club website
Views: 6599
For the last five years, the official Kingstonian club website has been hosted by Football Web Pages. During that time, the club have benefitted from the top FWP package (worth £55 per month), which has been funded by me.
At the end of March this year (on the day that Kingston Bridge Holdings withdrew its offer to invest in the club) I emailed Mark Anderson and Robert Wooldridge to inform them that I had decided to withdraw that financial support from the end of the season, which would mean that from 1/7/2023 the site would revert to the normal pricing structure which is outlined at clubs.footballwebpages.co.uk/create. I further informed them that, whilst I was very happy for FWP to continue hosting the site, I no longer wished to continue to fund this on behalf of the club's current board.
I received no response until a message from Rob two days ago. He informed me that the club would not be setting up a payment, and that they have made alternative arrangements.
Subsequently, from midnight the site will revert to a "trialist" package, which means that it will show adverts and cannot make use of its own domain name. The site can still be accessed via clubs.footballwebpages.co.uk/kingstonian but the domain name (which I own) will now be redirected to the Kingstonian page of Football Web Pages. So long as the new website allows it, I will ensure that club news articles are posted to this page, to ensure that supporters continue to receive relevant updates via the normal FWP channels.
On a personal note, I was disappointed - although not surprised - to receive no thanks whatsoever for the support that I have given the club on this matter. In the past, Mark Anderson has occasionally quipped that the club has never received financial input from me (other than gate receipts). On this, and so many other things, he is wrong.
It is, of course, up to each of us how much of our time, effort, or money we put into the club, and I am not going to start telling others what they should or should not do. However, I am very happy for it to be known that I will do nothing more than pay for entry to the occasional home match whilst this board is in charge of the club. The death knell is sounding for Kingstonian FC, and the current board of directors is deaf to it.
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23 people
Re: Official club website
Views: 3203
massive thanks Gary, FWP was essential part of routine for those like myself who couldn't longer afford time or money to attend games.
Hopefully something similar can be sorted but won't hold my breath, based on your knowledge - can't think that you've often been wrong about such things around our club demise (sadly).
Paul
Southampton K
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4 people
Re: Official club website
Views: 3472
Well I’d like to say thank you Gary, for all the time and money you’ve invested into our website over the years. I hope you know that it is seriously appreciated by your fellow K’s fans even if it isn’t by our useless board! Just checked out the new site and I’ve got to say it looks Micky Mouse compared to what we had before!
It really is starting to look like this current board are doing all they can to drive it’s few remaining supporters away from the club. Gary isn’t necessarily someone I spend a lot of time talking to at games, in fact we’ve even had a handful of disagreements during my 25 years supporting the K’s. However I’ve always respected his loyalty, dedication and the great deal work that he has put into the club. The way he has been treated by this board is absolutely disgraceful and is yet ANOTHER thing that makes me not want to spend my time and money supporting the team.
Don’t get me wrong I love this club, It’s been a huge part of my life. It’s given me some of the best days of life, unforgettable memories and lifelong friendships. But right now I’m a whisker away from removing my support for the club under the ownership of this current ignorant board.
KBHAFD!!!
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11 people
Re: Official club website
Views: 3387
Gary many thanks for what you have done
If you feel like this maybe you have to move on
There is clearly issues with yourself and the board and hopefully thus can be resolved
I have known you a long time mate but if you feel like this I really don't know what to say
Thanks again
There is probballly more to come out in the bigger picture.
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Re: Official club website
Views: 3503
There are no words... but I'll try
Sack the board!
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9 people
Official club website - a quick update
Views: 3599
So long as the new website allows it, I will ensure that club news articles are posted to this page, to ensure that supporters continue to receive relevant updates via the normal FWP channels.
Unfortunately I haven't been able to find an RSS feed on the new site, and as that's the way that sites generally give access to news items I will not be able to include Kingstonian news items on FWP. This means that supporters who use the FWP app won't receive updates when news items are published on the new site.
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4 people
Re: Official club website - a quick update
Views: 3597
Oh, forgot to say that the same applies to this forum, because the auto posts use the same process, which uses an RSS feed. Shame.
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1 person
Re: Official club website - a quick update
Views: 3603
Shocking to discover that basic budget providers with a website that looks like it's from the 1990s only has 1990s functionality. Perfect for developing the website and social media presence (a stated aim on the SC Facebook post).
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4 people
Re: Official club website
Views: 3585
It never ceases to surprise me how fan unfriendly the club has become.
I remember dealing with you Gary way before I got into Ks. My lovely late father in law (Dick Skelton) had somehow talked me into sponsoring the Ks first team shirts - even though I didn’t know the slightest thing about Ks (other than as an away fan in the old pre-season friendlies v Chelsea). I think the original price was £8,000 or something and I kept declining because I just couldn’t justify the cost to the business. But he doggedly came back gradually reducing the amount and eventually I (very, very reluctantly) caved in. I remember paying it out of my own money rather than from the businesses because I just couldn’t justify it to my team. Anyway, Gary was an intrinsic part of that attempt to breath new life into the club, along with all the other usual suspects, and your passion, commitment, and dedication to the club has been evident to everyone - even those like me - who don’t know you at all.
I eventually got into Ks in 2006/07 after Dick arranged for my son to be a mascot for a game. From that moment onwards it was amazing. Whether it was Dowse, Ali, Vicky, Jonny & Denise, the lads behind the goal, the Royal Box, Paddy in the bar et al - every time you met someone at Ks they were incredibly friendly and welcoming. A major part of my, for want of a better phrase, “onboarding”, as a fan was the lively, informative forum and website. I’m acutely aware of how you Gary, and Ali, were such an intrinsic part of enabling all that. As were those who diligently conducted the post match interview and match reports.
I rarely attend games these days, mainly because I take my 89 year old man to see the Bees play in the top flight (he’s been going since 1946 and can’t go on his own anymore) but also because it hasn’t been much fun for years. But it was a long drawn out withdrawal from attending games. At one time I was paying for 3 Patrons Season Tickets (me, my son, and my old man) and had encouraged a couple of mates to also sign up as patrons too. I’d get to most home and away games for a few seasons. The process of how that level of support has dwindled and, frankly died, would make great material for a textbook, “How to Lose Friends & Alienate People”.
I don’t know what’s wrong with the board. Some kind of seige mentality or something. I think I only know Mark and John but they always seemed to be decent people with Ks in their hearts (certainly so in John’s case). My only real knowledge of Yiorgos was that he used to be the bloke who’d shout crap at Dowse whenever he left the pitch at half time or full time and constantly moan about him during games. At that time we seemed to be perpetually in the playoff spots all season - so I’m not sure what there was to moan about. Other than that he didn’t seem a bad chap.
Something is seriously wrong at the club and I don’t think anyone can present a valid argument against the people behind KBH Ltd being welcomed onto the board as per either of their previous proposals. Ks desperately need their (relative) youth :-) and expertise, passion, ideas, and commitment. The way the board have treated Gary here is beyond comprehension. Another extraordinary act of self-harm in the club’s painful descent into oblivion. A heck of a price to pay at the alter of, as far as I can see, the board’s selfishness, stubbornness, and ego.
Save Ks before it’s too late!!
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20 people
Re: Official club website
Views: 3447
when time allows I too find myself opting for a weekend game at the Gtech over watching the "Imperial Fields hoops".
I used to just travel to loads of away games with my Bees fan mate for the last 20 years before covid (even managed to tie Wigan away into the Macclesfield FA cup game) and he'd come to KM but now their home games are easier to get to than watching the Ks...
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4 people
Re: Official club website
Views: 3608
“the board’s selfishness, stubbornness, and ego”
This is exactly right. Gary built, hosted and maintained the website for years, for free. He then asks to be paid for future work and the board are so stubbornly anti-anyone involved in KBH that they don’t reply, don’t thank, don’t acknowledge and instead go off and find a new web supplier, no doubt creating tonnes more work for another volunteer, purely out of spite. It’s, to be honest, pathetic.
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12 people
Re: Official club website
Views: 3423
Good things about the running of this club over the last few seasons
- The programme
- The website
- The Twitter updates
- The post-match interviews
All done by volunteers.
Bad things about the running of this club over the last few seasons:
- Search for a new ground
- Groundshare situation
- Managerial appointments
- Communication from directors
- Marketing / publicity
All done (or not, as the case may be) by directors.
It's time for change.
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11 people
Re: Official club website
Views: 3522
Also if they didn't want to pay, they could have just allowed adverts.
The club has not saved any money by paying for a new website to be built and maintained by another company.
It's all just... embarassing.
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5 people
Re: Official club website
Views: 3530
Some of the board’s mouth pieces have talked about ‘value’ in terms of the club’s new website.
As usual the club have not consulted or engaged with their customers i.E the fans so how would they know what value is?
For me value is not having to pay a web developer with 25 years of experience to continuously develop the website!
Doing it on the cheap so they can impress the inner circle. Pathetic!
Edited by Filipo at 15:44:37 on 1st July 2023
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4 people
Re: Official club website
Views: 3604
Whatever the rights and wrongs of the move to new website, we have to keep a proper archive of our history.
Unfortunately the menu system on the old site has now been disabled, meaning there's no way of accessing old results, stats, match reports and so on. Presuming no-one wants the painstaking task of copying a decade's worth over to the new site, this part of the old site has to be restored.
This is the club's history, RichardNW is painstakingly collecting it for old seasons. We can't just turn it off for our recent past at the touch of a button.
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9 people
Re: Official club website
Views: 3667
For those who don't use twitter- the club tweeted their new site which is:
https://www.kingstonianfc.com/
It actually seems to be pretty good and not that dissimilar to Gary's site. Gary does very good sites and always very easy to click through (certainly as compared to Pitchero) and I always go to FWP for live scores, so I imagine the new site will have lost some functionality, but not a bad replacement from what I can tell so far.
As you say it seems we have lost quite a bit of the history between the days of the original K's web and this season, and I think when we moved from Pitchero to Gary's site some history may have been lost then as well. Results over this period can still be seen on FWP but the reports that went with this on the official site I think have gone from the internet or at least I couldn't find it on the slimmed down site that Gary was hosting and certainly not on the new one.
I have all the reports saved on my PC anyway so the history isn't lost and did pass on an HDD to the Supporters club with all this information. At times I am tempted to just get a basic set of results/reports up on my site, especially with how slowly I am getting the old history up, The way I am doing things at the moment means I may never get the site finished in my lifetime (but hoping someone is keen enough to help at some point in the future or take it over when I'm gone).
However doing this would take time away from the old history and mean extra work when I come to do the seasons properly because there'll be all sorts of changes needed and it's virtually start again. Like I could spend perhaps a year producing results lists and linking to a Comet/K's Web/Official site report but then all the links would change once I get to do it "properly" and also there might be corrections needed anyway at that stage as each season I put up online presently there is usually things I need to correct.
I'll have a think though because it does feel like we should have this information up on the internet somewhere.
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5 people
Re: Official club website
Views: 3221
Just to say now that the old FWP site has had the menu restored so you can access the last ten seasons of matches again. Glad this has been sorted!
The last four seasons are also on the new site, you have to use the filters in the results section.
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Re: Official club website
Views: 3151
Gary seems to have put up results from 1919 now on FWP (not sure if this was what you were saying) and, presumably where FWP was covering the game on live scores, there are all the match details- line ups, times of goals, subs etc.
So I think a case of pulling in stuff from original K's web and adding back in some seasons between K's web and current date.
You said reports are back up, but I think you just mean the live scores section? Can't see any reports from official website(s) on there?
Anyway it's good we have an uninterrupted set of results in one place going back to 1919. K's web still the best for scrolling (and with reports up to when it ended) but unfortunately with the cut off date when it got mothballed.
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1 person
Re: Official club website
Views: 3126
The reports from the last ten seasons are on the old FWP Ks site, link in Gary's original post.
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1 person
Re: Official club website
Views: 3123
Thanks I understand now and see them there- I was looking at the main FWP site.
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Re: Official club website
Views: 3139
I spent time making sure that all the old Ks Web results were transferred to the FWP database, and have also moved reports data across at the same time. That means that - when I have some time - I'll be able to create a Ks-focussed front end to all of that data, so that all of the results and reports will be in one place.
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10 people
Re: Official club website
Views: 3143
This is great. Thanks for all you do.
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2 people
Re: Official club website
Views: 3134
That would be brilliant, thank you.
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1 person
Re: Official club website
Views: 3555
Thanks. Something all in one place would be great in the long term but in the meantime someone should just reverse last night's deletion at the touch of a button.
The reports are still there on the FWP site because you can access the three most recent ones from the home page. But without a menu system you can't access anything older than that.
By the way there wasn't a gap between Ks Web and FWP, as the ones from the Pitchero years got archived on to FWP.
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Re: Official club website
Views: 3536
What would be great is if the Ks web results archive was updated so all results could be searched.
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3 people
Re: Official club website
Views: 3585
K's web is another well laid out site and even though I have spreadsheets for all the results I usually go there first because it is quicker and easier plus if you don't know the exact year of something it is easy to scroll between the seasons.
I think Ali had plans to do this but presumably not enough spare hours to get this done. Still got the issue of missing match reports.
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Re: Official club website
Views: 3683
we’ll if it isn’t knee jerk actions without thinking of consequences
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3 people
Re: Official club website
Views: 3431
Love this quote Mr tolley
On council let's talk about the kingston road disgrace
Knee jerk wow
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3 people
Re: Official club website
Views: 3348
Don't know why someone dislike its a fact
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3 people
Re: Official club website
Views: 3406
what are you asking Paul?
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1 person
Re: Official club website
Views: 3383
It's a mess mate and a disgrace
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2 people
Re: Official club website
Views: 3679
Unsurprising that this current lot of bitter, spiteful and incompetent fools in charge have done this. At least you have supported the club this season. Haven't seen Anderson there at all in Tooting.
KBH in and get the current lot out before they kill us off completely.
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8 people
Re: Official club website
Views: 3659
Shame they’ve done this
Thank you for you good work Gary, some people do appreciate your good work
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7 people
Re: Official club website
Views: 3611
Thanks for all you have done in building and developing websites for the club for the past few decades Gary. As fans we heavily rely on up to date and accurate information and there are a hell of a lot of hours that go into this.
Yet again this is representative of the board and their lackies in their destructive approach to running the club.
It’s time for them to go!
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7 people
Re: Official club website
Views: 3528
A lot of doom and gloom surrounding the website but let’s give it some credit for being up to date with all the latest squad info: Players 1 to 7 of 7.
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10 people
Re: Official club website
Views: 3494
"Welcome back, my friends, to the show that never ends, we're so glad you could attend. Come inside! Come inside!"
It's just blatant at this stage is it not?
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3 people
Re: Official club website
Views: 3406
In my youth I used to be a bit of a DJ and I used this as an intro to my set.
Emerson Lake & Palmer, Karn Evil 9 - 1st Impression, part 2 .
Keith.
Why worry, be happy.
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