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HAPPY 2ND BIRTHDAY, CLUB HISTORIANS!
It’s around this time of year that we celebrate the setting up of the wonderful, confabulous, extra-ordinarily informative -
www.clubhistorians.co.uk
It’s great to see that it has not only reached its 2nd birthday but has gone from strength to strength, attracting a lot of visitors, some of them ‘regulars’ plus a lot of positive feedback.
The ‘brainchild’ of Ruth and Geoff as they chatted in cyberspace about the sorry demise of much-love clubs all over the country, they had no idea it would grow so big and, in fact, be used by people all over the world. Folk as far away as Afghanistan (probably homesick soldiers wondering what’s on at their local club that week), Japan, Australia, Iran, USA, Brazil, some small island in the middle of the Atlantic….. Club Historians has certainly gone global! Plus we have many regular visitors here in the UK and Europe.
As I write this birthday celebration piece, we have had a total of 51,159 hits on the site. By the time this is finished, that count will probably have risen.
That’s a lot of visitors for any site- thanks to all of you!
Yet ours is just a small-scale affair, managed by just two people in their own time, for free, with no funding. We’ve been told that such a total in just two years is a great achievement and would be envied by some business bodies, who spend a great amount on website designers and copy writers but fail to attract many visitors. We did it our way, so to speak, and the crowds come along to visit the site.
We know we are popular because social clubs are popular but rarely receive the attention and help they deserve. We also knew there would be a lot of folk out there who would like to be kept up to date with what is happening in clubs as well as learning more about their long history. And to be able to have their voice heard because we keep as a main aim the collection of people’s own histories and experiences to do with clubs.
We offer readers the chance to get in touch with us and promise to answer their emails promptly. We have had some wonderful offerings in terms of rich club histories plus many enquiries for help. Unfortunately, we cannot advise on all the enquiries as some are outside of what we do and we refer them to the CIU or other relevant bodies. But we respond to every enquiry and offer of help. We get involved as much as we can- because we want to help keep the club movement alive.
We have made many friends over these two years. Some of our ‘friends’ we’ve never met, but feel we know them and their clubs very well through our correspondence. Some we have met and have visited their clubs. It’s always great to go to clubs and meet the folks there and our growing Clubs Fact File is proof of this.
We have also built up a very impressive collection of Clubs Online- at the last count there were 87 links in this section and growing daily. Again, we do all this for the love of it.
If any of those clubs featured in the Online section have noticed more visitors as a result of being linked into Club Historians, we’d appreciate your feedback sometime. Thanks!!
So, two years have gone by very quickly and our site continues to grow.
We won’t rest on our laurels, however. In fact, where did I put those laurels? I can never find them so no resting on them for me.
We have some plans for the future, some developments in mind that might help more clubs not only to stay open but to thrive. We have an idea about an offshoot of the site, to be called My Local Social, which will continue to offer help and advice as well as advertising for clubs.
We will continue to expand and bring on board more clubs, more experiences, more friends.
So, raise your glasses and here’s a toast to Club Historians!!
Cheers!
All the best
Ruth and Geoff
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