ABPA - Australian Bush Poets Association

WOW .... I blinked - sorry ..

OK, costs to the ABPA to run the Forum? as Kymmie said - ZIP (financially). It's administered by volunteers.
We have a very competitive Hosting company that gives us an almost unlimited bandwidth.
The financial cost for domain name registration (ABPA.org.au) and hosting comes in at about $100 per year (Kymmie can correct me).

The time cost? Well, I do try to stay on top of things, however the site does need to be restructured and optimised to run on mobile devices. The ABPA website AND the Forum are here for the long haul. All things are cyclical, this, I believe, is also true for Bush Poetry. The Forum? Well we're all adults (I hope) so there is, and will continue to be limited intrusion(NO 'big brother'). In that regard I thank the Forum moderators.

For myself? This year I'm taking a bit of time for travel and writing, hence the call out for some web help.

Declining membership? Yes, it's in our aging demographic, some of our members are retiring from the ABPA.
But we've had 52 NEW members join so far this year.

___________________________________________________
Here's the visitor stats for this year (May hasn't completed yet) ...

Activity for the MAIN site

Month........Unique visitors......Number of visits...Pages.......Hits...........Bandwidth
Jan 2013.... 2980....................6822............... 74740........ 246085....... 3.08 GB
Feb 2013.... 2871.................... 5904...............60673........210019.......4.17 GB
Mar 2013.... 3014.................... 6153............... 60185........ 202506....... 3.55 GB
Apr 2013.... 2362.................... 5066............... 54512........ 193150....... 2.61 GB
May 2013.... 3226.................... 6139............... 52389........ 160321....... 2.68 GB


The top ten pages visited on the ABPA Website are ... FORUM pages ...

Pages-URL (Top 10) - Full list - Entry - Exit
152 different pages-url...........Viewed.....Average size......Entry.....Exit
/phpBB3/ucp.php...................9568........11.21 KB...........690.......1151
/phpBB3/viewtopic.php...........9168 ........30.10 KB........... 442....... 734
/phpBB3/index.php.................8965........ 27.80 KB........... 2165....... 1569
/phpBB3/viewforum.php..........6704........ 44.04 KB........... 324....... 444
/phpBB3/download/file.php......5133........ 28.37 KB........... 140....... 312
/phpBB3/posting.php..............2866........ 21.60 KB........... 178....... 148
/phpBB3/search.php...............1976........ 29.74 KB........... 140....... 177
/.........................................1843........ 7.65 KB........... 1350....... 457
/phpBB3/cron.php...................1679........ 43 Bytes........... 16....... 141
/forum.html...........................728........ 3.42 KB........... 93....... 57
Others.................................3759........ 282.14 KB........... 601....... 944

The "clique" appears to be a bit wider than just 15 or so people.

Robust debate is good. I've had the pleasure to sit informally, and get pissed with many of our professional poets - Neil included. Mostly we banter, solve the problems of the world AND the ABPA ...

Writing to Festival/competition organisers expressing concerns is OK, even I do it. Given that most of us are writers, it shouldn't be that hard ...

Hope this helps ...

Manfred.

Manfred, have you been paying accounts and not sent me the bill for reimbursement yet? I think I remember a $14 bill aaaaages ago (like two years?), but there hasn't been anything else to do with internet or forum expenses.

K.

Kymmie, I think we pay for our domain and hosting 3 or 5 years. Ive forgotten. We'll know when the bills come.


Frank ran the forum off his site for many years, we had the same discussions back then.

I really fail to see what the problem is. The forum has always been a platform for discussion and sharing, sometimes more discussion ( and banter) than poetry - so what! We seldom toss poetry at each other when we socialise face to face and not every social encounter is a competition.

People are able to engage as much or as little as they want on these boards.
Most sections are open to the public, some are not. You don't need to be a member of the forum to read some of the posts. There are on average 3000 unique (new) people checking out the ABPA website every month, and the area getting the most hits is - the forum!

Not everybody wants to be a member of this, or any other group. Some people are happy to just read poetry.

There are members who quietly work away at sharing our passion, through professional activities, through schools and through events like festivals and competitions. They don't look for accolades or recognition, they just quietly get involved at their level and 'do' whatever they are able.

There are a number of additions and upgrades needed for our website - forum included but it comes down to resourcing. We will do what we can where we can with whatever resources we have available to us. Sometimes the availability is, "Not now!"

In my mind the questions still are, "Where do we want the ABPA to be in 50 years time' and what will it take to get there?"

Goodonya Manfred, spot on.

How can a drunken vodka drinker make such sense or is it the rum ?


Great stuff Manny

Bob

But wait, there's more! Free advise from award winning poets such as Glenny Palmer and David Campbell. Not to mention daily entertainment in the way of varied poetry and good humour. Did I mention the free steak knives!

Heather

No, but as a poor Bush Poet, some free steak would be nice as well.

Neil

Good fundraiser a night on the town with Heather and Kymmie !

You must supply your own Tia Maria !


Bobbo

In our saris, hey Kymmie?

Ummm ... I'm not sure what's going on. Neil wanted some free steak, so is Bob fundraising to feed Neil? Or is the fundraising to support the forum? Why are Heather and I involved? I'm pretty sure the sight of me in a sari won't inspire anyone to part with their money! But OK, I'm not a party-pooper - I'll turn up in my sari, as long as I don't have to dance ... Heather can do that!