I am writing this in mid July, as we have company coming for the last week in the month, which is always the busiest time for getting the monthly edition out.
It has been a very busy month locally, with one and sometimes two major events each week and the usual sprinkling of other happenings to keep everyone busy. I managed to get my camera to three of the events - South Tawton Summer Fair, Belstone Village Revels and the South Tawton School Barbeque. These are all on the Journal Index page.
In addition I have reworked the Parish Day photographs and added these on to the Annual Events page. The total volume has been reduced, allowing me to increase the size to our normal 300 pixels. I have also added some extra pictures not shown before including some video stills, so that we have a more complete coverage of the whole day.
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Something crazy has been happening to our site statistics. I don't know it the level of interest will continue but it looks as if July will be our best month ever. And the mystery is Ecuador. Up until the middle of the month we were getting more hits from that country than from the UK, something like 30 hits a day. This has tailed off now but it's puzzling.
My own target now is to cover the Dartmoor Folk Festival and the Okehampton show in August and that will complete my major local event coverage until next year. This year I missed the South Zeal Open Gardens and several Sticklepath events.
I mentioned last month that I would be reviewing the site's future in July. At that time I was getting overwhelmed with other work and was generally downcast by the lack of publicity for local events coming to me directly. Lamp posts - yes, the web site - never! |
Since then, I have rearranged the site so that I am not dependent on waiting for contributions. What comes to me will be published, as I receive it; what doesn't, may get a mention on the Events Calendar, if I learn of it, else it will just not appear.
My other intention is to make my own comment on the page shorter and to restrict it to highlighting the month's new content. So, with that, I'll shut up.
pete
ps Have been inside Oke Castle, visited Drogo and seen Robin Hood with family. Also been filming the cutting of wheat straw for re thatch of St Andrews. Pics to follow! |
