The UKGA has decided

The guys from the UKGA have now made a decision about how they want to proceed with funding and managing the site...

Dear fellow UKGA-er,

The lines are closed, the votes have been counted, and we can now reveal...

In our first email to you, we said that we wanted to find out just how many people would support us if we made UKGA a commercial site. Well, we've been absolutely overwhelmed by the many kind comments you've sent us, and by the pledges of financial support you've made. It's gratifying to know that even what we've done so far is proving useful to you.

On the basis of your commitments, we've decided to go for it. In the past, when it had to fit around other projects, UKGA moved forward slowly, and we're as excited as you are by the possibilities when we're working on the site every day.

Our top priority is to get UKGA on to a more stable and fast hosting platform, which we're already doing. Because of your support, we're testing our new server now, and we hope to move the site onto it during the next week. We'll be in touch over the next couple of days with details of the move. After that we will be making some immediate changes to the site, particularly to the NOTAM system. We'll be setting up a blog too, so that you'll be able to see what we're working on, what's coming up, and give us your feedback.

One area of concern that has been raised several times is that of what we're going to do with the forum, and whether it should be covered by a membership. We've decided that the forum should be accessible to everyone free on an ongoing basis. Likewise, the classified service has become very popular, and we don't want to stop that valuable service. Therefore, we'll also offer free classified adverts and hopefully extend this with an emailed classified newsletter. The other parts of the site will be available on a subscription basis.

So, the time has come for us to ask you to make good your pledges. As many of you know, we already have PayPal available on the site, which will let you pay by credit card or PayPal account. This is the fastest route, especially via the Paypal link on the site, as it will update UKGA automatically. If you prefer to go to paypal.com directly to send your subscription, please use the same email address that you use for UKGA, otherwise we won't know who has sent us the funds!

If you like, you can send us a cheque: UKGA, 297 College Road, Whitchurch, Cardiff CF14 2NW. You can also pay by bank transfer if you wish. Drop us an email and we'll send you our bank account details.

Finally, we'd like to say an especially warm thank you to everyone who has already sent a contribution. Several people on receiving our email immediately turned to PayPal and sent us a membership fee, without any questions. Thanks again to you all, and thank you to everyone who has supported us in the past.

For now, happy flying, and I can tell you that we're looking forward to delivering more great functionality at UKGA.

Nev & Phil

So there you go!

Well done, guys, looking forward to details of the subscription costs etc....