Dear Members,
As you know, it's a tough time for lot of firework companies with a reduction in trade starting last season. Fireworks is to many people a luxury item and consumer spending is down. This is now having a knock-on effect on UKFR. The credit crunch has not so much rung UKFR's doorbell but has crashed right through the front door.
New member sign-ups have taken a hit as fewer people are buying fireworks and those that are spend less, so cannot justify joining UKFR as well.
Also nipping at UKFR's membership base is an increasing number of retailers offering free video of their products and the emergence of good quality on-line tools enabling people to share and access high quality video for free (YouTube etc) - both of these, although valuable resources for us all, are negating the unique selling points of UKFR membership.
With a reduction in membership numbers, UKFR is at risk of failing in its core objectives of sharing firework information with as many people as possible, and supporting the fireworks trade with pro-fireworks content.
Lately, advertising revenue is also taking a broadside as retailers get ruthless with expenditure ahead of what could be another tough year.
It is time to take action to keep the UKFR project alive, kicking, and attracting fresh blood and support.
To this end, I have decided to reduce the membership charges even further to stimulate interest in UKFR. With prices currently at just £1.67 a month, the next logical step is to reduce them to zero.
After giving it considerable thought I have decided it is time to return UKFR to its roots - a free to access website.
This will ensure UKFR has the maximum possible userbase able to access its pro-firework content, providing maximum support both to our community here and the trade in general. It should enable the site to realise its full potential with more people rating and commenting on the reviews and networking here in the forum. Furthermore it should provide significant increases in traffic for advertisers (those still standing!) who in the long term are critical to UKFR.
One other benefit should be a reduction in admin workload for me as I will no longer need to service a membership base, enabling me to use more of my spare time doing actual firework content instead of pen-pushing thus further improving the site
A free to access UKFR does have some challenges and it will need some hard work behind the scenes moving to a new server which can handle the traffic. However that will provide a good opportunity to update UKFR at the same time, which is urgently needed to bring the site content up to date.
A number of other important improvements need to be made not least to the review side of the site - for example to change the review process so instead of all review work having to be done through me, authorised members can instead upload reviews in their entirety. Giving members ownership of their own reviews would also mean they can edit or archive them in subsequent years if the product changes.
I'm hoping an updated and free to access UKFR will come on-line late 2009 or early 2010. I had hoped to complete sooner but I am severely limited in time because I run UKFR as a hobby, not as a full time job.
As of now, and until the work has been complete, all UKFR memberships are "frozen" so that you will all continue to have access to the site for free, even when your membership has become overdue.
PLEASE NOTE however that under NO circumstances should you share your UKFR access with anyone else. Until the changeover, current terms and conditions still apply, not to mention the site is still running on the existing servers and I for one am certainly not willing to pay for someone else's bandwidth use! Sharing access is considered very bad form,
anyone found doing it will have their access revoked and will have to languish outside of UKFR until it becomes free to access, you have been warned. Anyone wanting access to UKFR can still join, I will shortly amend the standard membership term down to £4.99 for three months (keeping the same equivalent rate of £1.67pm), so access is possible for a nominal charge.
I would like to thank everyone for their support to date. It was necessary to bring in a paying membership system back in 2001 as I cannot pay for the site from my own pocket and there were no advertisers back then. Quite simply without your support there would be no UKFR now and you have become like family to me (well most of you!
).
However the current climate has revealed this is a fragile base on which to build UKFR and I am really worried that with reduced member numbers the site risks becoming stale.
I think these changes could be very positive for us all. As always you have my personal committment to keep the UKFR project alive whatever challenges come our way. I have been running this site for just over ten years and don't intend to stop now. There are far too many firework companies still out there who I have not irritated yet
Regards
Pyro Pete
UKFR: IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT
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