Hi All,
From time to time, I get notes from some of our young people from around the country and it is always great to hear from them. Of course I always have to go back and ask them a few questions, which they always very politely answer. Just about all of them tell me that they visit my web site quite often to keep up with what is going on in town and many miss the rural atmosphere here, but have to go where the jobs are.
Larry Ward has done a fantastic job for me in providing me the space as well as designing the web site and maintaining it whenever problems occur since January 2004 - ALL FOR FREE. The number of visitors has grown tremendously, thus increasing the activity and it was getting to be quite a burden on Larry's Server, causing him some downtime and effecting his paying customers who rely on their websites for business.
I received the following note from Larry several weeks ago:
"Hi Henry,
As you noticed over the last week and a half the server has had some reliability issues. These are issues caused by the data center that the server is housed in.
Most of my clients are paying clients that rely on their website to be up all the time to make them money.
Because of this I need to move my sites to a more reliable company.
The price of this extra reliability is you get less space and resources for more money. Unfortunately because of this every bit of space I have on the server is extremely important and cost money.
Since your website was created it has become extremely popular, among one of the more popular sites on the server. Your site has one of the heaviest amounts of traffic and uses the most amount of space on the server.
I will, VERY unfortunately, no longer be able to host the site under my account. We will need to move your site over to an independent account. There will be a charge for this, through a different company besides myself. The fee is small however. The company I'm moving from has an account that has more than enough space for $9 a month, or $99 a year. This is a very good price.
I will be more than happy to move the site over and make things run smooth. I can also help you down the road if you ever run into issues.
I feel really bad about this, but as you probably understand, my paying customers and their site reliability needs to be at the top of my list.
I can point you to the page to order the new hosting account. After it is ordered I will be more than happy to work with the data center to move the site.
You will not have any issues or downtime with your server.
Thank You,
Larry Ward"
As you can see, Larry is a truly wonderful young man and I understand his position completely. I know of several people in business who have their websites with Larry's company and he certainly did not leave me high and dry. Like with anything else, there have been a few gliches in the transfer, but Larry has been working on getting them to work smoothly free of charge and is tackling them one at a time. Eventually everything will be back to normal and as far as the programs go, I don't change them, so they should continue to run smoothly.
(http://www.vtgrandpa.com/fxtown/larryward_070921.jpg)
Olivia, Lisa & Larry Ward
For those of you that don't know Larry, he is a 1997 graduate of BFA-Fairfax and only in his late 20s, just another example of one of our young people heading off to earn their living, but remembering his time here in Fairfax - Many Thanks Larry.
Oh and by the way - The $99, my family gives me in gifts for my Birthday, Fathers Day, etc., so I still get a free website and a great hobby to boot.