Our village website has just passed a historic milestone today. This blog, set up to serve a few hundred people in and around Parwich, has just received half a million visits.
The site has been extraordinarily successful since it was officially launched in March 2008. The blog plays an important role in keeping the community informed and provides an effective means of holding a collective dialogue. We are regularly cited as one of the most successful ‘hyperlocal‘ websites in the country, and we are held up as an example of what local communities can achieve when they harness the power of the internet.
On average last year, we received 545 page views per day. These visits come from people who live locally and want to know what’s going on; they come from from people who used to live here and like to keep a connection to the area; they come from people as far afield as the USA and Australia, who have historical connections and want to find out more.
So here are some more statistics…
Our most popular month was January 2010, when 72 notices were posted and almost 26,000 page views were recorded. Subjects ranged that month from make-up workshops, through Austrian dinner evenings to a lament that the fish and chip van hadn’t turned up!
Our most popular day was June 30th 2010, when 2003 visitors clicked on the site. The main interest that day was the Hill Race. Many pictures of the contestants were posted and there was great interest in this record of the races.
They say the best form of flattery is imitation. We were particularly chuffed therefore that the creators of that long-running BBC institution – The Archers – have used parwich.org as an input to create their own village website – click here to see just how similar it is! What’s more, Archers scriptwriter Keri Davis dips in to parwich.org to get ideas.
I’ve been popping into parwich.org for quite a while as an Archers scriptwriter, often drawing on it for little village details. So yes, it was a big influence when we were setting up the Ambridge site.
Most of all, we’d would like to thank you for your support and active participation on the website. It’s a cliché, but without you, the whole thing would not work at all! Please keep your information and ideas rolling in….we’ve only just begun……
Fabulous well done P.org team!
This is fantastic – well done the blog team!
It’s a great facility – we check in all the time and most of our Tom’s & Douglas’s Barn guests say they love clocking in to Parwich.org when they’re feeling nostalgic or before they arrive.
And we are getting 50 or so (not quite in the half million category) visits a month from Parwich.org to our blog too which is good! http://tomsbarn.co.uk/tomsbarnblog/
big thumbs up to you guys,and wordpress.
You know how you always remember where you were when something truly memorable happens, and there are certain moments in your life when you feel life won’t ever be the same again? – Well, I recall walking into a colleague’s office in the early 1990’s, and he said “check this out – you’ve gotta see this” – and it was my first view of the internet. After about a minute, I realised that life was going to change for everyone but even in that moment of revelation, I had no idea the power of the internet for good (and for bad), and how things would pan out over the next two decades.
I also recall Mike A’s presentation to a group of people who were trying to think of ways of efficiently disseminating information relating to the Memorial Hall, and his convincing argument for the use of a weblog (Mike had experience of his own blog, “Troubled Diva” where he promotes and discusses his interest in and encyclopedic knowledge of popular music) – after listening to Mike, I got that same feeling that this was going to change things.
A combination of the two has had a fascinating impact on life here in our small Derbyshire village, achieving a lot for the community, as said above, informing, and giving people a voice, but also going some way to help alleviate rural isolation, and hopefully helping to encourage inclusivity.
None of this could happen without a small team of dedicated and public spirited people who give freely of their own time in making parwich.org the international success it has become. – Who would have thought we would influence the writing of “The Archers”?! So a big thank you to the team who makes this happen.
I love the website and I love my family in Parwich and I love Parwich and Derbyshire. My only sadness is I don’t like the way we have to have our posts ‘reviewed’ by the blog team (not that I don’t approve of the blog team)… but I feel some of the immediacy and spontaneity of the website was lost when you changed the system. H
Thanks to all the members of the blog team who seem to work all hours of day, night and bank holidays to keep the blog running – yes its fascinating and informative, but for me even more important is information about road conditions and walk-in out of hours hospital clinics etc – which have helped keep us safe and sound. Thank you. Jean Cx
I have enjoyed the blog so much more than I ever anticipated. I generally log on every day just to see what is happening. The information pieces (weather,roads, what’s on etc) are always useful but I most enjoy the articles that evoke quick wit and silly responses. A touch of humour is always a welcome addition. Thank you to the blog team and everyone else involved in this village venture.
N.B.Perhaps ‘The Archers’ could find a way to mention our village in one of the programme episodes as a reward for being an ideas source?
Although it’s very nice to be thanked for our contributions as members of the blog team, I think that the success of this blog largely rests on the way that it has been supported by its readers. A large proportion of the posts on this site are actually written by you, not by us – and so I’d just like to thank everyone who has emailed us with blog posts, flyers and photographs over the past three years. We couldn’t have kept this site going without your active participation.
I agree with all the above comments and also logon every day. Its really nice to read about all the things going on and the photos posted are just stunning. We are so lucky to live in such a beautiful area and have such a lively community. Its really uplifting after all the terrible things you read and hear about in the news.