Posted by Andrew (aka 'Jock') on February 19, 2011 at 05:09:00 user Jock.
Sometime after TarBoard's 12th birthday, Ian Edmondson-Noble, TarBoard's founder and pilot, decided that enough was enough and announced his retirement. A number of TarBoard devotees started looking for ways of continuing the TarBoard discussions elsewhere. At the time it seemed unlikely that TarBoard's code – hand crafted by Ian to run on his own server – could be ported to run elsewhere.
Meanwhile another team had rescued the late Tom Johns's Arthur Ransome's Literary Pages and had plans for building All Things Ransome which was to be a grand 'repository of AR information'. Thanks to Ian delaying TarBoard's switch off, it did prove possible to port TarBoard to a new home. A massive amount of work went on behind the scenes to make all this possible and the two teams decided to pool their efforts, skills and resources. To ensure that that there would be continuity they registered 'All Things Ransome' as a legal entity.
It was my privilege to act as cheer leader during the switch over. As always in such volunteer ventures the burden of work fell on a small number of shoulders. The same team have also covered the costs of maintaining the tarboard.net and allthingsransome.net domains and for hosting the two services. This, as Roger might say, seems jolly unfair.
So if like me, you have found that contributing to TarBoard and, or All Things Ransome made your life brighter, perhaps you might consider making a small donation to cover running costs? There is now a mechanism to do this which can be accessed via the top of TarBoard's home page.