October 2023
We're grateful that the Coventry Foundation has stepped up to help us by underwriting much of our hosting cost. If you have not visited their site, I encourage you to do so by clicking the foundation logo you can now find in the left column on all of this site's pages. From their website's "vision" statement:
The Foundation has been created by passionate Jaguar® people who donate their time, resources, and services with the goal of better serving the Jaguar® Heritage and preserving the marque for future generations. We aim to leave a legacy for our children's children so that they will be able to appreciate and continue with the work that we started.
Good stuff and it's nice to see folks step up to ensure Jaguar is remembered indefinitely.
I personally have been unable to devote much time to site development (but would like to), as bills come in fast and furious and I need to concentrate on paying work. If you enjoy this site and find it useful, consider using the donate button (also in the left column) to send a bit of money that I might find an hour or two here and there to address site issues. Things which I know need attention:
- Owner's area logins not working
- Ebay links needs updating
- There is a major new release of the language this site is coded in due soon; last time this updated the site was knocked offline for a week--would like to avoid that this time round!
- The site design could use a refresh; mobile devices were not a thing when the site was launched (!) and it would be nice to make this place friendlier for phones and small screens
I'd consider opening a Patreon, but it's not clear other than a warm fuzzy feeling what I could offer as benefits without limited what non-patrons might be able to do. But maybe that is the future? My magic eight ball says ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Roger
June 2022
The sites recently ran out of disk storage at the hosting tier we were using, so had to upgrade to the next more-expensive level. Sigh.
I've been trying to figure out how to arrange things so a bit of how I make a living could reliably come from these sites. There is a lot to do to make things shipshape. I am considering starting a Patreon to try and solicit more donations, but I don't have a clear idea of what benefits would accrue to patrons. Perhaps detailed searching becomes a perk, or the ability to see more than a certain number of photos in a particular time period...
In any case, many thanks to those who have donate--and if you can consider doing so, it really does help!
Roger
January 2022
Hosting bills and domain bills are coming due, so anything you can spare would help a lot.
Noting much to report, my recovery (physical, not financial!) from my stroke has gone as well as could be hoped. Wishing all of you a prosperous and healthy 2022!
I would be amiss if I didn't thank Paul S. here for all of the work he has put in on these sites over the years. Many thanks, Paul, the sites would be shadows of themselves without your stewardship.
Roger
May 2021
A few things have been happening, not all good. I had a stroke in April and am now facing daunting medical bills, so donations very gratefully received! Thank you to all who donate!
We had a site outage on May 11 which hopefully will be resolved by the time you read this. If not, I'm busy trying to apply band-aids!
Roger
January 2020
Welp, 2019 came and went without a ton of progress on the codebase. Part of that is that donations are essentially non-existant, I think there were three or four total in 2019 (!). If you enjoy these sites and use them frequently, considering throwing a few dollars my way, or even set up a recurring payment of a few dollars per period of your choice. It really helps, both in the pocketbook and motivationally.
You can use the donate button in the left nav bar--thank you!
Roger
October 2018
If you're reading this, I've swapped the sites over to an interim code-base, which at least won't die in the middle of the night like the previous version did. (Unless--until?--I make a typo somewhere, of course).
CollectorData?
If you're seeing "collectordata" in your browser bar, using that domain allowed me to build this interim version, without taking the sites offline for weeks.
Even if you are "stuck" on "collectordata" (for example, "xk.collectordata.com"), the various "bespoke" domains ("xkdata.com", to continue the example) will still bring you here when typed into your browser, and any links you have bookmarked should still work just fine.
In other words, "xkdata.com" is exactly the same site as "xk.collectordata.com".
So What Happened?
I originally coded these sites in the early 2000s, and life has kept me from updating them much in the past 15 years--a lifetime in the world of web-servers. Well, that finally caught up to me. (Just to give you an idea of how time-intensive this process is, I have well over 100 hours invested just in updating the sites from that "oh crud!" moment to this "it pretty much looks the same" version--a version which assuredly has bugs lurking in the corners...)
To put that in perspective, I write code similar to this for a living (such as it is), and my professional rate is about that of your favorite mechanic or painter. So it's a significant investment. (Thanks to those who clicked the "make a donation" button after the recent outage! You can find it in the left nav-bar.)
Small Improvements
- Searches should work accurately again.
- The photo uploader should be a lot easier to use.
- You can view more than one week's worth of updates on the "This Week" page.
- The comments form now has a small editor, allowing some formatting without using codes.
- Nearly everything should be a bit more readable.
- There are a lot of improvements in the code, so site might be a bit faster
That said, there are undoubtedly still bugs lurking, let me know what you stumble across.
Future Plans
I will probably need to put in another similar chunk of time to convert these sites to a thoroughly modern base, taking advantage of the tools I work with "for reals" every day. I hope to accomplish that...soon?
That should bring some nice new features for you, faithful site users, which will be most-evident in a mobile-friendly format finally being available, but there will be additional improvements, some visible, some not. I have a long list of "cool" stuff I've wanted to build and maybe a bit of that can come to pass...but I absolutely need to get the sites to pay for themselves a bit more. I would love for this to be a "job", but despite what they promised us in the 1990s, that is unlikely to happen.
(Even if I don't spend any "quality time" working on the sites in any given month, they cost a chunk of change just to pay for space and hosting.)*
So I think we will be moving to some sort of membership/subscription model for the sites. I don't plan on hiding anything, per se, but if you are not a subscriber you may only be able to do a certain number of things per [fill in unit of time] or have restricted search parameters or...as I'm noodling this idea, my aim will be to keep the sites usable for the folks visiting for free, but try to provide an incentive to pitch in a bit to help keep the sites going.
Subscriptions, if and when they arrive, will be modest in cost, though there may be some tiers (mainly to offer a show of support). I may also pursue some advertising; if I do it will be topical. My tentative advances in the past, to various well-known businesses in our hobby, made it pretty clear that there was not a rich vein to be mined there. Maybe that has changed, but...
If and when these changes approach, I'll throw another missive up here explaining how I think it's going to work.
Caveat Emptor
So there we have it. I am a terrible correspondent--but I do read all of my email, so if you want to share your thoughts, please drop me a line--it will be read and appreciated. Unless you call me an arse...I mean, I already know that.
Roger
P.S. I set a "cookie" when you bopped in here, so the bright red notification in the top bar should be quieted...for now!
* To forestall suggestions about hosting: I know there may be cheaper hosting out there, but the thought of the headache--let alone time--involved in moving this site to save a few dollars per month, with all its gigabytes of data and files...I'm going to go have a lie-down