(Scroll Down the Page for earlier news)
Tuesday 2nd October 2007
1. Welcome to our latest sponsor, a local service offering 'home-from-home' boarding for your dog. Click here to find out more...
2. We've joined with Buy At to help fund this site. Please take a look at what's on offer and hopefully, you will find something of interest. NB: you won't pay any more for the goods and services on offer here than if you were to go directly to their site - any funds we earn come from the suppliers marketing budget, not as a cut of an inflated selling price. The same holds true for any links on other pages - we do earn a small commission if you buy something from the featured supplier but the goods and services on offer are exactly the same as if you had searched for them directly.
3. We now have more Forum members but to date, not many posts and comments. Don't be shy - just go there and post a comment - we don't edit your submissions (other than obviously libellous or profane - please, no bad language!)
Thanks and bye for now
Monday 10th September 2007
1. Well , summer's over and the kids are back at school. Autumn and Winter are just around the corner and it will soon be Christmas! With this in mind, we give a warm welcome to our latest site sponsor, Tia-Benny, who are a locally based online seller of fashion jewellery. Click here to visit their site and perhaps you will find that perfect gift!
2. This is also a splendid opportunity to for local groups to advertise their seasonal events - just email us with the details.
3. Local businesses, you can follow the example of Tia-Benny and feature your seasonal goods and services. For just £10 per year, your business will get exposure to our 150+ visitors a day. Click here to see how you can easily do this online.
4. Following several requests, we have now updated our Local News & Information page to include local Bus and train times.
Bye for now
Monday 20th August 2007
1. Welcome to a new site sponsor, Gibson Gas & Oil. Click here to visit their website.
2. Summer is nearly over already - last weekend's Sandy Horticultural Show was a great success, with lots of entries and visitor numbers. This is a significant boost to the new committee headed by Nigel Aldis. Our sister organisation, Sandy Historical Research Group was also in attendance and Sandy Enhancement Group announced the winners of this year's Best Kept awards ceremony, on Sunday afternoon. The upshot is that the Sandy Horticultural Show will be back again next year, hopefully bigger, brighter and even more successful than ever.
3. Local Groups - you can advertise your event in our Local Events page. E-mail us with your event and we'll put it in.
Wednesday 8th August 2007
1. Today is our 8th birthday and we are still going strong! Much has changed in the last 8 years - many old and not so old landmarks have either disappeared or changed significantly, we now have very little in the way of historical buildings left in the town's infrastructure. Magnolia House is now just a memory - the developers have tidied the site up quite a lot and it could be said that what is in place now over the whole site, has 'character' Whether the new buildings will stand the test of time, we can only wait and see. The old Baptist Chapel and the terrace of new housing has smartened the place up quite a bit and we do now have a Pleasant Place!
Fallowfield, started life in the same year as us and in terms of development, is now quite mature. We still see little of the play area/open space promised by the developers but at least there is now a small Budgen's franchise open - no pub however and will there ever be one there?
The latest change has seen the Texaco Service Station closed and bulldozed. In it's place, we are promised a modern complex, incorporating a mini supermarket, (do we really need another one in the town?) - somewhere to eat and drink and of course another petrol station. It's true that in recent years the site had become a little 'tired', although the last makeover was only about 10 years ago. One good thing - the dangerous entrance and exit at the roundabout is being closed off and access will be from the Northbound carriageway only. This will reduce the instances of accidents and near misses to zero (in this spot at least). Oh well, that's progress!
2. Welcome to another pre school group - 'Moggerhanger pre-school of Sandy. Details of when and where they operate here.
3. We have heard from the lady who runs the local About My Area/SG19 site and whilst much of what we said has been confirmed, the claim that they are The site for Sandy has now been amended. As it happens, we have agreed that whilst we focus specifically on Sandy and the immediate area, the other site has a broader remit. We still don't feel the need for out and out commercialism however and we are content to receive a small but ongoing level of sponsorship, for which we are truly grateful (all further offers accepted! - subject only to legality, decency and honesty).
Bye for now
Monday 23rd July 2007
1. We have received a response to our email to Villages Online, in respect of how they are now listing two sites about Sandy - which we considered to be misleading. The other 'Sandy' site is a commercial franchise operated by an About My Area franchisee - there is very little in the way of information about Sandy on the About My Area site and much of the content reflects a much wider area. We have expressed our belief that as Sandy Community website, we are the only one to focus on Sandy and the immediate area. We have now responded to them and requested that our link is made clearer, so that there is no confusion. In the meantime, we invite local businesses to sponsor us for only £10 per year (a tenth of the cost of advertising on other sites purporting to represent Sandy), in return for 12 months exposure to our 150+ visitors every day of the year. Click here for more details.
Thursday 19th July 2007
1. Welcome to a new sponsor, Joyce Millson, who is the local advisor for Slimming World - details here.
2. We now have over a dozen Forum members but very few posts - go along and join in, it's free and provided there's no profane or insulting/offensive or defamatory language used, you can discuss more or less anything you like. Obviously, topics related to Sandy would be preferred but you can write about anything that takes your fancy.
Bye for now
Monday June 4th 2007
1. Welcome to a new sponsor for our site - Precious Touch , a new local service for pregnant & post natal women and their partners. Se their advert and details of the next local event on Sandy.
2. We also have notice of a new Play Group that has been set up by Sandy Vineyard Church. Click here for details.
3. There has been some recent press comment regarding Biggleswade Town Council's new website. The critique comes from another local group and we would tend to concur with some of the views they have expressed. However, one thing the Biggleswade Town Council site has definitely got right, is their local events information. The Sandy Community Website has been running since 1999 and we have lost count of all the appeals we have made to local groups in Sandy to notify us of their events. Many of the local groups involved frequently complain that they can never get enough people interested in what they are up to.
We don't claim to have all the answers but we do get 150+ visitors every day of the year and we also know from feedback, that there is a significant interest from these visitors in community activities. So, here is an opportunity to feature your local group - there's no charge for non-profit organisations (and only a modest £10 per year for local businesses!), so e-mail us.
Finally, we feature many local groups but find that their Chairs, Leaders, Secretaries etc., change from time to time - sometimes it might be several weeks or months before we get to hear about it. We can only keep up to date if you tell us!
Bye for Now!
Wednesday 18th April 2007
1. Once again, we have had to remove links, where our reciprocal link has been taken out. In one case, our link was replaced with a link to 'About My Area/SG19, which is a commercial site, franchised to a lady living in Great Barford and which to date, has carried very little information local to Sandy. Sadly, the demands of commerce are encroaching and we expect to see more of this over time.
You can help keep this site fresh and up to date, by sending us details of your local community group, local events and information, particularly when new contacts take over the chairmanship or other office. All entries from community groups and charities remain completely free of charge.
Local businesses can support us by donating £10 (see our Local Services/Local Businesses pages for details). We only need a little sponsorship to keep the site going - we will have been on-line for 8 years on August.
Don't forget also, that we sponsor Sandy Enhancement Group and Sandy Transport Society, as well as the site for Sandy Historical Research Group, so it's not just the Community site involved here.
2. Don't forget the Forum, which we introduced last month - we would be delighted to receive your anecdotes about Sandy - registering is easy and you can post your information, ask questions, express opinions about what's going on in Sandy right now. There aren't many restrictions - just keep it clean (no foul language), don't libel anyone or make any hurtful or racist comments and you will be fine.
3. We have put some new menu buttons on the site and hopefully, you can see them and they all work correctly - let us know if not. (There are a few 'old' buttons sprinkled about but we will get to these in the near future).
4. We have put up some local bus information and we hope it will be of use to you. It's all in the Local Information Page (see menu of the left).
BFN
Sunday 18th March 2007
1. It's been a while but we have been busy on other projects - hopefully, we will be able to focus on updating this site to take into account all the innovations on the Web these days.
2. On this basis, we have introduced a Forum, where visitors to the site can post their comments about aspects of Sandy, the information on this site (corrections welcome) and anything relevant to Sandy, which might be of interest to others. No profane or defamatory language please, or anything that could be considered to be hurtful or inappropriate. Otherwise, there are few other restrictions - read the Rules before posting your messages. You can view postings without registering but if you want to post a message then you will need to register.
Happy messaging!
Monday 22nd January 2007
1. We have moved server. Our old server was based across the pond in the good old USA. However, the site has suffered a number of outages in recent weeks, taking us offline - generally only for an hour but nonetheless it meant that visitors from overseas in other time zones were being inconvenienced in the middle of the night over here. So, our new server is closer to home and we are promised a 99.9% uptime (here's hoping).
2. We have taken the opportunity to update some of the data displayed on the site. However, no-one is perfect, so if you spot anything you know to be incorrect, then please let us know. Some of the local services pages are greyed out at present due to lack of sponsorship. If you are a local business or supplier of services to the local community, it's still only £10 to represent yourselves on our pages. We had over 549,000 hits last year and we average 185 unique visitors every day of the year. Where else can you get world-wide exposure for just £10 per year? (All proceeds go towards keeping us online and the site up-to-date).
Monday 8th January 2007
1. Happy New Year to all our visitors! 2006 seemed to just rattle along and the Millennium is now a distant memory. This is our eighth year on the Web and we hope to be able to add a few enhancements during the coming year - notably a Blog for people to add their stories about Sandy and the local community. Watch this space...
2. We still only get a relatively few notices of local events for activities taking place in and around Sandy. Perhaps there are group secretaries and programme officers who don't actually consider this site when notifying of their group's forthcoming events. So, if you are reading this and belong to a local group or society, then why not tell your group secretary (or whoever is responsible for these things), that this site is offering free publicity!
3. One of our new sponsors, Buy-Local Net, who are running an local online food shopping service for Mid Beds customers, is offering free delivery to the first five customers who place orders from following the links on this site. Click now!
4. Welcome to a new site sponsor 'Finishing Touch Parties, a new online Party Shop directory for the local area. It's not just parties however. Their aim is to offer products and services for any special occasion, e.g. weddings, anniversaries, children's parties and so on. So why not pay them a visit and see for yourself what's on offer.
Happy surfing!
Monday 18th December 2006
1. We have a new site sponsor, Buy-Local Net, who have just launched a local food delivery service in the Mid Beds area. Please pay them a visit and take advantage of their offers.
2. May we at Sandy Community Website thank all our visitors, sponsors and advertisers for their most generous support in 2006. Here's to a happy and peaceful Christmas and we hope everyone has a successful and prosperous New Year!
Tuesday 15th November 2006
1. It's rumoured that someone else is setting up a website for Sandy. Well good luck we say, the overall level of interest in our site comes from visitors outside of this area and although we do provide as much local information as possible, there is a level of 'inertia' about the place. As a result, not all the information we hold is necessarily right up-to-date. We often put out appeals to local groups and organisations to send us their information about them and any events they are holding but our success level is driven by the amount of response we receive. We always post information received and local not-for-profit groups are never charged for any items posted to our web pages.
Neither do we seek advertising but of course we DO seek a small amount of sponsorship from local businesses. If you are a local business, just ask yourself: "where can I get world wide exposure to 200 visitors every day - over 70,000 unique visits and 500,000 hits each year for just £10?"
We are always keen to accept new sponsors and happy to renew relationships with existing sponsors. How much? - £10 per year! For that, you get an entry in our local services page and an honourable mention on our sponsors page (linked to the Home Page). You can pay online or send us a cheque. Please click here for instructions. Thanks in anticipation.
2. Whilst on the subject of sponsors, we welcome Ace Private Hire, a local taxi firm operating in and around our area. (see their details in our Local Services pages).
Saturday 4th November 2006
1. 'Blogging' seems to be all the rage now and I guess we will have to come up with one sooner or later! We would prefer something interactive, so that our visitors can add comments and stories about Sandy and the local area. We would be interested in thoughts about local pubs and restaurants, good or bad service received in the local shops or other establishments, local events & attractions and so on.
This requires a bit of thought and perhaps those with some experience of these things could email us with some info on how to get one up and running on this site. In the meantime, click to see an interesting blog we found about happenings in Sandy.
Wednesday 11th October 2006
1. We have a new weather link for Sandy - just click on the Local Weather button to view the new site created by local resident, Andy Dunlop.
2. The Kings Arms, in London Road has a new website. It can be accessed by clicking on the link in our Local Services/Places to Stay links or click here to view now.
Sunday 16th July 2006
Click on the name highlighted in bold (red or blue - depends on your browser) to see more details
1. Feedback (positive) received about the Kings Arms in London Road.
2. Sandy Enhancement Group website has been updated to include the 2006 Art Competition winners. Judging takes place for Anglia in Bloom tomorrow (17th July) so good luck to all concerned.
3. Sandy Transport Society has just launched their new website.
Both of the above are supported by Sandy Community Website and we wish them well.
4. We are still looking for sponsors AND we get 200 visitors every day of the year, so you really do get good exposure for your £10 per year. Email us with your details.
Wednesday 19th April 2006
1. Your Webmaster has been busy over the last couple of months and although some updates have been processed, we have a bit of tidying up to do. We are keen to publish as much local news as possible, so please, if you have anything of interest, let us know - this goes for local events as well!
2. It's a new Tax year again and we are once more seeking sponsors for the site. This year, we are changing things a bit by offering Page Sponsorship, so that local businesses can now choose the most appropriate page(s) that suits their business aspirations. The basic sponsorship fee remains £10 for a whole year's exposure on our site - that 200 visitors every day of the year and well in excess of 400,000 hits per annum. We will charge more for placement in certain pages and the most visited pages will attract a premium. However, you can still choose to be on a Local Services page for the basic fee. Please e-mail us for more details.
Friday 13th January 2006
Happy New Year to all our visitors!
1. We have two new local content sites up and running and you can link to:
b) Sandy ATC
Welcome to you both and we wish you great success.
2. Local Events - don't forget to visit this page often, to check out what is going on in the area. (Local groups can advertise their event for free- so how about it?)
Tuesday 20th December 2005
1. Seasons Greetings to you all! Hopefully all our visitors have had a reasonably successful year in 2006. Your webmaster is still in the long process of recovery, following a stroke in July 2004. The recovery rate has slowed right down but at least "I am still standing" so to speak!
2. Our News Feeds have had to change slightly. This was due to the fact that we signed up to a scripting site for $9 (£5), only to discover that there was a monthly premium of $49.95 (£29)! So we have had to decline - our site sponsorship would not cover a bill just for this service - of over £350 per year.
3. Following our successful server transfer, we are reviewing what the site has to offer visitors and we are proposing to host an online feedback facility, so that anyone with information pertinent to Sandy, can file the detail and see it posted on the site. We are working on this right now and hope to have this available early in the New Year. It is anticipated that local groups, societies, clubs and organisations will be able to use this facility - it will certainly help to keep the site fully up to date. In the meantime, if you have club or group details that you want featuring on the site, please continue to use the Feedback Form, or e-mail us. Best wishes for 2006.
Sunday 4th December 2006
1. New! We have added a News Feed to our Home Page and News & Information page, so hopefully, this will prove useful to all visitors to the site. The news will update automatically each day, so the news content will change frequently.
2. We have moved to another new server, which we believe will offer us more flexibility in the provision of new features. Come back soon and see for yourself!
Tuesday 15th November 2006
1. A bit of a tidy up here & there. We found a new link to the Bedfordshire County Council, which highlights news in and around Bedfordshire. We have put it in our Local News & Events page - go visit!
2. The sage of the Tourist Information centre continues. We were led to understand from both articles in the press and from other locals, that the TIC would definitely close at the end of March, firstly as we believed , to be absorbed into the set up at Ampthill but now we are advised that the whole of the Mid-Beds TIC operation is going to be shelved in order to cut costs (Well, Mid-beds have been capped haven't they?). Now we read that Sandy Town Council have stepped in with an offer of help - with a meeting arranged for 21st November, to thrash out details. Watch this space!
We do need something to promote Sandy and it will be a great shame if the TIC finally does close and is not replaced with something as an alternative. Sandy has a lot to offer and with NIRAH coming in the near future, there will undoubtedly be further tourist opportunities generating useful income for the town through its businesses.
Thursday 15th September 2006
1. We have had some Feedback from Martin & Sarah Flynn, the new licensees of the Kings Arms. As requested, we have published their reply to our critique. Click here to read their response.
2. The new gym is open at Sandy Upper School and yours truly has joined! The equipment is brand spanking new and utilises all the latest technology. Hopefully STC and Mid Beds will catch up soon and tell us all about it.
3. We visited the Centenary event at Laburnum Lower School last Sunday (11th Sept). The event was well attended by young and old, with many former pupils there to celebrate - our sister organisation, Sandy Historical Research Group, also exhibited during the event and we were able to add many names to the old photographs on display. The school was re-modelled in the late 1990's after celebrating its 90th anniversary, the expectation originally being that the old school premises would be knocked down and something "modern" erected in its place. Thankfully, this didn't happen and we have a fine example of on Edwardian construction. The school itself started life in the old Baptist Chapel in Pleasant Place a couple of years earlier.
Sunday 4th September 2006
1. Our Useful Links pages have been updated to eliminate dead and broken links - so all should now be working fine. Some of the links now point to sponsors, so please help by visiting them and finding items of interest.
2. We have one or two updates in our local Sandylinks page; webmasters please continue to advise of any changes or links to your sites.
Wednesday 10th August 2006
1. We have now been online for 6 years! You may have noticed one or two small changes, including a new background, which we hope makes the site a little easier to read. We have also updated a number of the historical pages, as new information comes to light. We have alos placed a few new pictures around the site, in order to better illustrate the theme under discussion.
2. We have a new sponsor - go to Local Services and view Taxis - welcome to Car2go!
3. The Kings Arms in Sandy has changed hands - and at the moment, not for the better. In the first two weeks or so, service has been slow, portions reduced and staff cut. We understand that the new licensees are applying for longer opening hours and live music Considering the experience of some of the locals to date, this looks like a recipe for disaster.. Change happens all over the place but surely, whatever replaces the former should a least be neutral or improved? Not from where we sit! Much to do here we think....
Wednesday 29th June 2006
1. Welcome to Haynes Village website - now in our local links page - go see!
2,. Whilst adding Haynes to our local links page we also checked the validity of the other links. Unfortunately, we seem to have lost a number of our local websites in the last couple of months. WEBMASTERS - please check to see if your local site is listed and if not, please e-mail us with your link details. We rely on you to help keep us up to date!
3. If you visit our site via any other address than www.sandy-bedfordshire.co.uk then please note that we have or are in the process of relinquishing a number of Sandy based domain names, which have historically pointed to our site. Once these other domains have expired, the forwarding will no longer work. So in order to keep up to date, please change your link information accordingly.
4. Local businesses - we do not have so many sponsors this year, so we have had to rely on alternative funding. However, we have noticed that some other sites are promoting "local" businesses an services which in fact are based outside ou area! (Town Pages is one such site). We get about 110 unique visits and approximately 1100 hits EVERY day of the year, which we know is good by any standards for a small community based information site - you know what to do....
Tuesday 7th June 2006
1. We have had to use some non-related sponsors for the next 12 months, due to a general lack of interest locally. We remain however, extremely grateful to the Health and Safety People for their continued support. You may also notice some advertising banners floating around the site - these are for suppliers who will pay us commission should any visitor to their site find anything of interest - so please support this initiative where you can. We hope that these banners are not too intrusive and that your enjoyment of the site is not impaired.
2. At last! We are now beginning to receive updates from the community groups located in Sandy and featured in our community page. We are glad to be of service and hop that local groups will continue to use this facility.
3. Great News! One of our local groups is taking up space on the Community site, in order to feature its' activities on and around Sandy. Sandy Enhancement Group will be located at www.seg.sandy-bedfordshire.co.uk and we should have material on display in the next few days.
4. Visitors to the site have increased by 15% in the last twelve months and we are getting quite a lot of feedback now, compared to a year ago. With around 400,000 hits per annum, we are giving Sandy Bedfordshire great exposure on the Net. Anyone out there who could support for the next 12 months, is most welcome to get in touch. Please e-mail us.
Thursday 3rd February 2006
1. Happy New Year to all our visitors!
2. We welcome a new community group into our pages - Sandy Choi Kwang-Do Martial Art School. Please click on the name for more information.
3. The new Town Council website is now fully up and running - very much council services focussed. As the only independent community website for Sandy, we are continuing to provide as much community data as possible. However, the information is only as up to date as you provide. Therefore we urge all members, group leaders and secretaries to review their entries regularly and advise by e-mail or feedback form of any amendments or corrections. Thanks
Sunday 26th December 2004
1, Your webmaster has been away from the scene for a while, after suffering a stroke 5 months ago today. I am in recovery mode, although very slow - it takes a great deal of effort just make a few alterations to the site!. Anyway, onwards and upwards - Happy Holidays and compliments of the season.
2. We've added a few more sponsors which hopefully you will visit and support us by buying goods and services that you may well need anyway! Just click on the banners to view their sites. All of them have been chosen for relevance and offer value for money. We will however coninue to attract sponsorship wherever possible, from local suppliers.
3. Our link to Sandy Town Council's website ahs been corrected, so that visitors are now redirected to Sandy Community's home page.
Sunday 18th July
1. Sandy Town Council have finally put their website back on line - revamped and with new images and content - there is even a link to us! This is good news for keeping Sandy on the map.
2. Our sister organisation, Sandy Historical Research Group, is currently campaigning to save the street scene comprising of Magnolia House, No2 St Neots Road and the Jordans site. There is time to make a difference and preserve Sandy's past for the benefit of the local community. The group is running a petition in order to establish public feeling about this important matter. You can give them support by signing their petition at the Beeston Flower Festival on 24th/25th July, when the group will be exhibiting old photo's, maps and other artefacts showing the Sandy of yesteryear.
Sunday 11th July 2004
1. We have a new site linked to our Community Page - Sandy FC - click on the link to visit
2. We have had to succumb to advertising. Although we received sponsorship from a number of local businesses for 2004, this year's take up has been quite a bit less than in 2003. We are of course grateful for those who have provided funding this year and hope that the level of exposure they are getting in the site is proving satisfactory.
We are therefore placing a few banners around the site in the hope that visitors will find something of interest from the advertisers and make a purchase through the link. We will try as much as possible to ensure this is not too intrusive and does not deflect from the site's mission to promote Sandy and the local area.
3. Sandy Town Council's site is still showing a "coming soon" page - many weeks now after hinting that in a "few" weeks it would be up and running again. We live in hope! In the meantime, if you have a local group or organisation that needs promoting through the Community pages, then e-mail us and we will help, either with a link or, a page or two if you can provide some copy and/or photo's.
We understand, that the Town Council is not going to use its' site for anything other than council service information, so we will still be the only Community based site for Sandy and the local area.
Monday 31st May 2004
1. We have been getting a lot of unwanted mail recently (spam), and so we have invested in an anti-spam program, to reduce what's coming in to manageable proportions. One of the downsides of anti-spam software, is that if set correctly, it will identify the main sources and block incoming e-mails from the provider. Regrettably, due to the high prevalence of spam coming from the big "free" providers - Hotmail, MSN, AOL, Yahoo and other similar brands, if you are unlucky enough to use one of these, then your mail is most likely being sent straight into the Deleted Mail folder. We do check before disposing of the junk, to try and ensure that friends and genuine e-mails do not end up in the bin - but please be aware, if your e-mail looks like spam, then it may have been junked and you will not have received a reply from us.
We are sorry about this, but you can imagine what it is like having to navigate through hundreds of rubbishy e-mails, in order to find the properly sent ones. Spam is here to stay, but if enough users lobby their ISP's then maybe some of the junk will get filtered out before getting out on to the Net - they have the technology, they also know who the major culprits are (80% of all spam is generated by less than 200 sites worldwide), but have yet to tackle them seriously.
One of the major problems being encountered by most of us with a presence on the Web, is the high volume of virus infected e-mails. We like many of you, have also invested in an anti-virus program, which deletes suspect attachments before they can do harm. The spammers and virus droppers are very sophisticated, and try to baffle to anti-spam/anti-virus software, by using familiar subject lines found in many genuine e-mails, or deliberately misspelling well know words and phrases. This has led to users like us becoming more and more restrictive. A simple example is the use of "re, or Re:" at the start of the subject line. Anti-spam and anti-virus programs now recognise this as a highly common source of spam and viruses and act accordingly.
So, if you are sending to us, please construct your Subject line carefully, avoiding the very common words and phrases, and your e-mail has a much better chance of getting through. Thanks for visiting us and we hope to hear from you soon.
2. Sandy Town Council has now put a holding page up with the "coming soon" message - we do hope that they will be up an running again soon - after almost 18 months of unattended stagnation.
Monday 3rd May 2004
1. We thank all our site sponsors who have renewed their advertising for a further year. Our Local Services and Business Pages have been modified to reflect the sponsorship.
2. Any businesses who would like to help support this Community website, may do so for only £10 per year. This gets you a feature display, our grateful thanks, and exposure to the thousands of site visitors we get every year. Click here for details and instructions.
3. Sadly, Sandy Town Council's site appears to be offline again - we don't know what's going on, but at the moment, we are the only comprehensive site available for information about Sandy and the local area. We would like to see S.T.C. get their act together, or admit defeat and support this site! We would gladly provide the Council's details as a sub-section of this site - lobby your local councillor today!
Saturday 17th January 2004
1.Happy New Year to all our visitors.
2. We are on our new server! The transfer went reasonably smoothly, with the site only being unavailable for a few hours at year end. Hopefully most regular visitors won't have noticed, since we carried this out in the early hours (UK time).
3. Our Feedback Form is now back up and running, after some programming issues connected with the transfer, so hopefully, visitors will continue to use this facility. Please report any other issues that you find and we may not have discovered yet!
Bye for now.
Saturday 1st November 2003
1. We were featured in yesterday's Biggleswade Chronicle, and our offer to Local Community Groups remains open - give us your group activity details, and we will put them on the site. Sandy Town Council are re-formatting their site, to focus on Council and Local Council services - we will be the only site for Sandy featuring non Council information - such as local groups and services.
2. Local Businesses can still have local representation - we charge £10 per year for an entry in the Local Business pages - all proceeds go towards the upkeep of this site, so not only do you get local and worldwide exposure for your business, but you are helping to keep the Community of Sandy on the World Wide Web. See the details and buy online in the Local Business pages
Send us an e-mail or use the Feedback Form on this site.
Sunday 15th June 2003
1. New links added to "Information Britain" - we rely on these organisations to help promote the site, please use the links to discover other useful information about other places in the UK. We do check the links from time to time, but if you find one that either does not work, or the site visited no longer mentions us, then we would be grateful for feedback.
2. The "£10" per year advertising sponsorship has gone quite well, and we have received funding to keep us going. We hope that the advertising is not too intrusive, and that our sponsors are getting enquiries and traffic through the associated links. If you are a local business and would like a featured listing on one of our Local Businesses or Local Services pages, then please get in touch.
Sunday 23rd March 2003
1. It's been a long time since the last update, but we've been here just the same. Your webmaster has been focussing on a new project in conjunction with Sandy Historical Research Group , which is going from strength to strength. As the group's mission is the record and preserve the social history of Sandy over the last 100 years or so, we will not be making any significant updates to this era on the Community site.
2. We have long resisted taking advertising, particularly banners and affiliate ads, and our sponsor MPRC, has continued to support the site. However, recently a number of Local Businesses have been requesting their details to be featured, and offering to pay for space on the site. To this end, we have decided to make a modest charge of £10 per annum, to help defray the ongoing costs of the site - as well as of course, giving the businesses a worldwide exposure to the many visitors we get to the site, looking for information. The initial response has been so good, that we have decided to make the same charge to all local businesses being featured on the site.
If your business is featured on our site, then from 1st April, we will only feature the details on a paid for basis. Use the Feedback form, click on the PayPal button in the Local Business pages, or e-mail us at info@sandy-bedfordshire.co.uk , which ever suits you best.
If your business is not featured, then please get in touch by the same method, and we will allocate you a space upon receipt of the £10 annual charge. Where else could you get worldwide exposure for such a modest fee, AND support your local Community Website at the same time?
Thanks in anticipation.
3. Local non-profit groups and organisations, will still be featured free of charge as a service to the local community. If you would like your group to be featured, then please get in touch as above.
Friday 1st November 2002
1. A new Website has joined the rising number of sites featuring Sandy in the Internet. Click here, to read more about Sandy Twinning Association.
Wednesday 30th October 2002 Go Back to top
1. Interesting News!. Our town has been undergoing a "Healthcheck", to evaluate Sandy's social, economic and environmental strength & weaknesses. In the ensuing report to the Town Council, it was mentioned that there are two websites representing the town (There are actually 5 or 6 in total, some of which focus on particular elements of the town - such as the Church).
Amongst other things, the report questions whether the two representing the town should be combined to avoid duplication (!). It is suggested on another website, that they are the "number 1 source" for local information about Sandy. We have very strong evidence that this is not so - but we do have a vested interest, as managers of the most up to date source for local information. (It is true however, that we don't feature anything about the Town Council, or the Councillors).
We would be very happy to see a combination of the two sites - as long as editorial independence was maintained and of course we would want to manage it. It would also be nice to receive a bit of support (i.e. some money, just to pay the basic cost of the site), as we don't advertise or receive sponsorship from any of the firms we feature in the Local Business pages.
Our site is three years old, is in the top 10 of most of the major search engines, gets 50 visitors every day, our visitors access virtually every page. Some of our regulars have obviously bookmarked some of the portal pages we feature, and we get feedback from all over the world. We also update regularly, with information about community groups and businesses, as they open up or close down. We also check the links regularly, to eliminate the dead ones and ensure that they are correct - something which the other site is not very good at.
We also link to many other local sites, promote Sandy with "sister" sites in America, and receive reciprocal links in return - something the other site does not do. This is essential in the promotion of the site on the Web. We even have a link to the Roman Sandy site - sponsored by the Town Council, but not promoted - where's the link?
We also live in the town and are involved in the community.
We will therefore be attending the follow-up meeting on 13th November, to explore the views of those attending. In the meantime, what do you, our visitors think?
- E-mail us: info@sandy-bedfordshire.co.uk
Friday 9th August 2002 Go Back to top
1. We're 3 Years young! Still proud to be serving the local community. We have managed to avoid the worst of the sponsorship issues, which would have resulted in many op ups and banners all over the site. We hop to be able to continue in the same vein for the foreseeable future.
2. Our sister site Sandy Historical Research Group continues to develop. The group has held exhibitions of old photographs and artefacts in several venues in the town. The site has a new picture gallery, which will illustrate the themes of old Sandy life being researched by the group. The first one has pictures of the Sandy Show, which was held from 1868 until 1953, in Sandye Place Park. Worth a look!
3. Our sponsor
is now able to offer a complete web service from domain names to hosting,
webspace and management. Prices start from under £7, for uk domains, and $9.95 (£6.63)
for us/global domains. A proportion of all sales revenue goes towards the upkeep
of this site.
Sunday 9th June 2002 Go Back to top
1. We have had a few difficulties lately, with uploading and updating files to the server, but hopefully, our information is as up to date as it can be. If you have links to us, or as a visitor - you notice links that do not work, then please e-mail us, and we will fix as best we can.
2. New Link! - BBC - 3 Counties Online has been launched as a standalone site, bringing news and information to residents of Beds, Herts and Bucks, and we at Sandy Bedfordshire Community Website are proud the be associated with this new venture. Click here to go there now.
3. We are also pleased,
through our sponsor
to support
a local appeal by Macmillan Cancer Relief. Click
here to view now.
Sunday 21st April Go Back to top
1. A salutary tale! Your humble webmaster is always trying to promote the Sandy site all over the world, in order to generate interest in our community. However, we recently fell foul of a scam, run by a site called europa-club.com "searchengine". We have always offered links to other sites and put back-links in return for the favour. This particular "searchengine" has snared a number of organisations as well as us. The scam is that once agreeing to add your link, there is no way to pull out. If the back-link is not put on our site, the owner of europa-club sends an invoice (around £100) for "advertising" the site for two years. If the invoice is not paid, then threatening e-mails follow.
Why all the fuss you may think - just put in a back-link and move on. The snag is however, the site is not a searchengine (like Yahoo, Google etc) - if a search word is entered, it only returns websites actually in the database - so the service is grossly mis-described to say the least. In addition, many of the "european" links are to **** (reference removed as it has been picked up by search engines) sites, which we think is inappropriate to be associated with.
We are, in conjunction with other unfortunate site owners, pressing for the site to be taken off the web - due to its fraudulent activities, and are confident that the "binding" agreement is both unfair and unenforceable. So other webmasters be aware - if you receive an unsolicited e-mail from europe-club.com inviting you to add your URL - steer well clear. Better still, report the abuser to his ISP, at abuse@t-dialin.net
Saturday 13th April 2002 Go Back to top
1. We are pleased to announce
an new service for Sandy residents, offered by our Sponsor,
where for a small annual fee, you can get "yourname@sandy-beds.com" as a mailbox. Full details here, and is you wish to pre-register your interest, please use our Feedback Form
Thursday 28th March 2002
1. Further to recent news of our intention to provide another site specifically for information about community and business services for Sandy, we will be launching the community service on www.sandy-beds.info , and the business information service, on www.sandy-beds.biz .
Both these services will go live in early May, and will feature options to "self -load" details into the sites. The business information service will be available at a small annual fee, in order to help maintain the community website. Enquiries for the community based service should be addressed to info@sandy-beds.info , and for the business services, info@sandy-beds.biz .
Saturday 2nd March 2002
1. We are pleased to announce the launch of the "Sandy Historical Research Group" website, which is live as of today! Click here to view. The group aims to provide a multi - source archive (of which the website will be a part), of all aspects of the history of Sandy over the last 150 years or so. We at the Community Site are proud to be associated with this new project.
2. More developments....... The information contained in our Local Businesses pages will be moving in the next month or so to a new site, "Sandy Beds Info". This site will be focussing on local commercial services, and will be a comprehensive directory for local business. There will be links from this site, but the move will allow our "Community" website to concentrate on non-commercial groups and organisations. Any businesses wishing to take advantage of our new local business directory, can register their interest by contacting us at info@sandy-beds.info. (We will be making a small annual charge, in order to support the Community site - and avoid the necessity of banners and advertising).
Sunday 10th February 2002 Go Back to top
1. It's been a bad week or so - a technical fault took the site offline from Monday to Friday night, but we're back now!
2. The Bell Website is back online again, the Webmaster has re-jigged the site, and added some new pics - go see! Click here.
3. We have been getting more feedback from overseas, requesting information about local groups and organisations. If you know of any that could usefully be added to our pages, then please get in touch - there's no charge for inclusion.
Sunday 13th January 2002 - Happy New Year to all our visitors! Go Back to top
1. After all our recent trials and tribulations with the system crash, we are now nearly back to normal again. We would still appreciate hearing from anyone who has sent info between mid-October and the end of December 2001, as we will check to ensure all updates have been applied.
Sunday 9th December 2001 Go Back to top
1. We're back! We suffered a system crash on 14th October, and in consequence lost all of our e-mail data. This included a number of feedback forms, including one from the local Guides group. If whoever sent the form can re-send the information, we will be pleased to update the local groups page.
Saturday 20th October 2001 Go Back to top
1. Welcome to Wrestlingworth on the Web. This new local site is operated by Alan Gower, and has a number of interesting pages featuring the village and its inhabitants. Click here to visit.
2. We have updated some of the links to the World Portals, click here to view. NB if you find any broken links, please e-mail us.
3. Guides and Brownies have some name changes and contact numbers for their leaders, click here to view
Saturday 29th September
1. More Awards! As visitors may have noticed, we are now displaying a total of four website awards on our entry page. We are proud to have been recognised, and will continue in our endeavours to uphold the high standards that these awards represent. Visitors to the site can help with Feedback. Send us your thoughts, views, news, details of organisations etc. It's all in aid of representing Sandy to the outside world.
Saturday 15th September
1. We, in common with many sites around the world, have acknowledged the terrible events that took place on Tuesday 11th September. We hope that our tribute on the temporary entry page will, in some small way, show support for and solidarity with, the many visitors we get to our site from The United States of America. - Webmaster
Sunday 9th September Go Back to top
1. Madonna Blondin has made contact with the site, requesting help to find an old friend.... Madonna, please send us an alternative e-mail address (the one you used originally will not accept replies), and we will get back in touch with the information you need!
2. We're famous again! - Tony Vale has written to our local weekly, the Biggleswade Chronicle, with a word or two in praise of the Sandy Community Website. Thanks Tony, we really appreciate the vote of confidence. Incidentally, Tony is a former resident of Sandy, and lives in Wymondham, in Norfolk, who also have a community site. Click here to learn more.
3. An update of our piece (Item 6) a week or two back for those of you interested in finding old school friends, with whom you may have lost touch - visit www.friendsreunited.co.uk . We have found it very useful, and have recently re-contacted old school chums, who in many cases we haven't seen or heard from in 30 years!
Sunday 26th August Go Back to top
1. New links added - Ampthill Town Council, Flitwick Town Council click here to go to Local Links page. Mark Smith from Ampthill has also advised of a new site for local Voluntary Service groups. Click here to go to Community Services page, and click on Voluntary Services to view.
2. We had some feedback about the "scrolling" Home page, no one liked it, so we have taken it out.
3. We have also heard from Sue Mason, now living in New Zealand. She is looking for long lost relatives in the Biggleswade/Sandy area. We fed the enquiry through to the Biggleswade Chronicle, and they put a piece in the Sandy page in the 24th August edition. (Sadly, despite our involvement - we didn't get a mention). However, we are not disheartened - any ex-pats out there looking for information or old friends relations etc., don't hesitate to get in touch via our Feedback Form.
4. Sites no longer with us: The Bell in Sandy - offline for a while now. Harlington "unofficial" website, also "dead". Note to all Webmasters: If you need some web space, we can help through our site sponsor, SBnet (see Home page). For non- profit organisations, they will cut a very sympathetic deal! (Nominal charge to keep timewasters out.) They recognise the commitment and dedication required to run a community website (like Sandy Bedfordshire for instance!!)
5. The Flower Festival pics were unexciting, so we've ditched them for now. We are currently looking through the Flower Show pics (held on 18/19 August), but are they of interest to our visitors? Lets us know via the Feedback Form
6. Schooldays - the best time of your life?.... We've found an excellent site recently, www.friendsreunited.co.uk , so if you want to trace your old school pals, we can recommend it.
Sunday 22nd July 2001 Go Back to top
1. Coming soon - pics from 2001 Flower Festival, and interior shots of St Swithun's Church. Expect to see these in the next few days.
2. Site "enhancement" - we are experimenting with page scrolling! See Home Page, let it load, and then wait a few seconds, and it will begin to scroll slowly towards the bottom of the page - you should be able to read all the items without having to do anything! What do you think? There are a number of "wordy" pages in the site, and if it makes it easier to read them, we will continue to add this feature. Let us know - Feedback here.
Sunday 24th June 2001 Go Back to top
1. We are pleased
to have received another award :
from a
new group involved in creating links to similar local sites throughout the UK, where
time and effort has been put in to create interest in the local community. We are
proud and honoured to receive this recognition. (Click on the logo above to visit
their site)
Thursday 14th June 2001 Go Back to top
1. In an important development for Sandy, we have teamed up with other members of the local community, to form "Sandy Historical Research Group". More details will follow, but the objective of the group will be to collate and archive local information, in a number of media formats, and present these to the world as an historic record of Sandy over the last 100 years or so. The project, which is long term, and could well last up to 10 years, will preserve a wealth of historical detail about the local area, for all who desire to enquire. We are proud to be associated with such a project, and intend to give as much support as possible to the newly formed group. Anyone interested in joining the project, or contributing any useful data will, we are sure, be made most welcome. We will pass on any enquiries received via this site. Click here for the feedback form, or e-mail us.
2. Sandy Summer Festival 2001 details have been announced, and the local Scout group has set up a website with all the details. Click here to view. Incidentally, due to other commitments, the web authors will be unavailable to capture the event with their digital camera this year. Anyone who has one, and is willing to take some pics of the parade and any others events, including the fun day at Sandye Place, then we would be pleased to receive your downloads via e-mail.
3. Finally, we have now received a pic of "old" St Swithun's school in St Neots Road, and in a little while, we will publish a report of the school inspection, which took place in 1906. Please come back for details later.
Friday 25th May 2001 Go Back to top
1. New Local Site link - Waresley. Oliver Broderick, who was born in the village, has illustrated the history of Waresley on this site.
2. The old Wards Car Sales site in London Road, has been taken over by the Hunts Car Company - looks like it will be opening very soon.
Monday 21st May 2001 Go Back to top
1. A number of local events have been announced, which are taking place over the next month or so. Click here for details. Local Organisation secretaries - we are being asked all the time for information about local events, from visitors near and far. Get your event publicised - send us details via the Feedback Form, or e-mail us at info@sandy-bedfordshire.co.uk. The service is free, keeps our site topical and up to date, and helps you to publicise your groups and events.
2. Richard Frood was installed as our Town Mayor, on 14th May. Deputy Mayor is Martin Pettit. Sandy Town Council site details here.
Saturday 28th April 2001 Go Back to top
1. Looks like a couple of businesses have "gone away" - Sandy Sound & Vision and E-commultimedia in the High Street. It leaves Sandy very light on electronics services, but presumably not viable.
2. We are considering setting up a weekly news page, so that topical items can be featured for the interest of our visitors. What do you think? We will be developing this over the next few weeks, but send us your FeedBack.
3. Don't forget our local "e-mail address" offer (See below for more details). £5 a year - funds used to keep Sandy Community Website on the Net.
Tuesday 3rd April 2001 Go Back to top
1. We have just been voted "Site of the Month", by John Pilgrim's "Out and About" feature programme on our Local radio station, 3CR. This is broadcast in the UK, on 95.5FM every weekday from 2.00pm. Click here for more information about the programme, through the website.
2. Feedback Form - we have had a few problems recently, but all now working OK again - thanks to Alan Dansey for highlighting the most recent one. (No thanks to UK2net - who have changed their directory without telling anyone!)
3. Visitors! - In recent days, we have been getting over 100 visitors per day, many local, but still from all over the world! We're delighted that the site continues to provide interest and information for many ex-pats and others keen to know about Sandy and the local area. Our links to local businesses and other organisations, provide the perfect platform - so send us your info if we haven't already got it. This service remains "free", but if anyone is interested in sponsorship - we are always keen to hear from you - only a small amount of funding will keep us going for 2 years or more! sponsorship@sandy-bedfordshire.co.uk to register your interest. Thanks. Go Back to top
4. Now we are getting famous (!?) - we wonder if anyone would be interested in getting a cool e-mail address - strictly for local residents - "yourname@sandy-beds.com". Well now we can offer this. In fact, due to some astute planning, you can have "yourname@sandy-bedfordshire.com", "yourname@sandy-beds.co.uk", "yourname@sandybeds.com", and others besides. The price ? - £5 per year, and we will tell you how to set up your mail program, so that your mail comes from the "right" address. Just click on any of the above mailing links with your request and we will get back to you. NB - with the help of funds from this service, we can continue to run and develop the Sandy Bedfordshire Community website. Thanks. Go Back to top
5. Coming soon! - We must be gluttons for punishment, but in the next few weeks, we are going to launch this site in French! (good for our "twins" in Malaunay), and this will be followed by German, and Italian, What do you think? Send us feedback - click here to access the Feedback Form.
Saturday 3rd March 2001 Go Back to top
1. New Link! - We have found a very interesting site which details the history of Hazells Hall, the family seat of the Pyms since the 18th Century. Rich in detail and with lots of photo's, we can recommend a visit to this site for all who wish to complete their knowledge of the local area. Click here to go now!
1. Our Events Calendar is looking very thin! If you have an event that is going ahead in the near future, please e-mail the details and we will feature the event in our Local Events pages. Does anyone have any details about the timings of this year's "Sandy 10" road race?
2. Our Hit Rate is up again! We are now averaging 2000 hits per day, with visitors from near and far. Recent visits have been from China, Barbados and Singapore. Welcome one and all!
Sunday 18th February 2001 Go Back to top
1. Poll is now closed - thanks for all who took the trouble to vote. The results are quite revealing - most of you like our history content, community information and photos of local scenes and events. Not too many were interested in the Business Directory, or the useful links (except for local links). The jury's out on our colour scheme! We will run another poll in a couple of month's time.
2. We've won an award! - Bedfordshire Net have presented us with a Gold Award, for the quality and Content of the site, and we thank all who have been involved in getting us there.
3. More History, more Content! - we have found some more historical information about Sandy and the area, and with the kind permission of Alan Stanier (of Essex University), we will be displaying this in our History pages over the next few weeks.
4. New Link! - Mid Beds Citizens Advice Bureau now has a website. (Link is in our Community Services page - to view CAB now click here
5. Another plea - we desperately need a photo or drawing of the old St Swithun's School in St Neots Road - the building was demolished more than 10 years ago now, but we have some interesting history from 1906, which we would like to illustrate. Also, if anyone has any old photo's of Sandy, which could be used to illustrate our History pages, please get in touch. We will gladly acknowledge all sources. Our e-mail is info@sandy-bedfordshire.co.uk
Sunday 28th January 2001 Go Back to top
1. Over fifty links updated in our useful links pages. Two local links sites have "gone away" for the moment - we will keep a lookout for when they come back online.
2. Site Poll - Some you have been kind enough to vote in our site poll - go and vote now! Early indications are that you like our history pages. We'll keep it going for another two weeks or so, and then publish the final results.
Sunday 21st January 2001 Go Back to top
1. We have a new sponsor! - SBnet are a locally based provider of webspace, web hosting &
management, web design and much more. Coming soon, e-mail SBnet to register your interest.
2. In the meantime, if you want to buy a Domain name - try 123-Reg, the cheapest source around, with
lots of free services thrown in. They're half the price of their nearest rivals! Go Try them out.
Saturday 6th January 2001 Go Back to top
1. New! Vote in our Web Poll - help us to improve our content during 2001. Click here to vote.
2. Sponsors wanted. A small donation will keep this site going for another 2 years. We will feature
sponsor on page(s) of their choice (depending on sponsorship level). Contact the site managers at:
Tuesday 26th December 2000 Go Back to top
1. More shops, services and businesses added to directory - more support for local traders.
2. New version of Street Map added - more up to date, shows all new estate roads and link to A1 from Sunderland Road.
3. Christmas and Seasonal Greetings received from our "twins" in the USA - Happy Holidays!
4. Christmas Greetings received from John Pilgrim, local radio presenter of "Out and About" on 3CR.
Saturday 16th December 2000 Go Back to top
1. Welcome to a new site for Everton - one of our neighbouring villages in Bedfordshire. Click