Briar Press classified section

There has not been a new ad since January 8. Is it a problem with the website or is nobody choosing to advertise here any more?

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I know, I noticed the same thing as I tried to place an ad some two months ao.

Hi, my name is Dave Hughes, and some of you may know me through the Metal Type website.

I have used the Briar Press website for many years and will be sorry if current events are signs of the site’s demise.

I hear that the site is currently unable to take new advertisements. I would like to offer some assistance in the shape of a free letterpress advertising platform.

Metal Type is on shared hosting and currently operates well below its resource limits.

It is based in the UK, but has an international audience, with the majority of users coming from the US and Canada.

It has some tremendous light-weight advertising software which is currently under-utilised.

Advertising is free and adverts currently delete themselves after 90 days. The option to create an account gives users their own control panel to manage their ads.

There are categories for Composing, Presses and Books/Publications, both for sale and wanted. Adverts do not appear immediately but need to wait for Moderation (which is done by me). Please bear in mind that my sleep pattern may be different to yours!

Posting ads is pretty straightforward and Ads can contain photos. There is an automatic email which sends out details of new ads to subscribers.

I hope everyone takes this post in the spirit it is intended. My aim is to offer assistance to the letterpress community, not to further harm Briar Press.

Here are the links:

Metal Type Ads: https://bit.ly/3KcDCRM

New Adverts Mailing List: https://bit.ly/3lI5oeU

Is it a matter of the available disc space for a sector containing ads being too full? I had an old ad of a few lines, no photo, from a year ago. Went and deleted it. Can someone else post a small line ad now? Or is the problem bigger than this?

I see somebody has managed to place an ad. A few days ago I tried to add to this discussion and couldn’t. I got an email address for a site administrator who I wrote to right away. No reply so far.

Actually there are a number of ads with January and February dates. You have to skip over the first ads listed which have December dates to get to the 2023 ones. This is such a cleaner site and it deserves much better support. It’s not how glitzy a site is but how well the material is presented and how relevant the discussions are.

Actually there are a number of ads with January and February dates. You have to skip over the first ads listed which have December dates to get to the 2023 ones. This is such a cleaner site and it deserves much better support. It’s not how glitzy a site is but how well the material is presented and how relevant the discussions are.

January 8 to February 16 — nothing. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. There is a link to an administrator but I haven’t bothered her/him yet. Lots of agreement that this is a great site.

All,

Thanks so much for your concern about Briar Press.

I’m happy to send word that reports about the death of Briar Press are (somewhat) exaggerated. But we are indeed experiencing a months-long backlog and, in a larger sense, a difficult moment of transition.

The current and fifth version of the website, which was launched back in 2007, is reaching the end of its functional life. It has fallen into a state of arrested decay, and must be administered by an arcane set of processes. Elizabeth, in her 80s and suffering from health issues, is no longer able to keep it afloat as she has for so many years. A remote support specialist we hired has been unable to continue, and I need to find and train someone new.

A screen-by-screen redesign of Briar Press already exists on paper, so to speak — more accurately, in Figma, a UI design tool. In the design work we sought to preserve the non-profit spirit of Briar Press while updating the user experience and improving accessibility across desktop and mobile devices.

Building the site on a new technology platform is the next step. And here I’ve been stalled as I consider the time and difficulty involved in launching a new website while also preserving a wealth of existing content. I’m currently working with a product specialist to develop a feasible development road map.

Meanwhile, as administrative support on the current website unraveled over the past few months, I’ve had no bandwidth to address the site’s operational needs. This dire state appears quite reasonably to be fueling the impression that we have simply given up.

I don’t have much spare time right now to provide regular updates, but would be very interested to hear thoughts from anyone who has an interest in seeing Briar Press endure. I am among those who do, and am aiming to see that it does.

Eric Nevin