Affected by Commanet going out of business

Due to Commanet going out of business, guests/visitors no longer have online access to our archive via the web. Using services and software that is ‘specialist’ leaves users vunerable to such events, and for small unfunded archives it’s an expensive risk. 

For those of us who are not programmers, but want a simple but flexible tool to enable the creation of electronic archives [that include images, video and audio files] there seems to be a hole in the market. We have a history going back to 1935, but are again unable to easily share it electronically, which seems a shame.

Comments about this page

  • Hi Bill,

    I run the Ossett and Gawthorpe Community Archive. We too are Commanet users. I have just seen your post.

    I am sure you will be interested to know that a group has been formed of about 10 Commanet groups from the Wakefield area (including Methley) and groups in North Wales. Development of the replacement system is going well.. The group who have taken the lead is The Buckley Society who have a technical volunteer. The idea is that there will be one website and each group will have its own section. There is no cost for the system development but each group will pay an annual share of the hosting costs. This in total is estimated at between £200 a year and £500 a year – at the most an average cost each of £50.

    If you are interested in finding out more please contact me on ossettarchive@gmail.com.

    There is a possibility we may, subject to Leeds University getting grant approval, that we will be working with them on their Yarns project. This too may be of interest to you.

    It would be good to hear from you.

    Regards

    Mike Adams

    By Mike Adams (15/05/2016)
  • Our archive in Tadcaster is affected in a similar way and we can no longer input data.
    I am developing a replacement system which aims to be as “open” and low-cost as possible. (Open in the sense the data is stored in text files, the data is indexed by a free-text search package and the application is written in Python, Javascript, HTML5 and CSS under a CC license.
    I was able to extract the content of the database tables to recover the data. This is not without problems, for example discovering the meaning of the numbers in the hotspot table took a while and I am still not sure of the correct meaning of the numbers in some of the category tables.
    If anyone is doing anything similar I would be grateful if you could contact me.

    By Billl Oldroyd (27/02/2016)
  • John- thanks for your helpful comment. We have already looked at your suggested solution but will probably not go with it because of of both initial and ongoing costs.

    We are finding other groups around the Country who are trying to resolve the same problem and at present we are thinking of how we can work together.

    By Mike Adams (04/02/2016)
  • Take a look at http://www.ccan.co.uk ,one of which sites (Little Downham) I manage. There was a 40+ group of Commanet sites in Cambridgeshire caught in the same bind. We are now hosted by Community Sites; if the geography can be stretched a bit you might be able to piggyback on the same colution. Please mail me if I can help further.

    By John Clarke (25/01/2016)
  • Hi

    I look after the Ossett and Gawthorpe Community Archive which is kept on Commanet software. We are desparate to find a solution to the problems created by the demise of Commanet. We need to get our archive back on the Internet so that we can participate in Leeds Iniversity’s “Yarns” project.
    I have found three other groups interested in trying to find an acceptable solution.
    Would you like to be involved?

    Regards

    Mike Adams

    By Michael Adams (26/11/2015)

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