Without Jim we would not have the Forum or the PayPal facility that you all seem to love but he has not the time to maintain the body of the web site and to keep it fresh and up to date, and neither should we expect him to.
We need someone who is prepared to take it on who is prepared to devote a lot of time and energy to create a new format.
That scares people off.
Given the recent comments by several people regarding the difficulty in submitting and paying for Register inclusion online, I am going to update that section to make it happen.
Prior to this I have been taking a "hands off" approach to everything for a number of reasons, the primary one being that there was a time when the site appeared to have an enthusiastic person willing to migrate it to a new, simple format that would be easy to update.
If I continue to update the site and in particular, get rid of the toilet blue background that is everywhere, there is really no incentive for anyone else to do the work.
Also- my time has been extremely limited in the last year.
I think I can safely say that for most everyone here they would much rather devote "a lot of time and energy" to their cars and other elements of the hobby, not sitting in front of a computer for hours on end working out how to make things work for everyone else.
I have said it before and I say it again now: The only reason I am "in charge" of the Rumcars site is because absolutely no one stepped forward after Darren declared his term to be over.
I told him I would be willing to do it as a "last resort" only. and......the rest is history.
I did not take it over to re-do it and constantly update it and freshen it up. I did it primarily to maintain the forum and also because I really enjoy RUMCARS.
I've also been able to provide the domain name and hosting for ZERO money in the hopes that this might free up some funds to be used elsewhere.
I think RUMCARS needs to seriously consider finding some money somewhere to PAY someone to set up a new, fresh site that is easy to update and maintain.
It needs to be able to incorporate this Forum AS-IS as well. This is not difficult but it takes a bit of effort.
Volunteers have no real incentive to take on a project like this or finish it. (it is never "finished")
That being said, money alone will not guarantee that things get done.
And no, I do not want to be paid to do the website.
I think RUMCARS needs to sit down with everyone involved and discuss
Where You Are Now,
Where You Want To Be in 2 years, 5 years, etc
How It Will Be Possible.
When I was on the Board of Directors of the old Microcar & Minicar Club in the USA, I tried to get the others to have this same discussion.
No one on the Board really wanted to discuss it at length.
I never suggested any ideas that I was not personally willing to implement, but could never get any of the other "volunteers" to actually do anything.
For many years they were in "reactive" mode where all they did was put out fires because no one wanted to address the future.
Eventually they imploded, blaming me of course because I saw the writing on the wall and left.
I don't want to see that happen here.