UFN (Unofficial Football Network) is coming soon
UFN is going to be a network of the best
Premiership web sites, all (naturally) created by fans
As well as the collection of independent sites (one or more
for each team) there will be general services available from
the UFN central site.
This is still in the last stages of construction and
due to launch early in December, but if you visit it
you can request an email notification of the UFN kick-off.
UFN is being set up by FutureNet, but they are not interested in
editorial control. So the separate sites will maintain their
individuality and opinionated stances.
What does ArseWeb get out of it?
Two things
First, we get to be part of something bigger, and it helps
consolidate our position as (one of) the biggest and best.
When ArseWeb started, there was not a single Arsenal web site
on the Internet. Now there are loads, and more coming online all
the time. It's very hard for newcomers to the Internet to tell,
from the results of Search Engines etc, which sites
are worth looking at and which aren't. A collective site like
UFN should help people to find their way to ArseWeb more
quickly.
NB our involvement with the Guardian/Observer
(see FUN page) was also undertaken with this
in mind.
Second, we get money. Part of the deal is that ads are run on
ArseWeb, and we get a cut. This is not to say that ArseWeb is
going to become a commercial operation....
The fact is that the
cost of running the site, both in financial terms and in terms
of time spent on it, has become such that it would simply not
be possible to carry on unless the site can start covering its
expenses. ArseWeb nearly ended in the summer of 98 because of this,
but we decided to give it one more season to try and generate
enough revenue to cover itself.
And the chance of going with an organisation with experience
of web advertising, and which was imaginative and enthusiastic
about creating a new kind of Football web site, was too good
to pass up.
The bad news is that for technical reasons,
in order to run the ads we need to start using Frames on the site.
Please rest assured that
- Frames will be kept to a minimum. There will be one ad frame
at the bottom of the page (as unobtrusive as possible), and one
other Frame which will contain
the ArseWeb site just as it is now. There will be no interaction
between Frames to confuse things.
- We will make every effort to ensure that people with browsers
that don't display Frames, or who choose not to, will not have
problems using ArseWeb. If you find that you do have such problems,
please Let us know immediately.
- It will be possible to jump to a Frameless version of the site,
from the home page if not elsewhere. If you feel strongly against having the
Frames, or if they seem not to work (in which case please tell us!),
then by all means use the Frameless version. However please note that
ArseWeb's financial well-being and hence its continmued existence
depends on the income from these ads. So if you like the site and
can put up with the Frames please do so!
Coming soon is the ArseWeb NewsReel, a brand new and
(we think) totally unique news service. It will be threadde and
easy to use, and should be bang up to
date, from all sorts of sources, and from the Arsenal fans
viewpoint. We expect NewsReel to go live shortly after UFN.
Other forthcoming changes should include a domain name (so that the
ArseWeb URL will be something like www.arseweb.com), and more disk
space, so we can bring you more stuff without hitting our heads on
the ceiling all the time!
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