Southwight to be free

Southwight Broadband Limited will be closing for business - this is the bad news - BUT there is also good news. Read on....

1. Good news: thanks to the founders of Southwight, you can continue to use the Southwight network for free, as they plan to donate the southwight network to a not-for-profit organisation in Ventnor. More on this later.
2. Bad news: all southwight.com email addresses and website addresses will be ceased at the end of March/early April. If any of you want to keep the addresses you have, just drop a line to mark@southwight.com and let Mark know. In which case he'll propose a solution for you.

In the meantime, the network will continue to run and you can continue to use it, for free.

If you are not a paying customer of Southwight, but would like to have a free service, please look back here for more information in the coming weeks.

Installation and technical support

For help on installation or technical support, please contact our technical partners, Mike Downes or Chris Street.

Mike Downes specialises in aerial installation, external and internal cabling.

• website http://www.wightaerials.com
• email info@wightaerials.com
• tel 01983 852968 or 079 7351 1614

Chris Street specialises in PCs and configuration issues.

• website http://www.iwpcs.com
• email chris@iwpcs.com
• tel 01983 852565 or 078 9150 9466

See also:

• New billing system
• New reduced rates

New Reduced Rates

We are pleased to announce a new low price - just £10 a month and we are also launching a simplified online payment system, which will be live in May 2005.

From the beginning of May 2005, we will be reducing the cost of the service to £10 a month. This is due to the arrival of ADSL in local exchanges, which has led to a reduction of charges for the lines used by SWB and we are pleased to be able to pass this reduction in costs on to our subscribers. Please note that as our costs are reduced, we are able to de-register for VAT, saving a further 17.5% over other suppliers. Therefore the new rate of £10 per month is just that - £10! This is approximately 30%-40% less than the basic broadband services now being offered by the ADSL suppliers (who typically charge £15 a month plus VAT).

The speed of the service offered by SWB will be unaffected by the drop in costs, and may therefore be 2 or 3 times faster than the broadband connection offered by these other suppliers.

We will also offer the same reduced rates for new subscribers - so please pass this news on to anyone you know who is thinking of getting a broadband connection!

New Billing System

SWB has implemented a new online billing system. To provide sufficient time for you to set up your account on the new payment system, we will not be billing existing users at all during May.

Please register for the new payment system and follow the instructions. This is a secure billing system hosted by SWB parters "Midas Billing". Click “Register” and fill in your details.

Please select the “Private/Domestic” package.

The MAC Address for your computer is printed on the enclosed invoice. Please type this carefully into the boxes provided (2 digits per box). This information allows our network and the billing system to identify your computer. If you connect from a different computer you will need to log-in using the Locust World screen.

In the Reference box please enter your SWB user name that you use to log in (its on the enclosed invoice).

Select your preferred payment method, either Credit Card or UK Direct Debit from the list box Payment Type.

Fill in your credit card or bank account details and click Submit.
If paying by credit card, the Authorisation Number is the last three digits of the number on the signature strip on the back of the credit card (for Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, EuroCard or Switch) or the 4 digit number at the right hand side on the front of American Express Cards.

This is a secure site and your credit card details will be encrypted when sent over the internet.

To ensure you have uninterrupted service, please register for online payments before 31st May. Your first payment will be deducted from your credit card or bank account in early June and Monthly thereafter.

We would like to thank you for your custom over the past year. And we look forward to continuing to provide you with fast, convenient, low cost online services over the coming year, and beyond.

Billing System:

https://secure.tempest-technology.com/midas/default.asp?meshowner=markepeoplecom&realm=SOUTHWIGHT

What is Broadband?

Broadband Internet access - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

Setting up a blog for your SouthWight website

This is a basic guide to setting up a basic blog on your SouthWight website using Blogger. I'm not particularly recommending Blogger, but its easy enough and thats a good thing for basic guide, right?

Basic Settings Blogger

If necessary, create an account on Blogger. Then set up a new blog. All the settings below should be applied to this new blog, consequently it will post the results into your SouthWight website using your SouthWight FTP service (yes, all included in your account!).

Remember when you filled in your subscription form? On the form I asked you to specify your preferred account name. In the settings below, use your account name where I have "account_name", if in doubt it is the one I confirmed in your welcome message (along with your password).

On setting up a new blog, work through all the settings, for hosting, make sure you don't use Blogspace to host (assuming you want to use SouthWight).

Basic

Set the Title to whatever you want, same with the description and other basic settings. This bit is about you and your blog, not technical stuff.

Publishing

These are technical settings for the SouthWight server, enabling Blogger to send your website posts to SouthWight, so we can show 'em. Ensure you enter the information correctly, substituting account_name and password with, you guessed it your account name and your password!

Make sure you use the default FTP setting (not SFTP) before you fill in the form.

FTP Server: ftp.southwight.com
Blog URL: http://southwight.com/~account_name -- where account_name is the account name I sent you in your welcome message and the one you put on your subs form!
FTP Path:
Blog filename: index.html
FTP Username: account_name
FTP Password: your_password
Ping Weblogs.com: -- advanced stuff, read, you decide!

Formatting

This section lets you specify how your posts appear, how to display date, time, your name and so on. Give this a go on your own - its all up to you anyway.

Comments

These setting determine whether you allow other people to post to your blog, i.e. add comments. And if you do allow this, what are the restrictions if any. Nice feature, especially for your readers.

Archving

This is highly recommended. Archiving means that over time your blog will be automagically sorted into archives in date order, meaning you keep your home page small and neat, with all past posts just a click away.

Archiving frequency: monthly (say)
Enable post pages: YES
Archive Path: archive/
Archive URL: leave blank
Archive Filename: archive.html

Site Feed

An advanced setting for allowing your site to be syndicated.

Publish site Feed: YES
Descriptions: Full
Site feed server path:
Site Feed filename: atom.xml
Site Feed URL: atom.xml

Email

Advanced setting for allowing email posting.

Members

Advanced setting for allowing more than one person to blog to this site (family, company members, etc., for example). A most excellent use of this idea is Boing Boing: A Directory of Wonderful Things.

GmailFS - Fab Google Hack

If all the BS about privacy in GMail doesn't bother you, then you should have a look at this very cool google hack from Richard Jones. Strictly for the geeks!

Here we go...

This is a new blog relating to South Wight Broadband, community networking, etc. More to come.


In the meantime, any SWB members reading this should note that blogging software and services, such as this one, are the simplest way to publish a web site. This took all of 5 minutes!


Have fun.