The Bad News: After 12 years of continuous operation Village14 is closing down as of Aug 1
The Good News: When we decided to pull the plug, the one issue that many folks felt strongly about is that they wanted that 12 years of Newton history to somehow be available on line as an archive of some sorts. We were talking to various folks, trying to come up with some means for that to happen. Our old friend Jon Shubow from Serpcom reached out and proposed a perfect solution.
Jon was the administrator of the Newton Tab blog and then later became the Village14 administrator when V14 launched. He now works for a web hosting company called SERPCOM. SERPCOM and Jon has been taken care of all V14 tech issues for years now … and for that we have been paying them a very reasonable monthly fee.
Jon said that if we turned off comments and stopped all new activity that there would be very little tech support for SERPCOM to do – just occasional security patches but they’d be no dealing with user issues. He’s offered to continue hosting this read-only archive version of Village14 and pay for the minimal hosting cost by running ads. This is a great short-to-medium term solution. At some point in the future if activity falls off too far we may have to revisit that, but in the meantime Village14 will remain just where it is, with the commenting disabled as of Aug 1.
The other very good thing about this plan is that if anyone should come forward in the coming months with a credible and acceptable plan for running Village14, we could just flick the switch and be back on-line immediately.
Many thanks to Jon Shubow and SERPCOM … and of course many thanks to all of you – the contributors, the commenters, and the readers who have kept this running for the past 12 years.
No news about what is happening in Newton anymore
Does a credible plan include just forwarding this website to a Facebook page for ppl to comment and post ?
@Bugek There is a Facebook page. The link is in the footer. Or go to: https://www.facebook.com/Village14/
I am exceptionally thrilled to keep the stories of which I am involved in alive and would appreciate a nominal fee to do just that. It’s part ‘n parcel as a business advertising expense. https://web.archive.org/web/20220718134231/https://village14.com/2016/11/15/nnhs-students-preserve-some-newton-history/
https://boston.craigslist.org/bmw/off/d/newtonville-newtonville-depot-1st-floor/7646666580.html
Shout out to Jon Shubow for offering his technical expertise at little to no charge. What a mensch. Jon, I don’t know if you ever read these posts, but you and I have been connected for over 55 years. Jen and Jessica and Lillian and Larry were good friends of my mom and Sarah and Jack Yules. This is wonderful news that you are going to help preserve a treasure trove of memories.
@Jo-Louise Allen Thank you.
So as I imagine it, Greg, Sean, Jerry and a few other others were out and about for a walk in Newton 12 years ago when suddenly from the fog emerged a 14th village. It both wasn’t there before, and somehow had always been there. It was both jarring and familiar. This mythical blessed (and perhaps cursed) village was a place of joy and jibing, of debate and discussion, of policy and parody and most of all of participation.
But this was a magical place, and one where the spell could be broken (and often was). And just like that other magical place, this one could not last when the key villagers were drawn away.
Perhaps one day we will return to this spot to try to find this fabled place. We will find nothing but the mist… unless we can awaken a new proverbial Mr. (Ms?) Lundie.