The Vintage Racer Needs Your Help! 

If you're a site regular, you already know that in August of 2008, the site just vanished.  TVR had been hosted by the same company for over 9 years.  Then suddenly it was gone!  Not only did our site disappear, but so did hundreds of other sites that were with the same company.  Even the hosting company's website was gone.  It turns out they decided to sell the company and the new owners were moving it to another state.  Without any warning, they simply pulled the plug for several months.  During the outage, I was scrambling to move the site and salvage what I could. Unfortunately, some of the old site was lost, such as the satellite photo section and the message board, since those databases were on the old server itself. 

The good news is that we now have a new home with unlimited storage and unlimited bandwidth with a very reputable hosting company, GoDaddy.com (who actively supports racing).  We'll never again have to worry about running out of room.  To say the least, rebuilding this site is proving to be quite an undertaking.  To date (now in our 10th year), I have been the lone Webmaster and have hand coded each and every one of those pages over those years.  Since I now have to rebuild anyway, I've decided to add some exciting features which will make the site far more interactive.  Almost daily I get emails with lots of great memories, photos and statistics which is far too much for one person to keep up with and some of it unavoidably slips through the cracks.  That bothers me to no end, but there just isn't enough hours in a day.  My goal is to upgrade the site so that anyone with the same interest in racing history can easily submit their own items in a user friendly way where you do not have to have a degree in computer science to submit something.

Here's where I need your help.  I have always been proud of the fact that I have kept the site non-commercial and funded it entirely out of my own pocket.  However, in order to expand the site, the costs have grown a little beyond my reach alone.  In order to obtain my goals for TVR, I've decided to start offering paid advertising, as well as adding a "Donate" button.  I'm not looking to make a profit, just make enough to meet the site's expenses.  At a cost of about $500 a year, and by doing the work myself, it's not a huge sum of money, but more than I can justify spending out of my own pocket.

So, if you have a racing, or automotive related business and would like to advertise on a site that reaches thousands of people with the same interests, please feel free to contact me at tvr1@comcast.net.  Consider this... Where else can you buy 12 months of exposure for your business to an average of 10 million visitors a year (of a specific type) at less than the cost of one week's advertising in a local newspaper? 

Also, if you have a few dollars you'd be willing to invest in a place where we can all share the same love of the sport, please make use of the "Donate" button.  I know money is tight for everyone right now, but every little bit helps.  And by the way, that button will be removed once I have enough to cover the year's expenses.  I will not be taking advantage of anyone's generosity.  If need be, the button will be returned the following year before our renewal becomes due, unless we gain adequate advertising to support us.

In advance, I’d like to thank everyone for their support and understanding.

Dave Zortman
tvr1@comcast.net
Editor & Webmaster
TheVintageRacer.com