For seven or eight years, I ran a website called Britlinks. Over that time, it grew from a simple list of links gleaned from altavista, usenet, and greenbelt programmes into a pretty hefty database of information about bands based in the UK and Ireland with some form of affiliation with the Christian faith.
I tried to use the site to tread and promote the thin path of asserting some value in community between Christian musicians, but avoiding most of the trappings that plague ‘Contemporary Christian Music.’ That attempt met with mixed success, and its results are still difficult to judge, but it certainly drew quite a number of visitors and built up sizable mailing lists.
A few years ago, I began trying to pass the site on, hoping that someone of like mind but more free time might pick it up and run with it. That’s not happened, and yesterday, after a little polishing of the code, I officially put the site into an ‘archive’ mode. It’s now complete with warnings on each page not to expect up to date information, and a brief history.
Running britlinks was quite a ride, and if it weren’t for that site my life would look quite different. But it feels good to have put it to rest in a more official manner.