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About Marlborough Online

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Last Modified: 12-1-2023 21:49

Marlborough Online has been providing information about the Marlborough region since 1999. The site is one of the oldest NZ regional websites. Initially the site was launched by the company Marlborough Online Limited, however although the company wasn't a commercial success and the web site became an independent entity after two years.

How Marlborough Online came about

The concept came originally from frustration at lack of regional information available on the web.
At the time the site was initially launched, there was very little information about Marlborough available on the web. Wordpress did not exist, Google was less than a year old, social media had not been invented, stuff.co.nz did not yet exist, broadband was an expensive luxury that only a few businesses could afford, and digital cameras costing more than a cheap DSLR today used floppy disks for storage to take lower resolution photos than a cheap smartphone today.
In this environment Marlborough Online was established to tell stories about the people, history and natural environment of Marlborough and make them accessible to anyone with an internet connection.

At high school, I'd contributed substantially with both photography, written content, and layout to the school annual the Marlburian, back in the days when cut and paste meant scissors and glue, so making a start in online publishing was exciting after having to abandon producing creative content after what I'd thought would be a science career.
As the site grew, it soon became necessary to have some form of content management system, and with Wordpress and other now popular systems yet to be invented, I developed Webpression, the CMS that powered Marlborough Online, from 2000 till 2017 to provide a publishing system for the site. Over the years the Webpression CMS has been used for various other local Marlborough web sites at various stages, including the Marlborough Civic Theatre, The Millennium Art Gallery, various legal practices and others. In 2017, the website was migrated to the open source CMS, Processwire to provide a modern, flexible platform for ongoing development without the need to maintain an entire CMS individually.

Telling the Marlborough Story

The concept behind Marlborough Online remains the same years after it initially went live in 1999, to provide timeless information about Marlborough to anyone with internet access, particularly information that might not otherwise be made available online. If there is any model that provides an inspiration for what Marlborough Online is, or should be, it would have to be National Geographic Magazine. I remember as a child, being fascinated by the incredible stories and photography from exotic locations around the world that National Geographic revealed each month.

As a young adult, I was desperate to leave Marlborough as I thought it was boring, but after being forced to return due to health issues, I started to scratch below the surface, and realised that Marlborough is incredibly rich in history, nature and culture, and easily has enough material to fill its own equivalent of National Geographic every month.

As computing power, photographic equipment and internet connections have improved, I the way I document the rich diversity that is Marlborough. In the early days, photos on the site were scanned from prints, and had to be small to cope with dial-up connections. Nowdays I have a DSLR along with Photoshop and Lightroom, so that images can be made to look their best and uploaded in minutes.
Researching articles can be incredibly time consuming, so I've tended to focus more on images, but the intention is to provide quality articles as time and money permits.
In addition to the web site, Marlborough Online has also embraced social media, with a Facebook page, Instagram account and Twitter feed, to keep people updated with new material. 

How You can Help

Keeping Marlborough Online involves a lot of time, and some expense. The web site doesn't receive grants or other funding, and involves personal expense to keep it online. The site earns some advertising revenue from Google, but this can be highly variable and doesn't always pay the bills.

  • Donate through PressPatron or Patreon which allows you to make a financial contribution to the site. (If you register on the site, you'll also have your account upgraded to ad free status if you support the site.)
  • If you're a Marlborough based business, you can also show your support by contracting my business Create IT to build your website. Income from paid work helps subsidise Marlborough Online.
  • You can also show your support by purchasing items from the online shop including of 'Wind on the Withers', and 'Tales of the Taylor' books of poetry and photography featuring the Marlborough region.
  • If you would like to license images or articles, please use the site contact form to make a request with your requirements. I take copyright seriously, and do take action against any unauthorised use of content on this site, however I'm open to reasonable requests, and in the case of non-profit use, may be prepared to grant rights to content at no charge.
  • If you have local Marlborough content that you'd like to contribute, I'm happy to consider public submissions for articles.

Christopher Cookson
Editor

Cite this page

Cookson, C. (2023). About Marlborough Online. Retrieved March, 19, 2024, from https://www.marlboroughonline.co.nz/marlborough/about

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