As regulars to go-bare.com will already have heard, GO BARE, the naturist community run by Ian Battersby closed yesterday. I share the sentiments expressed on the Yahoo! group, go-bare.com, by Peter, David and Steve and have written to Ian to express my sadness that he has had to close the GO BARE site. I don't know his reasons for this decision, but it must have been a very difficult decision to take. I have sent my good wishes to him for every success in his future endeavours.

I have reminded Ian that go-bare.org (this site!), similar in functionality to the GO BARE site, has been operational since April 2005 and that all former GO BARE users are invited to join us here, and/or the go-bare.com group, as they choose, as currently no forum exists on the BN site, and is unlikely to, and neither do the excellent naturist sites like NUFF http://www.nuff.org.uk or Shabden http://shabden.co.uk provide a forum (Ray: Thanks for your support and kind words in the forum here - you can buy all the merchandise you want from the reliable and reputable Shabden site!)

I have also offered to preserve the entire message database from GO BARE within the forum hosted here. Ian may be unsure whether he wants this to happen - he would have to provide me with the database file - so I would encourage all former supporters/subscribers of GO BARE to write to Ian directly at ian@gobare.com and express your support, or otherwise, for this to happen. It would help also if people would let me know whether they would like to see this happen. Personally, I think it would be very sad to lose all the supportive messages and accounts of GO BARE and other experiences, particularly those relating to Abbey House Gardens, WNBR, and Tunick in Newcastle, to mention just a few. I certainly enjoyed reading all those threads along with those relating to our national organisation.

As far as GO BARE/go-bare 'ownership' is concerned, it might help to remind people how GO BARE came about and why it appears to have the same name as this site!

In May 2003, in conversation with Stuart Troughton, a good friend and supporter of all the various 'clothes-freedom' initiatives (and recent BN pro-change candidate - see http://naturists-uk.org), we were considering, as we had done for some time, a new site, given that a large following had amassed from 2001, on Vincent Bethell's Stopsegregation group, but he, VB, was unhappy with the many 'naturists' who had got 'involved' with picnics and cycle rides! ;-) Anyway, the name 'go bare' was conceived, and given that gobare.com was already registered by someone in the US, but not being used, I first registered go-bare.com on 7th May 2003.

Shortly after, Ian heard about this - through an announcement I made - and offered to set up the site. I welcomed Ian's offer and 'GO BARE' was borne. Ian secured gobare.com from the American, along with some other 'dot' endings for good measure.

Later, given the preference some had for the old style email based groups like Yahoo!, I set up go-bare@yahoogroups.com and pointed go-bare.com at it in Dec 2003 - rather lucky as Steve Gough and I got banned from Vincent's Stopseg group, not long after, for wearing designer clothes and appearing in a newspaper - shame on us! ;-) So, Ian is the registered owner of the domains listed, while I own go-bare.com, go-bare.org, and go-bare.biz

Anyway, somewhat confusingly, the two, GO BARE and go-bare, have (almost) happily co-existed, although one or two seemed to infer a difference in 'ideology' - I'm not sure there really was, but who am I to disagree.

go-bare.org was an experiment in the use of Mambo (as used by me in setting up nakedwalk.org), and has, despite not being promoted (or officially launched!), attracted 169 registered members - and a little more confusion! Well, it exists and will continue to do so for years to come - so use it or not. It's your choice.

go-bare.org is costing nothing - it's one of many sites we (Alex, my son and I) host for the princely sum of $5 per month. The other sites as many will know are:
http://nakedwalk.org
http://naturists-uk.org
plus
http://mambadesign.com (and some of the sites listed in the 'portfolio')
http://autositephp.com
http://part-baked.com
so you can see, long term existence of go-bare.org versus cost, is not an issue. Also go-bare.org requires no special maintenance whatsoever - only people to contribute, and of course it is the contributors that make a site.

For the 'techies' amongst us, the latter three sites are 'technical' sites and reflect Alex's two year development of a fully-featured Content Management System, which is already being sold to individuals, local bands and organisations.

Alex, now 16, and continuing to study computing, provides a full design service in the creation of websites but as yet has not integrated a forum with autositePHP, so go-bare.org will continue to use Mambo for the foreseeable future. If go-bare.org does migrate to autositePHP, it will be seamless to the user and the message/articles database will be fully preserved - that's a guarantee as long as I am able to keep riding my bike!

So, the future is bright. We may have lost an excellent site, but hopefully we have not lost the community which it attracted. go-bare.org is yours to use and I would invite people take part in the publication of news and articles - just let me know and I'll make you an administrator, just as we already have several on nakedwalk.org

Please also let me know if you have any suggestions for improvement of go-bare.org, but bare in mind, it will require volunteers to help with changes - easy for anyone with a little time and basic knowledge of word processing, as Mambo is easily driven, with no special knowledge of websites or html, through a standard browser. And if (when!) go-bare.org migrates to autositePHP, it'll be even better and easier to use, so please do consider clicking the 'donate' button from time to time as this will help oil the wheels, keep Alex going in his studies, and encourage him (and me!) to provide a better service and more features, functions and content.

Good websites don't have to cost £1000s - BN, if you're listening, please take note - but a little contribution and often from you, the subscriber, certainly helps!

Enjoy!

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