• I have spoken to Rod this morning.

    I am going to lay the cards on the table and tell you exactly what is happening and how I personally feel about UKDFD and its present situation.
    I may not come across as tactful... but those of you who know me personally know what I stand for and how I am.


    As many know UKDFD is run on a voluntary basis and people support us with contributions... your not buying anything... you are supporting the cost of the server.. In fact the donations no where near cover that cost. Gordon Heritage and I pay the surplus out of our own pockets and have done for years.

    Now to those of you who think it is your "God Given Right" that this resource exists and your entitled to it, entitled to answers and instant validations is beyond me.

    Upgrading over 50000 records and importing into new systems, new database versions, programming language etc etc is not an easy task.
    I am self taught at building these things and have to learn new stuff all of the time... this takes time... a lot of time.
    We have personal lives as well... Gordon is building a new house and doesn't have time to be involved at the moment.

    The problem we have is that the old software was purchased and highly modified to create this unique database.
    The company who developed the back end have stopped doing anything with the code and we are left to work on a new one.
    Technology advances in web development and our software is to old to work on the new database code.

    If I allow admissions to the database as it stands it will over right records if wrong characters are added.
    It is beyond my capabilities to fix this as Im not a computer/database programmer.

    I fully understand Rods frustration as he cant validate records without the previous version to this database to help him search through.

    Now... there is a few ways of looking at this.
    Refund people who believe they have been "ripped off" by myself and close everything down until I have finished the upgrade.
    Suspend all voluntary contributions and close down the server.
    Or... you can wait.. until the job is done.


    When the new database is open and rebuilt there will be no "free loaders" relying on other supporters to support their own personal use.
    They will be a charge to cover the use of this site like may other websites who run this sort of thing. There will be no people using UKDFD as quick response so they can put their finds on Ebay and use it as a reference.

    This has been a free resource for years for the hobby... and I feel that has been under estimated and in all honestly many are ungrateful.
    Feel free to quote me on all the detecting forums and spread the word that the database will be upgraded and finished when I have the time to complete it. when I find the time to learn new languages and database modifications.

    Also just to add to the mix... the PAS database was down over a year when they where working on their upgrade and they had specialist in this area.

    Please forgive the rant... but yes I am more than a little miffed about the whole thing (notice I was polite there)
    I can not give a timetable... as I dont know what it could be or what other problems come across in this process.