Frequently Asked Questions

This site has been run since 1997 by Adam Sheik and I maintain all these pages in my spare time.  I've lived here all my life so I'm sure a lot of people reading this have seen me around town or know my family, if so please drop me a line.  Also get in touch if you left Longsands from `91-`93,  its always nice to hear from people I went to school with!

Although I maintain this web site a great deal of information is provided by our visitors.  Any local news or information is therefore gratefully received.   Also, anybody wishing to submit an article for publication, photo's of the town or just some snazzy graphics they have created for the site will be most appreciated!

• What relationship does this site have with the town council?
• Who was this St. Neots bloke anyway?
• Can you answer <question> about the town?
• My club/organisation/charity is not listed on the site, can you add it?"
• Here are my business details, can you put them on the site for me?
• How can I add an event to the front page Events Listing and Site Calendar?
• I want to complain about something on the forums!
• I mailed you ages ago and you haven't replied - what happened?!
• Can you please plug this forthcoming local event on your main pages?
• How can I help this website?
• I'm a pupil at <school>.  I have to do a project on the Central Business District of St. Neots - could  you please send me all the information you have?
• Do I know you?
• Can I use <page or picture> for my own website?

And now...  
    ...the Answers!

Q. "What relationship does this site have with the town council?"

A. None whatsoever, and for the record we don't receive any public funding either. We believe that this site best serves our community be remaining independent of the council, so that our users are free to applaud or criticise their performance from a neutral platform.
For their part, the town council maintains an official position of vague disapproval of this site, which you read more about here.
Having said that, plenty of town councillors use the site, and you can be sure they will read your posts on our forums. We're always happy to publicise anything the council asks us to as well.

Q. "Who was this St. Neots bloke anyway?"

A. Try this link: http://www.rootsweb.com/~enghun/places/StNeots.htm

Q. "Can you answer <question> about the town?"

A. It's possible but certainly not guaranteed, I don't know as much about this town as you might think!  To get the speediest response I would urge you to post your question to the knowledgeable folk on the Local Questions discussion forum instead.  Apart from anything, by being answered within the forums of the site your question could help out other people in the future.

Q. "My club/organisation/charity is not listed on the site, can you add it?"

A. Certainly!  Just send me the details and I will add them to the relevant sections.

Q. "Here are my business details, can you put them on the site for me?"

A. Yes I can, but I'm sorry, I won't do it for free.  This web site takes up a considerable portion of my spare time and I am not willing to add to this workload to advertise commercial companies.  It is not always realised that, in addition to paying a hefty fee for corporate webspace, I also incur monthly bandwidth charges.  If nobody paid any advertising, the more popular the website becomes, the more it would cost me.

Please see the Advertising page for more details.

Q. "How can I add an event to the front page Events Listing and Site Calendar?"

A. Provided your event is non-commercial, please post details in the General Chat forum. Please also add the date to the end of the subject heading. eg: "Event X, July 30th"
In the main body of your post, please provide details on location, start time, end time, admission fees (if applicable). You migt also want to add te venue post code if you know it, as this can help people look it up online or using their sat navs!

Once you have done this, please contact me with a link to your post (otherwise I may not notice it).

Q. "I want to complain about something on the forums!"

A. Please see our Website Policies page for complaints procedures.

Q. "I mailed you ages ago and you haven't replied - what happened?!"

A. Sorry!  If you have submitted information or a request to the St. Neots website and don't receive an answer immediately please be patient.  Every effort is made to respond within a few days but this is unfortunately not always possible.  If you haven't received any reply within about a week please send a gentle reminder, it is possible the e-mail has simply been lost amongst a load of other correspondence!  To minimise the chances of this happening please use the contact page.

Q. "Can you please plug this forthcoming local event on your main pages?"

A. Probably, as long as it is a non-commercial event.  Please give me plenty of advance warning and I'll do my best.  The format of the details should be the name of the event, a few brief sentences describing it, date, time, price and contact details for more information.   

If the event is commercial I will have to charge a token sum.

Q. "Do you need any help?"

A. Help is always most appreciated!  Things that would be extremely helpful would be:

• Contributing to the content of the site - photographs, articles, graphics, logos etc are all gratefully received.  Even posting to the Discussion Boards helps the site grow!
  

• Advertising the site - please tell your friends about the site, by e-mail or whatever!

• Linking to the site (also advertising!) -  if you run your own website, please consider linking to these web pages.
  

• Visit the Local Business section and (if any are of any interest) let the companies know you saw their details on the site.

Q. "I'm a pupil at <school>.  I have to do a project on the Central Business District of St. Neots - could you please send me all the information you have?"

A. Sorry, all the info I have is to be found on this site and I honestly don't have time to respond to these types of queries.  The only advice I can give you is to be careful if you decide to falsify your reports.  For my Geography GCSE I had to compare the traffic flow in St. Neots with Bedford so rather than stand out in the cold counting cars I decided to be creative and use my imagination...  I proceeded to draw lots of nice shaded graphs detailing traffic going up and down various streets.  The night before I handed it all in someone pointed out that Bedford uses a one-way system - so I had to redo half my graphs and tables.  There is a moral somewhere here but I never dwelled on it long enough to learn the lesson...

Q. "Do I know you?"

A. If you were at Longsands during 1986-1993 its possible.  Some names of people I went to school with are here.  Its more likely you know one of my cousins though.  The Sheik family website is here.

Q. "Can I use <page or picture> for my own website?"

A. Please see the Copyright Notice.

My full contact details are here.