Following a couple of weeks offline, it is with great pride and relief that we welcome you to the brand new Caught by the River website. We’ve been quietly working on this version of the site for a little while now, but as it turns out, a calamitous hack is quite the kick up the arse.

Our main aim when we embarked on this overhaul was to make it much easier to access archival content. We’ve published almost 5000 articles since we started in 2007, but many were almost impossible to find – something we hope is solved by our new ‘Explore’ tab, which allows you to easily browse by contributor or topic. Also new are our individual author pages, and much-simplified navigation bar. Our hope is that Caught by the River is now nicer to look at and easier to use, whilst still maintaining its identity. We are eternally grateful to all the lovely people at Amido whose hard work, patience and website wizardry made this possible. Given the recent urgency with which we had to complete this new website, please be aware that there are likely to be a few inconsistencies – with formatting, image sizing and mobile view, for example – whilst we adapt our huge archive to its new home.

Now: you may also have noticed the new ‘Support Us’ button on the right-hand side of the site. Caught by the River has been a labour of love for the last ten years – a hobby that we’ve somehow managed to squeeze in alongside our day jobs. The people and writing it has thrown our way have served as constant sources of inspiration, and we hope that we’ve managed to pass some of that on to both regular readers and occasional visitors. But whilst we were never expecting to get rich off the site, we are now unfortunately at a point where we can no longer afford to run it as a hobby.

We are stubbornly anti- the idea of introducing adverts to the site when we’ve managed to keep it ad-free for so long, and our takings from the one place where we used to make a little money – our shop – have been dramatically reduced of late. Common sense tells us we should probably call it a day, but we’re just not ready to do that – and besides, this is not the kind of place where common sense usually prevails. So we’re asking you for help.

We’re hoping that if you like and value what we do, you might consider donating a few quid – or even setting up a monthly donation – to help with our running costs. As we said, we aren’t ready to let go of this thing yet, and we hope that you feel the same way.

So there you have it. Normal service will resume from Monday; in the meantime, we’d be chuffed if you delved into this ten years’ worth of newly unearthed content with reckless abandon.

With love,

Jeff, Andrew, Robin & Diva