I finished building this site – 101FREEChristianDating.com on a brand new modern platform, to at some point be an replacement for the existing fusion101.com website that most single Christians are familiar with since it started in 2000. 101‘s singles’ service started life at www.fusion101.com (which you can still join – it has many 1000’s more members than 101FREEChristianDating.com) and was designed in 1998/9 and launched in 2000 as a social network for Christians – with an emphasis on single Christians – the folks I really wanted to help to meet believing husbands and wives.
My motive was simple – having struggled myself to meet single Christians at my church – a relatively small congregation in the countryside made up mostly of older married couples, and having heard the issues of my single Christians friends expressing the same problem – and watching them travel to different churches to try and meet people – often with no results, made me realise something needs to be done – if we are not as Christians to become extinct!
By carefully screening all profiles and monitoring the site activity constantly when I was not at my day-job (I discovered most sites – and virtually all free sites had a lot of fake, undesirable and scammer profiles on them), by 2005, fusion101.com was the 200,000 busiest site on the Internet. Whilst that may not sound like much – there were millions and millions of sites on the web even then – many with big budgets and teams of workers, but fusion101 was run solely by me administrating the site with sometimes the help of developers who would fix occasional bugs – but mainly be required when the site got too busy to put it back online when the server crashed.
By 2006 Fusion101 had facilitated 100’s Christian marriages and would have up to 800 Christians logged in during the evenings (this was before mobile dating and apps). This was continuous actual site use (our site logs you out after 30 mins) – before the days of fast Internet and sites like Facebook that have enough computer resources to leave you more or less permanently logged in even when you’re not using it – and before the days when You-tubers could easily gain 100,000 followers by making videos.
But over time I was not able to update the site to keep up with improvements in technology (not for want of trying – all the developers I could find insisted on building a completely new site rather than fix the problems as they occurred and in stages on the existing platform (as most bespoke sites and companies do as and when the problems occur). This meant that finally – about 5 years ago the site became virtually unusable and was more or less finished off when a development company added SSL (secure connections) making the site slow down so much it has been almost useless ever since. That along with having to jump through eve more hoops to please the Internet watchdogs trying understandably to stop spammers imposed on all sites – but trapping little sites like mine in the madness – meant fusion101.com very nearly died.
The first thing I had to do around 2015 was make Fusion101 work on a mobile. Mobile friendly sites had been around for years so with the help of a development company we changed the design in about 3 months to make the old design ‘work’ on phones.
Next I had another big problem – the server itself was now obsolete and companies would no longer allow emails to be send from it – further slowing any site activity since members could no longer get their login info or alerts when someone contacted them.
So it was time to learn how to build servers myself – running fusion101 alone is like building houses but having to be an architect, builder, plumber, gardener, electrician, plasterer, roofer – you get the picture and of course no one can be an expert in all these things – especially me – an no-numerically gifted artist!
Anyway – with my new server built I then asked the same very experienced company to move my site to the new server – but they refused and said they would create their own server. I warned them this would not work and alas they tried and eventually used my new server as I had requested in the first place. Not after a nice bill.
Believe me – you cannot argue with offshore developers – it is ALWAYS your fault and they close ranks as fast as you like! Only last month my development company were saying I had broken something on the site when it turns out (and I proved it by insisting they view the site logs) I had no access to my server during that entire period as I was working away from home 🙂 What had happened was a rookie or new developer had completely over-written 2 weeks of our previous extremely stressful work. But you just have to pay and move on. It’s REALLY painful.
Good news is that I have just (as of 2022) managed to get the old site (fusion101) back to working order – with some new and very annoying bugs introduced by the developers being a little careless helping me in the move – five steps forward and four steps back is normally par for the course unfortunately with offshore web developers as having no redress if they mess something up – they are normally and understandably already on their next job and forgotten who you are or how the code worked (I’m exaggerating a little but not much to make the point).
So – good news is that we now have a completely new brand new platform and site (101FREEChristianDating) and the old site (fusion101.com) is working / usable again with some bugs. That I am eternally grateful for as this whole venture has been – well taken quite a toll on my body and mind. I feel like a recovering something-or-other!
So if you’ve been moved by my story – or more honestly constant struggle to keep this online and help single Christians meet and would like to help me pay for some of the above (it’s blinking expensive to get even a jot or title changed by web developers and my accountant I’m sure is wondering why I am not declaring bankruptcy) please consider a tiny donation here as only a small amount more than I get monthly at the moment is the difference between solvency and insolvency (I need about £300 a month in donations as the rest of the income i need comes from ad revenue) – I promise you this will help me no end as things are very very tight (actually in the red).
But it’s my passion and I refuse to give up (I won’t start to tell you about the 50+ sites I have just discovered and had to get removed from the Internet pretending to be fusion101 – many linking to dreadful and unmentionable sites – this kind of thing is normal for me to deal with) so I take full responsibility but any help is welcome more than you will realise.
I hope you meet some great Christian friends on 101. God bless you all – Edward.