HELP! (Before we CRASH!)

Ever so often you – our beloved Allegra readers – may have noticed that we have issued a call, perhaps to crowd source for references or most influential anthropology books, perhaps for a popular writing contest, or an intern. Or, even more likely, for funds. These calls are keeping with the general spirit of allowing Allegra to grow into a vibrant community – which it has become! Simultaneously they embody a simple fact: in order to keep this community vibrant,

WE NEED YOU!

There is no point in being coy: we also need your financial support. Throughout its existence Allegra has been a self-funded venture; the intellectual and creative passion of a few mad individuals who have gotten it started with independent funds. This has gotten us this far – but now it is time to change this, and make Allegra genuinely a shared enterprise for our scholarly field!

To date, Allegra has published 794 posts by 423 anthropologists around the world! We have been read by over half a million people and we continue to attract 15- 30 000 visitors every month. We can hardly believe these figures ourselves!

We have hosted a great number of thematic weeks, ran series of posts on current issues of academic and societal relevance – we have an extravagant social media presence both via Facebook and Twitter, and we even dabble around with Instagram. All in the spirit of allowing for scholarly content & ‘anthropological gospel’ to spread as well as study what is the role of us scholars in this contemporary moment.

Our website – the 2.0 version launched in Spring 2015 – has served us well! It has had the capacity to function fast, at least relatively speaking. It continually impresses us with its beauty – thanks to graphic designers Michel&Michel. Simultaneously it is now stretched to its limits.

We simply must do certain technical updates to ensure that our cherished content remains safe, that the website won’t crash & that it continues to operate at a level that all of us desire!

We recently began working with a technical specialist, and he created an impressive list of improvements that need to be done. To summarize areas of priority, we need to

• revise, test and update plugins;
• improve website performance;
• improve website security.

Our tech guy also suggests that we

• set up a password management system;
• create better email campaigns and subscription management using Mailchimp;
• update the contact widget;
• integrate Google Analytics data into the WordPress admin panel for convenience and easy access to the most recent stats & create automated Google Analytics reports.

In addition, we’d like to

• redesign the site menu and categories;
• update our Friends and Relations’ page;
• add Google AdWords to make our posts appear better on google searches;
• create searchable author profiles with areas of expertise and languages.

You can make a donation in the amount of your choosing via Paypal. You can also become a regular supporter in the amount of your choice. Simply click on the options in the form located on the right side of this post or go to our DONATE page.

Thank you in advance for your support!