All info about.com

History
All Info About (AIA) is a network of over 100 content websites. It is similar, to some extent, to About.com and was, in fact, founded by two ex-Guides, Sue Williams and Carol Fisher in 2001. They both live in the UK and started the network as a British alternative to About.com as many UK based Guides had their sites removed then.

The network went live on September 1, 2001, and just a few weeks later, About.com cut many longstanding sites, leaving those Guides with the choice of running an independent site, giving up altogether or joining the new All Info About network. Many chose the latter. Because most of the ex-Guides were American, All Info About was no longer predominantly British. Since then, Correspondents (the AIA name for Guides) have come from countries all round the world including the UK, USA, Canada, India and Australia.

The All Info About network grew relatively slowly after the American ex-Guides joined in September 2001 until 2004 when it had around 30 sites. At this point, it seemed a critical mass was reached and grew quickly after that until it passed the 100 site mark in the middle of 2005.

Principles behind All Info About
Although the idea of having a network of sites, set up as subdomains, was the same as About.com, the principles behind the network were different. Correspondents are allowed a great deal of autonomy on how they treat their subjects and nobody dictates what should or should not be covered although the basic Terms & Conditions forbid indecent content, plagiarism and other offensive or illegal material. Correspondents are not paid but are allowed to put advertising in the side columns of their sites and keep 100% of the income received. The network runs web banners across the top of all pages and the income for this is used to keep the network online and to improve server capacity to cope with the ever-increasing traffic.

All Info About Changes the Model
At the end of 2005, Sue Williams and Carol Fisher decided that the way forward was to change from HTML pages to a content management system (CMS) making it easier and quicker to build and edit pages. At the same time they decided that the sites would be even more successful if each one was a domain in its own right rather than sub-domains of All Info About.

Content
All articles must be either original or used with the author's express permission. They include informative articles, instructions where appropriate, patterns on sites like cross-stitch, recipes, glossaries, etc. Some sites have forums associated with them and most send out regular newsletters to subscribers.

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