Reposted from Marisa Constantinides‘ blog TEFL Matters.
For the last – well, almost two years now, since September 15 2010, #ELTchat has kept us on our toes and forged hundreds of professional and personal relationships amongst its followers who turn up on Twitter every Wednesday to talk about topics they have suggested and voted on – a community of peers which was created by a small group of colleagues – which grew and grew some more and became something that counts as an important part of our continuous professional development.
Like many great ideas, it didn’t hit just one person but several.
And that is how #ELTchat was created.
The website to keep up the communication of its members, a base and repository of our ideas was one of the first things we all thought of creating – the wiki came later.
Andy Chaplin was keen to join the moderation team and help with podcasts and technical stuff; he was quick to buy eltchat.com and announced the good news to us after the fact.
A few months later, right after TESOL France 2011, he suddenly disappeared – some say for reasons of health.
We never found out for sure.
We never received a single word of response to our emails.
eltchat.com was and still is registered in his name.
And yesterday we lost it.
On August 8 the domain expired and we have no way of taking over unless it goes up for sale again; it was very sad that Andy Chaplin did not find it appropriate to renew.
The news is really upsetting.
The work we have put in on this website cannot be told in a few simple words – but it has been a labour of love and we have got so much out of it that we have never regretted one single moment
We are pretty upset at the behaviour of this individual – disappointment is one big understatement.
But we trust that our community of #ELTchatters, our PLN for short, will again gather round the new domain which we have purchased – eltchat.org
It will take us a few days to put the website back on its feet.
And all will be as it was before – all the posts in place all your thoughts and comments, all the polls and great summaries which got us on the shortlist of the ELTon Awards nominations.
We will be back with a vengeance.
We are not just a website – we did not get on the ELTon awards shortlist as just another website!!!
We are a great community of teachers and we have a Plan B!
See you all in September!!!
Marisa Constantinides – Shaun Wilden
Vicky Loras
P.S. We would greatly appreciate it if any of you belonging to this great community of teachers, teacher educators, bloggers, #ELTchat followers, reposted this on your blog.
If you decide to do this, please add your name to the post under ours.
Vicky Loras's Blog 
This is sad. Something I’ve had happen in my early days of making resources and using / partnering with others. They just disappear. They are still there but just failing to deal with their initial passion.
In our business, you see so many flame up and flame down. come and go. that’s ELT. It has its strengths and weaknesses. If eltchat does need a server (but seems like you have a Plan B) – just let me know. I believe in open arms, open everything.
David
Hi David!
All of us at #ELTChat thank you for your support. I was very sad and angered when I found out about this, but it quickly went away knowing what a great community we are! We can do this!!! And having Marisa and Shaun as our moderators and the people who do all the great work of rebuilding, and James the podcast magician, and everyone, is just such a big thing!
Thank you so much!
Vicky
Hi Vicky,
A bit bemused reading this and how sad too! I’ve only managed to attend a couple of sessions as Wednesdays are often difficult for me. ELTchat is more than worthwhile. I’m sure the new website will be just as good as the old one.
Go for it!
Cheers
Roy
Hi Roy!
Thank you so much for your support. It is such a great community – the chats, the summaries, the blog posts that have been sparked, the interviews. I was really sad and upset when I originally read this in Marisa’s blog. I am sure that it will be up and running again and even better!
Thank you so so much,
Vicky
Hi Vicky best of luck with plan b. I look forward to seeing it up and running.
Thank you so much! Marisa Constantinedes and Shaun Wilden are working hard (and on their holidays as well) to build another website, which I am sure will be amazing!
Thanks for your support,
Vicky
Hi Vicky,
This is wonderful news. I’m looking forward to checking out the new ESLChat. Thanks for making this happen, and good luck with the launch!
All the best,
Mathias
Thank you so much, Mathias! It will be even greater, I am sure : )
I really like your blog.. very nice colors & theme.
Did you make this website yourself or did you hire someone to do it for you?
Plz answer back as I’m looking to create my own blog and would like to find out where u got this from. kudos
Hello Lanny,
This is a ready-made template from WordPress – one of the free themes! That is the great thing with WordPress, it has a huge variety in free themes and I really liked this one (called “Chunk” if you are interested), because it is clean and I liked the header too.
Have a great week,
Vicky