It does not seem possible that Scottish Radiance has been on the web for five years but the first issue was uploaded in June 1997.  The idea of a monthly Internet magazine from Scotland was a collaborate effort between Scott Hatton, who was at the time the Webmaster for hebrides.com, and myself.   Scott’s website hosted Radiance, as the webzine has become fondly known, from their offices based in Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis in the Western Isles for the first two years.  Radiance was moved to a server in the USA when the number of readers rose to gigantic proportions.  The amount of visitors varies from month to month but the for the last three years the numbers have been over a million a month.  Currently we are running about 1.3 million visitors a month.  The top numbers of visits are from English speaking countries.  The USA and Canada are almost tied for the most frequent number of visitors with the USA currently in the lead.  Australia comes third with New Zealand fourth.  Germany is fifth and Italy sixth.  After that the visitors are scattered all over the world.

Scottish Radiance is all volunteer effort.  None of the writers or programmers is paid.  We sell books and CD to pay the server costs and buy needed software to keep up our high standard.  What make the magazine so special are the wonderful people who write or have written for us on a regular basis.  I am the only writer left from the first issues along with the Gaelic organization Clì - The New Gaels.  Writing a monthly column is a big commitment and many of the writers have either gone on to different things (Gary Dobson, Hamish Brown, Adam Harvey), had to drop out because of work commitments (Bill Currie and Liam O Caiside) or in a couple of cases because of illness (Frank Hatton and Arthur J. A. Bell).  Along the way we added new talent (Kay Glasgow and Woei Hern) who are still with us today.  The wonderful thing about being a webzine is you can access everyone’s work in the archive.

The amount of awards and recognition that magazine has received is so huge that we can not keep the award section up to date.  We appreciate every one of the over 500 recognitions that we have received. 

As we begin year six we are adding a new dimension to Scottish Radiance by publishing our first E-book.  The book is a novel I wrote entitled Lighthouse at Gealach Head.  If this book is successful we hope to be adding more E-books to Radiance Publications.  Why not give an electronic book a try at Gealach Head Lighthouse.

Sharma

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You can find more articles in the archive under Island Miniatures/Lighthouse Letters.