I know some of you have wondered about the future of Freedom Kilts because I'm getting phone calls asking what's going on. I thought I should explain.

As you know, I had a web developer two years ago who did a pretty good job on an upgrade to my site. Last December that guy got a big contract, had to move away, so passed me off to a young kid that he said was good.

This new guy worked and worked on the site. At least he was telling me that he was working on it. But the site never worked correctly. I had hopes that we would have a new shopping cart, that the accessories section would get finished, and that I would finally have a full e-commerce site.

After 5 months of living and working around a broken site I started to look for someone else to take over the site. I had been writing a detailed site requirement proposal and sending it out for quotes.

A week ago I told the kid that I was sorry, that I thought my site development must have been more than he could handle and that I was looking for someone to take over the site.

As it happens this kid had moved my site to his own server when he started the job. I thought at the time that was ok because he was offering hosting as part of the job at no additional charge.

Well, last week the kid dropped a CD supposedly containing my site in my mailbox and removed my site from his server.

In a mad dash I went to the development company and ended up begging them to get something up. Anything.

But it seems that the code written into the site won't allow it to run on anyone else's server, or there is a mistake in it. For a week now we have been up for a while, then down again. E-mails are being lost, customers frustrated, and there are appearantly rumours running around that Freedom Kilts is going under.

This is simply not true. We have just had our best season ever. The order board is full, and we are all sewing like crazy.

We have a developer working on our site. We hope to release, in stages, a bigger, more user friendly site.

I have learned a lesson. I will never make the mistake of trusting someone else with the lifeblood of my business.

So, WE'RE STILL HERE GUYS. THIS IS JUST A TEMPORARY GLITCH. WE WILL BE BACK BIGGER AND BETTER THAN EVER.

Thank you to everyone who has called and sent messages of concern. I appreciate the patience of everyone.