[horney]

Is that what was meant? I thought it was about having a place to put all the recip tables and having each of the free sites branching off from there - and I can see the logic. As well as where the logic breaks down.

Either way, horndog has a valid point. Doing it the current way is tedious. I can understand why people want to use templates, autosubmission and the rest. The time consumed in generating and testing a single free site which looks fresh, to me at least, justifies a reasonable return before the additional time spent in putting recip tables with cats together and submitting them through the self-protection barriers imposed by the list owners, however well justified.

I don't have templates. I designed a stylesheet when I started and keep kicking it about and altering the content to make each site look different whatever the photographic materials and sponsor banners I have at my disposal.

It doesn't look too much now like it did when I started, just a dozen or so sites ago, but I can always return to earlier instances and tweak them differently. Only the list owners/approvers can say whether the effort is likely to prove worthwhile in the longer run (all feedback appreciated).

There is, in my humble opinion, an awful lot of effort already invested in that.

So is there an easier way, or have the scam/spam merchants beaten us into submission?

Sounds a bit like the freedom versus islamo-fascism argument in the UK, as it happens. All we needed was a Stalinist Prime Minister to get into office during a security alert. The answer's obvious. Fuck freedom.