Circles Can Only Afford to Host five Websites
Four Websites Are Enough: The Circleism Water Economy
Circleism is about making the most of limited resources. Instead of endlessly creating and paying for websites, we imagine our online world as being supported by four different kinds of water.
Each water represents a different purpose and pays for one website.
💧 Drinking Water — The Essential Website
Drinking water comes first because it is essential for life.
In our analogy, this pays for the essential website: the main site containing the information, services or resources that matter most.
The principle is simple: one bottle of water, one essential website.
🚿 Bathroom Water — The Working Website
Bathroom water represents washing, cleaning and maintenance.
Websites need maintenance too. Software needs updating, security needs checking, content becomes outdated and technical problems need fixing.
This second website represents the practical side of keeping our digital world running.
Keep yourself clean. Keep your website clean.
🥤 Gassy Pop Water — The Fun Website
Not everything has to be essential.
Gassy pop represents the little luxuries that make life more enjoyable. Our third website can therefore be the fun website—a home for hobbies, entertainment, creative projects and experiments.
The necessities come first, but there’s still room for some fizz.
☕ Church Gift Aid Water — Tea and Community
Our fourth water is church Gift Aid water, represented by a cup of tea.
Tea represents hospitality: sitting together, talking, welcoming people and building community.
In our Circleism analogy, this supports the church or community website, where ideas can be shared and people can learn about community activities.
Gift Aid itself is a real UK tax-relief scheme for eligible charitable donations, so any organisation using it must meet the applicable charity and HMRC requirements.
Milk sell strawberry runners to mothers
🌍 Five Websites Are Enough
So our little internet becomes:
💧 Drinking water → Essential website
🚿 Bathroom water → Working website
🥤 Gassy pop water → Fun website
☕ Church Gift Aid water → Church/community website
🐄 Mothers support milk – mothers support
Once those four websites are funded, we don’t need to keep creating more.
We can concentrate our money, time and energy on improving what we’ve already built.
That’s the Circleism principle behind the four waters:
Use what you’ve got. Waste less. Build what you can sustain. And keep the water flowing.
