The original design of this web-site was very much an iterative process.
Graeme Skinner (Vicar) went through a large number of designs and layouts
before the colours and layout which you now see were decided upon.
The original site was designed and coded in Microsoft FrontPage, to
enable simple maintenance to be performed.
The extended facilities of FrontPage were not invoked and the design
and programming has always been such that the site can be correctly
viewed in Microsoft's Internet Explorer, Netscape's Firefox, Google's
Chrome and OpenSSL's Opera (being the major website viewers).
The technical aspects of the site were under the direction of Walter
Mann. The ability to control colours and layout was introduced by Walter
into Graeme's designs, incorporating Cascading Style Sheets (CSS).
The site was loaded and hosted on multiple parallel web servers provided
by Walter's company Walcam Ltd.
A visit counter was incorporated into the site using text file database
and PHP programming.
The counters can be viewed by clicking HERE
or on any page by clicking the final letter 'C' in the PCC copyright
heading at the bottom of the page.
When Graeme left St Mary's, the maintenance of the site was taken over
by Walter, and a number of new pages have subsequently been introduced.
The site is now maintained though the use of Macromedia Dreamweaver
and simple text editors, ensuring that the code adheres to the required
XML, HTML and CSS standards defined by the World Wide Web Consortium
(W3C).
The ability to show extracts from the St Mary's Magazine has been effected
by copying the text file created during the magazine production process
and storing it on the web-servers. The appropriate web page is then
dynamically assembled on request by PHP programming.
The Diary page was initially imported from the magazine; but is now imported from the monthly FOCUS sheet, and assembled as
required for display by PHP code, however the date of the entries is
also considered and anything more than a week old is not shown.
The Services Diary also draws its content from the imported Dairy, but
filters and shows (through PHP programming) only those entries concerned
with Services.
The ability to show pictures (see Headlines pages) and permit users
to view larger versions of certain pictures, is all dynamically created
on request; database controlled through PHP programming.
The scrolling window on the home page contains 6 entries randomly selected from a set of pre-formatted entries.
The PHP code selects and displays the entries. New entries can be submitted (ask the Office) by any Church Event Organiser (with date limits applied when necessary)
and for those interested; current and previous entries can be viewed through a special viewer by clicking HERE .
If you are interested in any further technical aspect of this web site,
or have any suggestions for its ongoing improvement,
please contact the WebMaster through the WebSite Form by clicking HERE .
