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CHRISTCHURCH AND DISTRICT MODEL FLYING CLUB |
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editorial I admit my mind has not really been focussed on this issue of Sloping Off. I have spent the last 4 weeks getting to know all about websites. This is the story. About 2 years ago I was given an old copy of Dreamweaver 3 by a certain Jam*s McNe**ly who shall remain nameless for reasons which will become obvious. I could not make head or tail of it, so went on a Web Design course at the Lighthouse. The teacher was more interested in Flash Macromedia (making buttons light up and water drip down pages) than he was in my problems. Dreamweaver was on to Version 8 ( I should have taken the hint then) and we were working on Macs not PCs, so half my time was spent catching up. It was a humbling experience and a total waste of money. About 2 months ago I found a copy of the Dreamweaver 3 manual in the Library. All was clear (ish). I started out and immediately ran into brain problems again. Even Trevor could not make much sense of it and the final straw came when we found out that DW3 could not compress pictures for the gallery page. In despair I phoned Steve Marks, a friend who had made an early website for the sailing club. Over coffee at his place he gave me a copy of WebSite Pros Fusion 7. “It’s easy” he said. After loading the CD and reading the excellent “Getting Started” manual, I tried out “Building a Site in 10 minutes” - the first chapter in the book.. And it worked! I genuinely had a front page and the 5 basic button pages in 10 minutes. The programme does everything else for you - no HTML, no complicated drop and drag, just type in the words and paste in the pictures. I did have one big fright, though. I completed the 5-page version and was just messing about with the one of the pages, when suddenly all the pages had the same thing all over them, replacing the existing text. I suppose I had somehow made the new page into some sort of master page. No amount of fiddling about would undo it, so I had to scrap 3 days work and start all over. By then I was so used to the programme that it took only a day to get back to where I was. But now I have the whole site saved in another file, and re-save at the end of the day, every day! Getting onto the Web was a nail-biting experience. The hosting company, UKHosts, were very helpful, but I was missing the vital passwords to get going. A quick phone call found that they were “having trouble with AOL” (oops) and sent me a new email with it all in. One failure later I put in the correct words in the right places and by the time you read this the outline site should be up and running. I think more time will be needed before I have the Newsletter pages sorted out, if indeed Fusion 7 will support all that password stuff. I’d like to thank Trevor Hewson for the website that you will shortly see in a new guise, Steve Marks for his copy of Fusion 7, Jam*s McNe**ly for the inspiration and everyone who was kind enough to offer comment and advice on the version you see today. After a while, you just cannot proof-read your own work because you think you know what’s coming! What I hope happens now is that YOU will let me know what else you would like to see on the website and I’ll put it in, updating once a week or so. I also hope that you use it to refer to the calendar, the results, your picture, Harry Spotter’s activities and so on. In other words, it’s as much for us as it is for visitors! Many thanks to all contributors who have made this another bumper edition. Mike Roach 01202 477553 roachfoxwood@aol.com |
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