Maintenance of the BFPPG web site
Development of this site
This site was prepared by Mark Hayden, Tim Mackay, and Paul Gerrard in October 2008 with input from others and with the HTML being written by Paul Gerrard. A key objective in the design of this site was that it should be easy to maintain - even by someone who has minimal experience with websites and HTML.
Maintenance of this website
| Basic stuff you really need to know | Other stuff you need not know |
| All files used for the BFPPG website are located in the same folder. | This make life easy - You know where everything is, it simplifies creating links to files and makes updating files a little more idiot-proof. |
| Each page of the website has a separate file. | |
| The format of the fonts, etc. is controlled by a single file named "stylesheet.css". By changing things in this file you can change the fonts, etc. in every page. Probably best not to fiddle around with this unless you know what you are doing. | This ensures that each page looks similar and makes it easy to update fonts, etc. for the entire website with a single change. |
| Each page of the website is identical except for the text on the right hand side. | This has been done intentionally so as to keep the rest of the code for each page the same. It also means that ther is no hierarchy of pages (i.e. the home page is just like every other page)
Could have used frames. This would have added some advantages, but some complexity and some hassles with different browsers. On balance it was considered better not to use frames. |
You can control the way the text appears on the page by inserting what are known as "tags" in the text. These tags have "<....>" around them. For instance,
Other useful tags (in either upper or lower case) include:
If you just want to update some text this is about all you need to know about HTML. If you are using Microsoft's Internet Explorer to view this page and you would like to get a feeling of what HTML looks like just right click on this page and select "View source". The top half will look like gobble-de-gook, but as you move down the page you will find it pretty easy to read. | HTML is short for Hyper Text Mark Up Language. There are various software packages (e.g. dreamweaver, front page) that are designed to "help" people avoid learning about HTML, but this is so easy why fiddle around with a package when working directly on the code allows you to have total control rather than working through a black box. |
| In order to make changes to the website you need to know where the files are saved, you need to have access to these files and you need to have some means upload and download files. I (Paul Gerrard) use "CoffeeCup Free FTP" to upload/download files. It costs nothing and is easy to use, but there are lots of alternatives. It takes about half dozen mouse clicks to upload/download a file i.e. less than 60 seconds. |
Updates Updating the website involves downloading the releavant file(s), making the alterations, and uploading the file(s). If you have never done it this may sound mysterious, but it is easy and exactly how you will do it will depend on what program you use for uploading/downloading files and whether you use Internet Explorer or some other browser. For example: Update text on a page: - download the relevant file, open it, edit it, and upload it back to the website.
Removing a page - download the file of pages that have links to the page(s) to be deleted, then delete the link(s) to the page you want to delete, then upload the file(s). Add a page - download an file, save it under another name, edit it to create whatever you want. Then update the menus for each page so as to include a link to the new page. (This is not hard - just copy a line from the menu of a page and paste it where you would like the link to the new page to appear and make changes to this line so that is gets the new file and and so that you get the words you want on the menu. Note you need to do this for every page.) Finally, upload all the files that have been changed.
Add a link to open a file (e.g. Word, Excel, PDF, etc) - download the file for the page that is to have the link and insert the following:
TOO EASY |
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Hit Counter Web page hits and other data about traffic on this web site can be viewed at http://my.statcounter.com/logout.php . The user id and password required to access this site are paul.gerrard and aptstrat. The sevice is provided is free. The code to make it happen is inserted at the bottom of each web page. |