Thursday 5 November 2009

Bonfire night & addictions

Went to the bonfire celebrations tonight, didn't realise how popular this event was with people from many other villages.  It just goes to show that with a village hall committee dedicated to their community and raising money for charity, what would we do without these ladies.  It's a pity we cannot have a proper bonfire, is it because of red tape bureaucrats?

One thing I've realised lately is that you have to be careful about mentioning some websites.  What, you may ask yourself was it.  I just happened to mention a feature I was adding to the website, a simple photograph that you could put together in the form of a jigsaw.   Now it appears that half the village, near-by villages, Humberside Police and the island of Cyprus have taken up this addiction.  For this I blame my long suffering partner Charmain, is this her revenge for going on and on about Internet websites, maybe not but she is certainly likes to do more than the odd jigsaw.

There's maybe a moral to this article in that be careful what you say it may comeback to haunt you, for my part I need to wait until late at night to post articles such as this.

Wednesday 21 October 2009

Website Creation

As mentioned yesterday the Love Zone has been the reason for my lack of blogs.   When I first started the Skeffling Blogosphere I promised to assist anyone who wanted to create a blog or web page.

Well the editor of the Skeffling Newsletter kept me to that promise, little did I know that she wanted to launch a website within two weeks.   This was from conception to finished product, it took six months for the Skeffling Community website to evolve to its present stage.   I'm pleased to say that she has achieved that aim with technical assistance from myself and a young graphic designer in Shauna Nicholson.   The last few days of the project were very hectic and the website was finally uploaded to her own web address in the early hours of last Thursday morning.

Toni has proved that with a little bit of help from the community, anyone in the village can show off their talents to the rest of the world.   For anyone who would like to see her creation click on this link "Love Zone", while your there leave a comment on what you think about the website.

Tuesday 20 October 2009

Spammers

Some of our new visitors may have noticed that on the links page of the Skeffling Community website is not allowing you to add your name to the Free Links for all page.   This has been targeted by spammers who have been adding links to some questionable products and services.   So for the past week the service has been suspended.   Once the activity from these individuals has died down we will re-instate the service.

If you would like a link on this page do not hesitate in contacting me by e-mail.

To all those that requested the facility to have a page where they could offer items for sale, that page has been available for some time now.   Unfortunately no one has taken the opportunity to list items that they would like to sell.

Regular readers will have noticed that this is my first post in over a month, explanation for this tardiness will be forthcoming in my next post.

The website Love Zone is one reason.

Thursday 20 August 2009

Buy & Sell

Although we have Skeffling Chatter for visitors to write articles on the blog pages, it doesn't have the facility as yet to post items for sale.   So with this in mind we have now created an area on the Skeffling Community website that allows you to place text adverts for items that you'd like to sell or you can view the adverts to see if there is anything you'd like to make an offer on.

At present you cannot include a photo of the item as that would require us to purchase a commercial softwareprogram, which can be quite expensive.   If and when we are in a better financial position we will revisit the idea.

If you cannot see any items that you'd like to buy, have a look at these great deals from Amazon now.

Tuesday 18 August 2009

Guestbook Development

Due to another suggestion from a visitor I've now added a Guestbook to the main site.   This should allow those visitors or have not signed up to Skeffling Chatter to post their thoughts about the content on "The Skeffling Community website".   There are links pointing to this page on the Chatter website and this blog.   If you follow any other of our regular bloggers a link will be placed on their websites.

With the encouragement of my blog and the Skeffling Community website a visitor from Lincoln has been prompted to do a similar project for their community.   If you visit their website don't be to critical at first because from my own experience it can take a number of months to become reasonably proficient in website design and construction, the link is Your source for all things Lincoln related

Rumour has it that our very own Newsletter editor is set to launch her very own website.   The theme being short stories of a confession nature, I' sure all her readers of the Newsletter will be eagerly awaiting developments.

Saturday 1 August 2009

Increased number of readers

Great news, after analysing the stats for July the decision to launch Skeffling Chatter has paid off.   There has been more than double the number of visitors to the Skeffling Community website, each visitor has stayed longer and read more pages than previous months.

What is surprising is the number of visitors from other parts of the globe, one that had me puzzled though was from the USA military at Menwith Hill maybe we're under surveillance.

This aside thank you to all who have enjoyed visiting our village community website.

Wednesday 22 July 2009

Re-vamp Disaster

Tried to re-vamp the website last night to display the photographs differently, major disaster wasn't able to view photographs, some problem with loading the pictures. Have now reverted back to the previous update and all is well.

Apologies for anyone that had trouble accessing the website this morning while I restored the backup. Have now setup a mirror site to test out the new functions before uploading to the main site.

If anyone knows of a good programme to display a photographic album I would be most grateful, meanwhile I will have to experiment to find a more suitable method.

Tuesday 14 July 2009

No 71 Bus

I along with many others that rely on this rural bus service would also like to voice my dissatisfaction with the condition of the bus.   Its not much better than the old boneshakers that I used to travel on which were in operation 30 years ago when Connor & Graham ran the service, as you can see from the latest book that was published recently, which can be viewed here on the what's new page.

I've heard all the arguments that they trot out about it not being economically viable, but is it our fault that everybody now uses the car.   I'm not a car driver and this is my only means of transport, apart from my old bicycle which seems to get slower the older I get, it must be getting past it, besides that when I had my heart attack a few years ago I needed the bus service more than ever.

If the green lobby want more car drivers to abandon their cars they should protest and lobby this company, or they will never convince them to use public transport.   But in the meantime it would be helpful if the Gazette would run an article on this shoddy treatment of Eastend villagers and publicly shame this large bus company on our behalf.

I for one will keep mentioning this subject on the website until we can get a satisfactory outcome, and if those at East Yorkshire Motor Services do indeed meet our humble exhortations, I will congratulate them here for listening to our pleas for an upto date modern 21st century bus service.

Will resume normal waffle about technology in the next post.

Monday 6 July 2009

Birth of a new idea

I've come up with the following idea to allow visitors to the website to give their views.

"Skeffling Chatter" is born, here you can receive an invitation to become a contributor to the website and speak you mind whether occasionally or on a regular basis along with others visitors. This page will allow you to tell others in the village what you think (as long as its not abusive or offensive to others) their will be no restriction on who can become involved, this is not just for the "Great and Good".

For those that want to get started now send me an e-mail

You don't have to do anything else apart from write you views, no getting involved in how its published on the web.

For those who don't have a computer and Internet access they can either find out if its possible to do it from the local library or a friends computer or just write their views down on paper and post or hand it to me personally (my postal address can be obtained by telephone on 01964 650645).

Help and advice can always be offered on which is the easiest best way for you to achieve this.

For those that have or want to have a blog that can become part of the website. I'm able to help in the setting up of a blog and integrating it with the rest of the website.

For those that would like a web page about a particular interest or hobby, get in touch and we can discuss your ideas.

NOW for the worthy part, I'm doing this project in the hope that people from all over the village and beyond can get together and become a true community and improve the quality of life for all.

If you have any further thoughts on this subject or things I have not covered please get in touch.

Sunday 5 July 2009

Voice your Opinions

As a result of receiving some feedback from a villager who has become a follower of the Skeffling Community Website and its blogs with its lack of a way to add "their" feedback to the website directly, I have attempted to find a way to allow this to happen.

Hopefully the readers will bear with me until I can implement the following suggestions and iron out any teething problems, as I'm not a fulltime professional web designer here goes.

  1. Skeffling Chatter web page.
  2. The ability to post your own views.
  3. Able to post the occaisional article.
  4. Help on how to do this.
  5. As uncomplicated as possible.
  6. Ways for those that do not have a computer.
  7. No internet access.
  8. Is it possible to have my own web page.

These are just a few of the ideas I have received from this resident and others.

Thursday 2 July 2009

Blogger Layout

Just about mastered the art of getting this blog to look and integrate with the main Skeffling Community website, as you can see I've added links at the top of the page; have'nt mastered how to show the same style of buttons though. Next task is to set-up a proper blog page for the Newsletter editor.

Tuesday 30 June 2009

Book Launch

Received an e-mail from the Easington parish clerk about a book launch this Saturday, which is at Easington Community Hall - 10:00 to 11:30, the book is titled “The Journey Starts Here” and is an illustrated history of Connor & Graham the former local bus company and is written by Mike Welton.   If any readers are interested and wish to purchase a copy it is priced at £6.   More details can be found on our events page and I’m sure many people from around the area will be visiting.   You may be able to find more about the author at the publishers website, which is S.K.E.A.L.S (Spurn, Kilnsea and Easington Area Local Studies Group.).   Hope to see you their.

Friday 26 June 2009

Speeding Meeting

Attended the Withernsea & South Holderness Regeneration Partnership - Parish Council Sub Group meeting where the first item on the agenda was about speeding. Mick Harris project manager for Safer Roads Humber gave a presentation outlining the problem and possible solutions.   In a nutshell we don’t meet the criteria for having speeding camera’s sited in this area and we will have to explore other ways of enforcing motorists to slow down as the go through the villages?

Also at the meeting was the editor of our newsletter (Toni) and she will give a fuller account of the procedings in her blog and the July issue of the Skeffling Newsletter.   If you would like to air your views on this lack of action please make a comment or e-mail on this or (Toni’s blog).

Website Integration (update)

Have given up on the idea at the moment of using iframes to integrate external blogs as it has proved problematical in the sense that if we were to show the full width of the blog page you would no longer have access to the adverts that appear alongside these posts. Also any links on the blog would send you away from the Skeffling website with no obvious means of returning here. May re-visit the idea when wide-screen monitors become the norm.

Thursday 18 June 2009

Adverts & Newsletter

Spent the last two days inserting the June edition of the newsletter into the main site (thanks to Toni for allowing the her copy to be published on the web). Its a pity the Bumper Auction had to be postponed as St Helen's desperately needs funds for its renovation, but hopefully we can look forward to it being arranged in the autumn.

The inclusion of adverts to raise funds for running the website have taken longer than planned, I didn't realise how many pages the website had grown to, having to decide what type, size and where to include them in the page layout is taking its time, hopefully it will be concluded by the weekend after testing on a dummy website then including the changes into the main site.

Still waiting for OTHERS to offer to add their blog for inclusion.

Monday 15 June 2009

New layout

Skeffling website needs its layout changing to allow the inclusion of adverts from its sponsors, these are Heart Internet who supply the web hosting and possibly google adsense for supporting this blogs inclusion to the main site. Hopefully any other resident who has a blog may wish to have it included within Skefflings main site.

So what are you waiting for! Submit your blog now.

All of the adverts on the links page are provided free of cost, as a service to the community (donations for running the website are most welcome). So if you want to earn some extra cash with your free time please submit you adverts for inclusion on this page, contact me either by e-mail or telephone which you can find on the contacts page.

Friday 12 June 2009

Website Integration

This entry is merely for test purposes to see how well it integrates into my website. I'm hoping it will prove whether it is feasible to invite other villagers to submit their blogs for inclusion to the website about Skeffling. One of the main problems is hyperlinks to other websites taking the reader away from the main website and not opening a new tab page.

Sample hyperlinks are http://www.withernseadoctors.co.uk/practice_general.html http://ottawafood.blogspot.com/
Now just need the code on how incorporate these sites, at the moment only able to do it by using iframes.

Tuesday 3 March 2009

Broadband

Green light for faster broadband

BT plans to plug some homes straight into the fibre-optic network
Regulator Ofcom ruled on Tuesday that it will present "no regulatory barriers" to the development of super-fast broadband infrastructure.
The ruling will allow BT to proceed with an investment of £1.5bn in the network, giving up to 20 million UK homes access to high-speed internet.