I started this project with no knowledge about web design at all. I
had thought for some time that the Dorcan Church should have a presence
on the World Wide Web. I figured that since it is our first point of
reference when visiting other parts of the country other people would
do the same.
The starting point was to search other web sites for ideas. In
particular I looked at Earlsdon Methodist Church and Putnoe Heights
Church.
Earlsdon is where my wife comes from and where we were married so we
often look to see what is happening when our next visit is
due. Putnoe Heights I found from a web search when looking for
inspiration for intercession prayers. They are also an Ecumenical
partnership but operate in a slightly different way.
The next step was to find an inexpensive web authoring program. I
found
Nvu which is free and does the job quite well. Development of this
program stopped in 2005 so I changed to "Kompozer" which works in the
same way.
The Earlsdon Methodist site has a technical page which saved me from
making all those mistakes when you are learning. In particular I was
introduced to CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) This took a couple of days
to master. I was quite pleased when I produced three columns
where I wanted them and in any colour I chose.
So that was the style sorted. Content is another matter so initially I
trawled the weekly church notices and monthly magazine to get some
initial input. I am now looking for people to feed information or
perhaps take responsibility for a page or two.
Tony Prichard – April 2007
23rd. May 2007 - www.dorcanchurch.org.uk acquired for an initial period
of two years.
23rd. June 2007 - External CSS completed and version two published for
comparison.
28th. June 2007 - Web pages verified for W3C, XHTML 1.0 and W3Ccss
standards compliance.
1st. July 2007 - www.dorcanchurch.org.uk set to forward URL to
existing site.
24th. September 2007 - CSS version set to be the default website.
18th. November 2008 - www.dorcanchurch.co.uk added and hosting moved to
FreeVirtualServers.
20th. November 2009 - Contact form added to hide e-mail addresses.
Major update commenced to check all pages for content and revised style
4th. March 2010 - Coverted pages to PHP. Thus making it possible to edit the navigation menus and common content from a single file. Only the changed content needs to be uploaded saving bandwidth.
2011 - Changed to editing with Dreamweaver. Added search box to index page.
Swindon, Wiltshire
