| This page has been created because
as a webmaster I like to read about the various hardware and software
combinations that people use to create sites. With this in mind, I
thought other people may like to read about how this site has been
created.
If you are interested read on. There is just one thing I
should mention. Scunthorpe & District Cats Protection are in no way connected with any of the companies
that sell the software mentioned below and we do not receive any payment of any kind to endorse
their products.
Hardware used:
The computer used is a laptop. It
has 512 Megabyte Ram, a 40 Gigabyte hard disk, It is powered by an AMD
Athlon 3200 + processor.
The majority of the photographs seen on this site are taken with a
Kodak DC240 digital zoom camera. This is a 1.3 million mega-pixels
model. A fairly low specification camera to what is
available nowadays.
A Canon Canoscan FB63OU flatbed colour scanner is used for
reproducing any other photographic images seen on the site. These are scanned at 96 DPI (dots per inch)
Regular back-ups of the site are made after each update
using the CD Rom re-writer
Software used:
The computer operating system used is Windows
XP.
The HTML editor used to create the pages is
Microsoft FrontPage 2003. I
would not say it is the best programme available but it is relatively
inexpensive and I find it easy to use and pretty reliable. I hand code
any parts of the site that FrontPage cannot do, or where it is the easier
option.
Xara X and Xara Webstyle version 4 for are
used for the the creation of all the non photographic images, (Gif files).
Xara Webstyle version 4 is used to create the navigation bar that you
see at the top of all the pages. All the graphics are optimised
for fast loading using the optimisation options built in to
the relevant programmes.
Ulead Photo Express version 2.0 photographic software is used in
conjunction with the scanner.
The photographs from the camera are transferred to the computer using
the software built into Windows XP for this purpose, and then imported into Xara X for resizing
when required and optimisation, or Xara Webstyle version 4, depending on how much
optimisation is required.
Technical details:
The Guestbook on the site is provided free by Bravenet Web Services.
You do have to have an advertising banner at the top of
the Guestbook page but the book is very customisable and proves to
be a very reliable service.
The site uses a hit counter to track
visitors. This counter is supplied by Stat
Counter. It is a free service and I have used it for a while
on another site, and it has proved to be one hundred per cent
reliable. Please Note, although the counter gives us various
statistics such as the time of day the site was accessed, the country it
was accessed from etc, it does not collect any personable
identifiable information from any visitors.
The feedback form to send comments about the site to the webmaster is
a standard html form with a PHP powered response. I am no expert in PHP
but by reading books and tutorials on the subject I managed to create a
personal response to visitors filling in the form as long as they leave
their name on the form.
Zenu Link Sleuth is used regularly to check that all the hyperlinks
on the site are in working order.
All pages on the site are linked to an external Cascading Style Sheet
to give a consistent look, and to enable any style changes to be easily made.
The site is uploaded to the host server using the built in publishing
tools in FrontPage 2003. I have never had any problems with
this process,.
The site is hosted by a company called
Supanames. We have used this company for over four years now and
they give an excellent service at a very competitive price, and I would
highly recommend them to anyone looking for a web hosting company.
Please see their logo below.
Well that's about it. I hope this has given you an insight into how
this site is created, and if you want to know any further details feel
free to ask by using the feedback form or
e-mailing me. I will be
happy to respond.
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