Sherington Web Site - FAQ

• This page provides answers to some of the questions often asked about the web site.

  How many visitors does the website get?

• In the first 5 months of 2012, there were an average of 3815 page loads a month.
• In 2011, there were an average of 3679 page loads per month.
• To put the figures into perspective, there are approximately 373 households in Sherington.
• About 10% of the visitors are typically from outside the UK. The majority of these are from the US, but Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa are also frequently represented. Overseas visitors have also included France, Germany, Romania, Argentina, Japan, Israel, China amongst many others.
• The hits counter is provided by www.statcounter.com. Their web site describes how the system works and how the data should be interpreted.
• The Statcounter statistics also include information on visitors' operating system, browser and screen resolution. Where visitors have used a search engine, the name of the search engine and the keywords are recorded. The number of hits on individual pages is also available.

  What software do you use?

• Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 - for browsing and testing new pages.
• Notepad - for creating/modifying the text
• Paint Shop Pro 7.04 - for processing the images
• miFiles 1.12d - for uploading pages
• Microsoft Internet Explorer 9, Opera 11.64, Google Chrome 19.0 and Mozilla Firefox 13.0 - for occasionally testing the compatibility of pages with more recent and non-Microsoft browsers
• Pages are created directly in HTML. We do not use tools such as Microsoft Front Page.

  What hardware do you use?

• 6 year old Mesh Computers AMD Athlon 64 3800+ PC, with 19in flat screen
• 2 year old Mesh Computers XGS i7 950, with 12GB RAM and 24in monitor
• Epson Stylus Photo PX720WD Printer/Scanner
• Olympus Camedia C-350 digital camera
• Fuji Finepix Image Memory Card Reader DPC-R1
• Panasonic SDR-H60 60GB HDD videocamera

  Where is the web site?

• The web site is now hosted by Heart Internet. It is a 'Starter Pro' account.
• Until 10 November 2007, the web site was hosted by Pipex. The webmaster had a Pipex Xtreme Solo ADSL account, which provided 50MB of web space. The webmaster did not need this for his personal use, so it was available for the village web site.
• When the web site was first set up it was hosted by AOL, again using the webmaster's personal web space.

  How big is the web site?

• There are currently over 650 pages and over 4000 other files (photos, videos documents) including the School, Pre-school, Parish Council and Fete pages.
• Total file size is approximately 550MB.

  Who provides the URL 'www.sherington.org.uk'?

• Nominet is the organisation responsible for the registration of all '.uk' URLs.
• The URL is arranged through Heart Internet.
• Heart Internet also allows up to 1000 'www.sherington.org.uk' email addresses/mailboxes to be created. These can be full POP3 mailboxes, but there is also a facility for emails to be forwarded automatically to other email accounts. The spare addresses not used by the web site itself are available to Sherington community organisations. Pre-school, School and the Parish Council are amongst those using this facility.

  What does the web site cost to run?

• The main cost is the £6.09 fee for the URL for a two year period, plus the £2.95 per month cost of the Heart Internet 'Starter Professional' hosting package.
• As the webmaster would have the computer hardware, software, and broadband link for his own personal use in any case, the only other costs are for consumables such as paper and ink.

  When did the web site start?

• The web site started in July 1997.
• Initially there were just half a dozen pages with basic information about the village. The web site grew slowly with additional content steadily being added over the next five years. Growth has substantially accelerated since May 2003, with the web site more than doubling in size with the addition of the Fete, Parish Council, School and Pre-school sites. This reflects the increasing participation by other villagers and village organisations in providing material for inclusion. The increase in contributions is paralleled by the increase in users.
• In November 2007, the website reached the 50MB Pipex limit, and has therefore moved to Heart Internet, where the capacity is now 5,000MB. This will allow the website to continue to grow, e.g. short video clips can now be included.

  How do you achieve the page layout?

• New pages (i.e. those created since mid-2011) have an improved layout. The pages are 974 pixels wide, which (allowing also for a vertical scroll bar) will fit on screens which are 1024 pixels wide (or wider). Styling is via CSS (cascading style sheets). The navigation menu has been moved to the top of the screen and is based on a design provided by www.cssplay.co.uk. The new design was first applied to the School web site, but is being progressively rolled out to other pages as they are updated.
• The older pages were created by using HTML tables. The cells in each table were given different background colours to create the various rectangular regions on the page. Some cells have another table inside them, eg: to create the right hand menu. The original page width was fixed at 722 pixels. Fixing the width meant that the appearance of the page will be more independent of the screen resolution being used. The choice of 722 pixels was to cater for those using the older smaller 800x600 screen resolution: it is less than 800 to leave space for the vertical scroll bar, anything larger would result in a horizontal scroll bar too. The main content area had a width of 610 pixels to leave room for the menu on the right.
• The web site uses the same basic layout throughout. However different colours are used for each of the main sections, eg: light blue for the School (the sweatshirt colour), green for the Parish Council, red for the Fete and dark blue for the basic site.
• The pages are designed to look best when viewed using the Internet Explorer 'medium' font size setting.

  Who provides the 'Search' facility?

• The 'Search' facility is provided by FreeFind. They 'spider' the site every week or so in order to record any changes. A list of all the keywords people have used for searches is emailed to the webmaster each week. They also provide the Site Map and What's New features. Their service is free, as it is supported by advertising.