L&H Website gets a make-over
Regular viewers of the L&H website may have seen that the site has periodically received a change of look and functionality in order to keep up to date and it's time for another. Online media has been under constant development over the last 20 years or so since the use of the internet at home became commonplace.
The Trust was into hi-tech fairly early on and launched a new website in March 2001. (what was there before that?). It was built by Sue Williams and Ian Nelson of WRG and “Neltek” and operated primarily by Sue.
Read about it on the first news page here: https://www.lhcrt.org.uk/news2001.htm
It developed over the next few years but the look and the technology remained largely the same until our present webmaster, Paul Marshall, took over in 2013 when Sue retired from the role.
Over the years since then there have been some massive changes in the technology requiring frequent updates. If you want to look back in time you can do so here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20010410004840/http://www.lhcrt.org.uk:80/
A major change was of course brought about by the growing use of mobile
phones and portable tablets with their wide range of screen sizes and aspect ratio.
At first it was necessary to have two different
webpages for desktop and mobile users.
That’s why some URLs have a .m in
them to indicate mobile, such as
https://lhcrt.org.uk/mobile/m.membersapply.html
Nowadays we only have one page which adapts to any size of screen but in some cases it is the mobile version that has survived.
Other changes brought improved security. The ‘s’ you see in a URL ‘https:’ indicates that the data is encrypted between you and the website. That was brought about by changing our Website provider to our present host Cloud-Next, who were offering it for free.
Perhaps the most significant change is in the rise of social media like Facebook and the L&H is lucky to have one of very best thanks to our Communications Manager Christine Howles.
That means the website is no longer the go-to place for news of how the resoration is progressing. Since 2014 we carried Working Party Blogs with weekly (at that time) updates on the Work Pary progress. Here is an archive from 2014/15.
Whereas social media are virtually instantaneous it takes far to long to update a traditional website. And that brings us to the reason for this 2023 change.
Paul explains:
“Over the years I have developed my own way of working to keep the L&H
website up-to-date.
First of all, I used a program called Serif Web Plus which was
easy to use but it could not cope with the mobile revolution so I started using
a newly developed program called Mobirise. It was basic, but free to use. It has developed hugely since then, and while still free various premium extras are needed.
So then I started using more and more hand written HTML code as more advanced 'nice to have' features were introduced. Not entirely written from scratch, a lot of copy and pasting went on using helper programs, some bought, and some specially written by myself. All to keep the cost to the Trust to a minimum!
“So, this next change is to remove dependency on me so that when I pop my clogs the L&H is not stuck. The latest version is built using a content management system (CMS) that is used by 43% of the world’s websites.
This means that once set up anyone with a few IT skills can be authorised
to update the content remotely. It may still look familiar and many of the pages will be
exactly the same – for now - maybe forever. So please bear with us if
there is a lot of switching back and forth between old & new.
The main
change will be to the news pages. The News, Working Party Blogs, and
Environment Matters will all use the same 'blog' system. The latest will pop up
on the home page and all will be readily accessable. Events will be handled better too, incuding integration with EventBrite, for online booking and ticketing.
So this will be the last post using the old system. Time to move on!
“Finally, I have decided to change my title from Webmaster to Website
Administrator.
I am concerned that in this modern age someone may be
offended by the term Master and visualise me wielding a whip over my team! Only joking, I don’t have a team."
Paul Marshall
LHCRT Website Administrator
