It is about time we had a fairly quick method of keeping members up to date as to :

• the state of the waters,
• match lengths in use etc.
• decent descriptions of the waters, maps, parking places
• fishing reports, photos.
• news from the committee
• raising and discussing matters affecting members

The website has been developed using Apple iWeb software. I have a fast ADSL2+ service. Technically ADSL2+ can run at up to 24 Mbit/s downstream & up to 2.5 Mbits/s upstream, the service I pay for runs at up to 1.5 Mbits/s. typically I am getting 11Mbit/s downstream and 1.5 Mbit/s upstream,  which is considerably faster than the bog standard (up to 8Mbit/s downstream + 512 Mbit/s upstream) as offered by BT Openreach and their resellers which typically gives you 2Mbit/s downstream for many users.

Hosting

I initially hosted the website on my existing NAS (Network Attached Storage) device – a Freecom Network Drive Pro using a free DNS solution from dyndns.com. The website has been running at saltaire-aa.dyndns.org since 22 October 2008. This runs far too slowly when accessed from the outside world but its like lightening on my LAN. It is still in use as the backup site and for testing new website features.

I also had the option of using Apples commercial MobileMe service which has a storage limit of 20GB storage 200GB per month of data  transfer. As Apples MobileMe service is mainly targetted towards IPhone and IPod Touch users who also use Macs or Windows PCs and has had horrendous problems when it was relaunched earlier this year (2008) and costs £59 per year or £89 for a family membership. I decided NO way on earth was I going to use MobileMe.

Commercial webserving from many UK hosting companies starts at about £8 per month. BT is about £10 per month. US based hosting is from about £3 per month. All options except the dyndns service also require an annual or multi-year registration of a domain. So I have registered saltaire-aa.org¹ and I am storing the content on a paid-for hosting service.

The domain registrars and hosting service providers GoDaddy also offer a free hosting service with their adverts at the top but that is much more limited as to what you can do with the service. The adverts that do appear on the webside are ones we can benefit from if enough people click on the adverts and are placed where we (or I as website maintainer) want them. They are content sensitive Google AdSense adverts and you can if you wish block the adverts very effectively in some browsers.

First Developments

The first pages to be written were the first draft of the front page and the pages for Tong Park, then the pages for all the data currently in the yearbook. The yearbook was scanned, OCR’d , and checked for OCR² errors. This data was then updated except for the rules which will have to be updated after the AGM. The News and Information RSS Feed, Match Information RSS Feed/, Committee Contacts and linked Profile Pages have been implemented for some committee members. Minor editing of pages has continued throughout. There are are series of pages with Agents and Tackle shops information implemented as an RSS Feed or Blog. Some of their information has links to their websites and/or their email addresses. Unfortunately the 2008 Yearbook is based on an older issue yearbook (2006) so some of its pages are in error. There is an External Links page with links to the Environment Agency, British Waterways, Angling Organisations, the Telegraph&Argus and some Saltaire Village related websites. An article documenting the Barbel Stocking of the River Aire in October 2007 is in draft. The Photos page may eventually become a Albums gallery eventually. The pages that still need to be completed are the fisheries page for Linton. The Fisheries pages for the Canal and River are planned to be updated and re-implemented as multiple pages. Some are partially written already and so are not fully linked to the other pages but draft fishery pages can be reached from other fisheries pages.

Your pictures

Anyone wanting to submit photos to be included on the website should use the LINK on the photos page as this goes direct rather than being forwarded through the saltaire-aa.org email system and thus avoid the 1MB per mailbox limit. By submitting them you are delegating copyright to the association. Articles for inclusion on the website can also be submitted by email using one of the email links on the webpages.

1. also saltaire-aa.com, saltaire-aa.net, saltaire-aa.info [↩]
2. Optical Character Recognition [↩]