A few years ago I received my house's entire history of deeds and it sparked an interest in the history of Wells and locality. That wad of old deeds and paperworks showed only five families have lived in this end terrace since it was built over hundred years ago.
Those documents, a new-comer's interest in Wells, and some skill in software development lead to an idea of this website. While wikipedia gives the academic information, cityofwells.org.uk is the local history, knowledge, and secrets of our little town in the north of Somerset.
For those interested in how the website is generated and in keeping with the openness of web development here is how this works. The background software is written in php and a little python (still learning) using a MySQL database running on the Linux platform (LAMP for short). To annoy script kiddies and keep other ne'er-do-wells (bad pun?) at bay, each time the original data is saved the relevant html static web pages are generated. Hosted on http://streamlinenet.co.uk/ shared server it can be prone to outages.
As expected the whole www.cityofwells.org.uk website meets the web standards as described by the W3C. It can be viewed on any system, using any browsers, in any resolution.
A Google calendar is available to show all the local events available. Add to your Google calendar.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License. This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. Others can download and redistribute your work just like the by-nc-nd license, but they can also translate, make remixes, and produce new stories based on your work. All new work based on yours will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also be non-commercial in nature.
Had to drop streamline.net's MySQL database due to number of outages and quality of services. Lucky there was a couple MBs spare on another MySQL database server I could borrow. If it wasn't for the potential disk space the photographs are taking I would drop streamline. There is such a thing as too cheap
Recently I smashed open my china piggy bank, gather all my Christmas money, and did a few extra 'paper-rounds' to buy my brand new Nikon D40 DSLR camera; and loving it. It is not the prettiest in the bunch and quite shy compared to the all singing and all dancing big boys, but until I can save my pennies for a proper camera, I am as happy as a cow in clover!
This upgrade from the original Point-n-Shoot canon ixus doesn't make me a better photographer, but at least I look the part. SH
