A look back...

Just added to the "About Us" page a list of links to www.archive.org each showing a snapshot of the wsr.org.uk website as it was. I have selected one example from each year from 2000. There's also a link to all snapshots of the website taken by archive.org over the years.

RSS for Latest Pix

I am close to finishing some work which will provide a RSS feed showing thumbnails of the latest ten images from the Latest Pictures page. The benefits here will be gained by those who use RSS feeds to alert of new content (in this case, new pictures). The Latest News RSS feed has been up and running for some time now http://www.wsr.org.uk/news.rss so this is the next logical step for the website as I aim to provide as much online coverage and access to WSR things as possible. If we get a single extra passenger then it's all worth it :)

And from phone to email...

...users can also send news by mobile phone to our email address, just key in:

mmail steve@wsr.org.uk your_message

remember the space between each of the three elements

and then send to +447747782320

Simple.

Text to Skype

Here is another way for folks to send us news items.

1 Start message like this skype wsrweb
2 then a space followed by your message eg London train arrived at NF
3 then send to +447747782320

This make use of the (free) Connectotel SMS to Skype service. Please note we do not use Skype for any other purpose eg phone calls

Cool eh :)

Ready Steady Cook

The website itself does not use cookies - those little files that are a pain or a blessing depending on what they do. Remembering a login name and password is one thing, but sending back information to a commercial company about what you do on your computer is quite another thing. Anyway, I have needed to better understand what pages are being visited. So in November last year I placed some code on the front page and news page which links to a statistics facility. Of course, it uses a cookie. The results have been quite useful. I now have a good idea of the numbers of unique visitors (on a daily basis) by correlation with my own simple incremental counter. And a better idea of what operating system and browser folks use - Windows XP and IE6/7 by a long chalk. The most useful stat is the screen resolution being used - which suggests the next major improvement to the website will be a page size of at least 1024 pixels wide. Back to the cookies. I plan to keep the statistics code for a few more weeks and then remove it. I will have sufficient information by then.

Bigger pictures are live...

As mentioned below, I have put the bigger picture pages on the live site. It's only for the set of eight pics from 2006 at the moment. Canny visitors will notice the pages if they visit the What's New page. There is a temporary link on the Gallery page too. The link to the previous 2006 page is still there. And, yes, I have swopped the pic of Nellie. OK I know these pages feature my own efforts but it's my site, so there! Seriously, I hope visitors will permit me a smidgen of self-indulgence.

A gallery page for "Braunton"

Spurred on by a set of fab images taken and sent in by Marcus Slade, I have created a page of pictures showing progress at Williton Shed as "Braunton" begins to take shape after a very long but hugely professional restoration. The page includes most of those of "Braunton" already on the website in various picture pages down the years. Let's hope tis not too long before the completed loco is revealed to the waiting world. Gonna be a good one.

Bigger pictures

Most pictures in the Gallery are now rendered at 512pixels on the longest side. This size is often an exact division of out-of-the-camera images and should give a reasonably faithfully sharp image when reduced.

However, I am also working on the Year-by-Year galleries, which are of my own WSR images, and well, being selfish, I'd like these to be bigger still! So these are 864pixels on the long side. Of course, users having broadband will be at an advantage when downloading these pages and also those having a screen resolution width of 1024 or more. I am not yet ready to release these pages but when I do I will add a "warning" to the gallery page.

Let's have a blog

Yes, let's have a blog, he thought. Why not. Everyone has one. Actually, I do already have a blog. It's called West Somerset Railway Tales and allows me to bung onto the web a few thoughts about WSR related things that I wouldn't always put on a newsgroup or on the website itself. So why another then? I thought I could use a blog to put things up about the website, such as new ideas, bad ideas, changes. Things about hits and traffic. Anyway, I'll give it a go and see what happens. Blogs away.