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OCTOBER 2009 |
Since losing my job in March 2009, I have had a lot of free time on
my hands. However, rather than sitting on the computer all day, I
made the most of the early good Summer weather, and went out on my
bike a lot. I have been able to carry out a lot of personal
administration, redecorate my home, and have a massive clear out.
Six months later, and the global recession is still hitting the UK
hard. I have still been unable to find gainful employment, so
now devote a lot of my time to voluntary projects, in addition to
teaching myself CSS design.
One of the major benefits of having all this time off, is that I
have been able to produce massive updates and new content for the
site, and finally answered a lot of e-mails which had been building
up.
The site is almost near completion, with regards to missing
pages/wrong links. A huge amount of new CSS has gone into these
updates, and I hope you'll agree that the site looks sleeker with each passing year.
- A new References page has been created, and provides links to the
many sources I have used in the creation of this site.
- The Geography, Inspiration, and Disclaimer pages have all
been updated.
- The forum continues to grow, albeit slowly. New topics have
been added, including a brand new section on cycle routes in
Cardiff.
- A total of 35 new images have been added, in addition to new
suburb pages.
- The famous Cardiffians page has been updated, with brand new
graphics and layout, with many
new additions to the list (separate pages for every person are still being
worked on)
- Each of the famous Cardiffians profiles have been
upgraded to the latest XHTML standards, with new fluid
layouts. This marks the end of converting the site
from hugely error ridden HTML 4.01, to error free,
Strict XHTML 1.0 - every single page can be checked with
W3C standards and will validate perfectly, in addition
to perfectly validating CSS 2.1. I am particularly
proud of this accomplishment.
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March 2009
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- Having spent the last few weeks worth of my spare time on
the site, I've been able to do some decent updates. Many
suburb pages have gone online, including Splott, Llanrumney,
Pentyrch, Grangetown and Gabalfa. Still more to go, but as there
are so few left to do, I've been able to concentrate on bigger
updates.
- As a result, there's a brand new sortable
A-Z Image List available, which has finally replaced the old
manual search. More pages are being changed from .html to .shtml
and eventually, the old pages will be removed from the site.
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Jan. 2009
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- A NEW FORUM HAS BEEN ADDED AND ALREADY HAS SOME ACTIVITY ON
THE BOARDS. Please check it out.
- Work and personal commitments have again prevented
me from adding much new content recently. Every page on
my site is already validated to XHTML 1.0 and the latest
update of CSS (version 2.1). This provides
cross-browser compatibility and addresses accessibility.
Updates include:
- A new site logo in PNG
format, which takes advantage of the new opacity
abilities in Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 3.
- New Page Titles, replacing outdated text and
instead using bright, clean graphics.
- The entire site structure to be reworked to include
SSI (Server Side Includes). Please update your bookmarks.
- Brand new multi-level menus using CSS
- The upgrades will take me about 6 months
to complete. Thanks to everyone for all the e-mails over
the year. Every single one has had something positive
to say about my site which pleases me no end!
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Sept. 2007
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- A total of 24 new images were added to the galleries.
- This site has been officially recognised in a new book
called
'Haunted Cardiff and the Valleys', published by Tempus.
Steve Cluer, Chairman of 'South Wales Paranormal Research', and
I collaborated by e-mail to provide some images for his new book, and this site is honoured with a credit in the
acknowledgements section. Many thanks Steve - the book's a great read!
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July 2007
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- New images
were added to the Adamsdown, Caerau, and Canton pages.
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May 2007
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- The site is now just over two years old and this is my first
update entry for nine months. I have been very busy with
other things and have as a result left the site unattended for
quite some time. I have created a new site for the Parish
of Llantwit Major and Cowbridge,
www.westvalecatholics.co.uk
and maintain the site as a voluntary contribution. It
is updated every week.
- Since Internet Explorer 7.0 was released, I have been having
problems with my Flash Menus. New CSS menus have been added,
new graphics, and I've got
around to doing a contact page.
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Aug. 2006
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- New page added to the Suburbs section (Cyncoed and
Lakeside)
- 19 new images to added to various galleries, with most of
them going in the City Centre section, which now has eight
pages.
- New photos added to the Coryton and Whitchurch page.
- Added a new biography to the Famous Cardiffians page.
- All main pages rewritten to comply with the HTML 4.01 and
CSS WC3 web standards. I've noticed now with 'validated pages', the site is easier
to update and maintain. It will also make search engine robots'
jobs easier as they are scanning through clean code.
- I have removed the Guestbook due to spamming problems.
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June 2006
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- More problems with Google indexing the site, so need to learn how
to produce clean, efficient code to resolve the issue.
- The site has now picked up over external 50 links.
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May 2006
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- Google has dropped the number
of pages it indexes on this site from about 60 to just 5! Even
without the use of a Site Map, Google had been indexing these pages
without a problem since October 2005. I have now created a long
overdue XML Sitemap which should resolve this issue.
- The 'Famous' Cardiffians page has been completed and so
far has four celebrities listed.
- Thanks go to those who have e-mailed me, and left in my
guestbook, so many kind comments about the site. I am pleased that people are
enjoying my work, including Brian Lee! (Author of 'Cardiff: Those
Were The Days' and 'A Cardiff Century' amongst others).
- The site received over 58,000 hits during April 2006.
The highest since it's launch.
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Mar. 2006
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- Added a bit more to the Timeline, and thanks to everyone who
signed my Guestbook.
- Slightly
redesigned some of the Gallery pages with a larger Navigation menu,
for users who may have found the writing too small.
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Feb. 2006
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- The guestbook is gaining signatures every week - thanks to
all who have left comments.
- A large new batch of
photographs (71 in total) have been added. Most of the new photos
are of the City Centre.
- New links to each photo have been added. If you wish to add
an images, please remember that all contributions are
credited.
- Another 12 years worth of history was added to the timeline
this weekend.
- The 'A to Z Image Index Page' has been finally completed and
all links are active.
- Also, the guestbook has started to fill up - thank you to
everyone for your kind comments.
- The homepage has been re-coded slightly to reduce the 'spare
junk code' that Microsoft FrontPage seems to enjoy adding in
irregular places.
- 5 new photos have been added to the Caerau page.
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Jan. 2006
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- The Timeline page is online, and being added to in chunks, and I
have added additional navigation links.
- I have
added more sites of interest to the Links Page, and I have added a
guestbook to the front page.
- Still no new photos put on the site, but other pages have been
tweaked and updated.
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Oct. 2005
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- Thanks go to my
Brother Adam, who spent many hours going through
my notes and books, and adding the information to the Timeline.
- The new Main Navigation menus have finally been added, and
are done in Flash.
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Sept. 2005
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- After 5 months, the site has finally been indexed by Google,
and other search engines for the first time. I need to
brush up on SEO techniques!
- The A-Z index page is up and running, but the hyperlinks are not yet
active.
- I will soon upload a page dedicated to Cardiff's Timeline. I will not be citing
sources at present, but will eventually add a list of
the books I used in the process, towards the sites completion.
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July 2005
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- Javascript used to create
an interactive image gallery, providing both simpler viewing of
thumbnails and larger images, with reduced loading times.
- Format of many pages changed to provide
better level of control over text sizes, improving ease of use.
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June 2005
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- New site history page added, and new photos on the Roath &
Penylan and Canton pages.
- New links page added.
- Clickable map performance increased with pre-caching.
- New pictures on the Adamsdown, Cathays, Cardiff Bay & Llandaff Pages.
- New pictures on the Roath & Penylan page.
- New pictures on Ely, Llandaff, Llanedeyrn, Heath & Gabalfa pages.
- First photos on the site, which were added to the Butetown
page.
- All pages up and linked through the main map on the front page.
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May 2005
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- Front page completed with continuing minor adjustments to area pages.
- Site created and online.
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