Here are the older entries from the Weblog
19-Aug-08 Added pages for 2006, with access to programmes,
Fawlty Towers and
The Odd Couple. Revised a few more pages
around this time. I realise I need to start working backwards from the
present, as I have a number of photographs and programmes from this time that
aren't yet accessible from the site. Let's see what I can manage in the
next few weeks.
06-Aug-08 Loot page now has photo
galleries added (promo shots and
mugshots). Have hived off the
WDG Experience article as a separate page.
Added in the theatrical "Chain of Command"
which proves Stage Managers are the equivalent of God. Minor tweaks and
modifications.
08-Jul-08 Detailed
Booking Info Page added, outlining how to book and a run-down on the WDG
experience. This will be extremely useful for new visitors. Added
the Two Into One page currently calling for
auditions for the November production. Minor tweaks and additions, as
usual.
22-Jun-08 TheatreFest results are online (considering they were
only announced three hours ago, I've done well). Events page updated.
12-Jun-08 I've put more year place-holder pages on but without
much extra data, but the 1990s all have a page for each year at least, and I've
actually added two 1980s pages. Previously there was a huge gap from 1972
to 1996 with absolutely nothing online from then. I have added material
for Other Times (1996) and
Boeing Boeing (1988). But this now makes
room for new material and it's a lot quicker to put something online when I do have
material.
I am currently going through all the photographs in the 2-drawer filing
cabinet that was in the Green Room. There was slight water damage to the
contents after the flood, but nothing major has been damaged. Good
progress has been made physically sorting the photographs. I may then get
a chance to scan some in once they are in some sort of logical order. Help
scanning some of this stuff in would be INCREDIBLY valued by myself - any
volunteers??
10-Jun-08 I've been forgetting to update THIS log for some time
now. The site has grown a lot more in the last nine months.
Programmes are only complete up until 1972, however there are a lot more
programmes added at "random" throughout the years. I have been given some
older archival material (photos and news clippings) which is online in the
relevant places (eg Doctor In The House)
and I've added a lot more photographs scattered all over the place (see for
example the Summer of the Seventeenth Doll gallery,
which is quite extensive, and might be a useful resource for HSC students).
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29-Sep-07 Programmes now complete until end of 1970.
27-Sep-07 Programmes now complete until end of 1968.
23-Sep-07 Programmes now complete until end of 1965.
20-Sep-07 Programmes are complete up to end of 1964. The
next programme to go on, will be one printed after I was born (what a
giveaway!). I've also started a Butler Blog
with recollections on the production process.
17-Sep-07 Programmes are now complete to the end of 1963.
We are still in the Wyong Youth Hall and despite it being mentioned that the
move will be in 1963, the new Memorial Hall wasn't ready for occupation until
June 1965. We have been there ever since, of course.
16-Sep-07 Programmes are now up to 1961. 1960 actually saw
the first photographs of the producers (ie directors) in the programmes,
although this didn't continue at all. Fred Chapman and Elsie Brown have
the honour of being the first and second people depicted in a Wyong Drama Group
programme. I'll let you know when the photographs re-appeared, it doesn't
seem to be until 1968.
14-Sep-07 Still a few more programmes online: I have completed
the 1950s now and the next programme I scan in will be from 1960! Thanks to Robyn Weidlich for a few suggestions on how to
revise the Pass the Butler Bookings Form.
For those into statistics the web site now consists of over 85 megabytes of data
and is made up of 3,452 individual files.
13-Sep-07 I've added two pictures from the
TheatreFest, made it
up to 1957 with the programmes and revised the
Pass the Butler dates. I added
three more pictures of the flooding on the Flood Pics page and designed a form
to email bookings in for Pass the Butler.
10-Sep-07 Scanning in of the older show programmes is now up to
1956. This is a very time-consuming task because I tend to want to clean
up the images (which are often mottled photocopies) and this can take some time
to get a good result. However looking at some of the results compared to
the originals it's amazing how well you CAN clean up a mottled photocopy.
Also new on the site is that since the TheatreFest is now in the past tense, it's
been moved to "Prior Shows". I have also posted a list of the
Award Winners. Communicating Doors has also been moved to the
previous shows section.
15-Aug-07 I have forgotten to upgrade THIS page for some months.
There have been many changes, including keeping the Events page up to date.
But this week I found a lever arch file containing programmes from 1952 onwards
in the Green Room. This was taken down to Laycock Street Theatre's Open
Day on Sunday 12 August, and I have actually started scanning in the programmes
from it and putting them online. So there are now some "Prior Shows" pages
starting from 1953. It will take a while to scan all these programmes in
and put them online, but I have finally made a start, and we have some archive
material from the 50s now online!
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14-May-07 A few more programmes have been scanned,
Soul Mates is now in the past tense rather than
future (so we are looking for an April 2008
performance now, too), and I have added some more text around the place.
Don't forget to look for "Prior Shows" for most of this new material.
17-Apr-07 Have put a large amount of material gradually over the
last month. The archive has material now from 1997 to 2002, and is (apart
from photos - can anyone give me any?) fairly complete with regard to programmes.
There is bonus material when I have access to it. I particularly need
photos of plays - production and in rehearsal - to put online. Please
email me at the address at the foot of every page...
13-Mar-07 Have done a number of small changes, and added more
material from the late 1990s. Deleted a few Theatre Fest pages (by
request).
08-Mar-07 We now have an
August Production, and so some preliminary information is available for
that. I have done a lot of small tweaks this week, touching up the
expression, and adding a few snippets of essential information that has been
previously missing (eg Meeting information).
27-Feb-07 Added the XtrAct page,
publicising these Drama Classes for Youth, run by three conscientious members of
Wyong Drama Group. This page itself has become too long, so I creamed off
the historical entries, and they are on their own page now.
22-Feb-07 Looking back at the site it is interesting to note
that it now has over 70 megabytes of files behind it, and consists of 110 pages.
More material is on the way as I start to scan in old programmes and look for
photographs. Take a look in the years 1997 to 1999 for new additions,
which I won't otherwise mention here.
19-Feb-07 Added the Group Shots page. Added even more
What! E-News. All the issues I have are now online (about 75 of them). Added the Love Letters (1997) programme.
18-Feb-07 Added another half-dozen What! E-News issues.
Added a links page.
17-Feb-07 Put up quite a bit of material from The One Day of
the Year. Put up material from Run For Your Wife, Fourth Wall,
Wanted, One Body, Life Goes On, Love's
A Luxury and several Bush Bashes. Added the Blithe Spirit Programme,
previously missing. Added the What E-News archive containing Rose Cooper's
fortnightly What E-news! reports, going back for nearly a year so far. I
will be putting more issues online when I can get a chance to upload more.
I now have nearly EVERYTHING I HAVE ON MY COMPUTER online. Of course I
will proceed to scan in more photos and programmes in the fullness
of time adding to what's on my computer, but for now I haven't got much more
material to put up. (Apart from the
Financial Reports which are omitted because they are commercial-in-confidence).
So, I need YOUR help to provide info for the shows we have
little or no material of. Check out the website itself for the shows where we need
more material. The object, in the longer-term, is to have a programme,
poster, press releases, cast photos and production photos online for as many
plays as possible. We have, by the way, produced over 180 different shows
since 1952, so this task will never be complete.
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16-Feb-07 Didn't like FrontPage's inbuilt PhotoGallery as much as I thought, so
I manually re-did the photo gallery pages. These are now much simpler in
web structure.
Added the "Contact Us" page and the Maps of Wyong (small
& large) showing the location of the Memorial Hall, available from the "For More Info" page.
Got the Hit Counter to work on every page (this was nice, and I am no longer
bamfoozled - you must always add a hit counter component, you cannot cut/copy
and paste them).
15-Feb-07 Added the Farndale Avenue Murder Mystery files.
Also added the Site Map.
14-Feb-07 Thanks to my wife, Sharon, I now know how to reduce
the size of programmes produced in MSWord to about 30% of their original size,
which results in a pdf file about 20% of the size it would otherwise have turned
out. Accordingly, I can put more programmes online, as downloading them on
dial-up becomes viable. Today I converted the Summer of the Seventeenth
Doll poster and programme (which were already online, but now have been on a
diet) and I added the Arsenic and Old Lace programme and poster.
This opens the door for more programmes in the future.
13-Feb-07 Added a photo gallery for Arsenic and Old Lace.
Renamed "Coming Shows" to "Events" and put in a "Dates for your Diary" section
with up-coming events, such as the play readings and working bee. Revamped the
side Navigation Bar so it
doesn't list the home page - this is always available from the top Navigation
Bar anyway. I also added a photo gallery for Bedfull of Foreigners -
thanks to Rose Cooper for supplying the photos (I need some more for other
shows not represented thus far if anyone can lend a hand). Loads more minor revisions... By the way, if anyone can tell me why the
hit counter works on about 60% of the pages, but fails on the others, I'm all
ears. I do the same thing with the hit counter on every page.
12-Feb-07 More tweaks, and more material. Revamped the
Soulmates page and added the poster Darlene sent me. Added some more
Blithe Spirit material. Added direct links to any show's page
directly from the tables of shows produced.
11-Feb-07 Put a lot of material from Summer of the Seventeenth
Doll (2005) online, including using FrontPage's inbuilt Photo Gallery, which I
will no doubt be using again in the future. This site has also been
submitted to Yahoo and Google search engines today. Let's see how long it
takes before it actually comes up in the searches. (It took about six
weeks last time I did this).
10-Feb-07 More archival material has been placed on the site
from the early 2000s. More tweaking has been done, but today's work has
consisted mainly of actually making more material available.
09-Feb-07 As of today, the site really came online.
For the last four days I have been looking at the site, and thinking all was
fine, so I emailed everyone saying that the site was up. "Not so" I was
told. "It should be" I replied. Thanks to a problem at our host, the
site was available if you were using our host as an ISP, but not if you weren't. So at home, when
I called the hosting service to maintain the site or look at it, it looked good. When I was at work, and
having a look at the site, all looked fine. However, guess who our ISP at
work is? The real test came when I was at home and calling in from my other ISP,
and sure enough
"Page not found, DNS error". Yet another phone call to the hosting service
meant that a small glitch at their end was fixed, and the rest of the world can
now access the site.
Today's changes have been quite extensive. I have split the "Prior
Shows" page up from one long page listing all shows back to 1952, to five
individual pages covering each decade. This means the "prior shows" table
doesn't take ages to load (which it was doing, even on broadband). This
means the archives for each show can be even better organised. I have also
been doing more fine tuning, and I've fixed the Newsletters page so that the
links don't ALL open in a new window, just the newsletters themselves (woops!).
I've also added a credits page, and renamed this page to "The Library", as not
all the contents are archives.
08-Feb-07 Now comes all the tinkering. I have changed most
of the external file links to open in a new window. ALL of the newsletters
are now online (Up to December 2006, anyway). Some more navigation buttons
have also been added. I need to get these a little more consistent - but
as the site structure is still radically changing, this can wait. More
needs to be done, and will be very soon.
07-Feb-07 The website host had our disk quota set too low, which
was causing all the problems. It is now fixed and the site works as
intended. This is quite a relief, as I was thinking we had incompatibility
problems, or (shudder!) I had done something wrong in Frontpage.
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06-Feb-07 At 6:30pm, the new site has gone live on to the new
address. There are substantial problems: some of the buttons are
invisible, and some of the menus do not appear at all! The "4MoreInfo"
page does not work. However, there is data online at the new address, and
people can come home from the meeting tonight and have a look. At least
the shockwave flash page banner works.
05-Feb-07 I had no idea how much work has been involved in what
I planned, but there is still more work to do! However the site is looking
pretty good, and will become quite a resource in the future.
03-Feb-07 Substantial progress has been made, with a major
re-vamp of the site, and less pain under my right arm (at last). The table
listing all shows is in reverse order, and contains links to various years for
which we have some material. This needs to be extended. All 2007
info that is to hand is now up. We need to figure out more of what is
going to happen in 2007... The members' biographies need more work, but I'll add
to that later. This is almost ready to go online.
17-Jan-07 My right arm has been too sore to continue computer
use for extended periods (you may know I have psoriatic arthritis, if not, you
do now), so progress has been slow on the re-invention of the site.
27-Nov-06 I was intending to renew the website's theme (which is
the background colour, button designs, headings and so forth).
After many trials, nothing really looked better than the "old" neon theme.
So I've stayed with it! A new banner has been made (shockwave flash
format, for which you will need to have ActiveX components enabled in your
browser), which has taken a lot
longer than I thought, however, I hope you'll think it was worthwhile.
There are eight images all 640 x 150 pixels showing varying aspect of the group,
from rehearsals to productions, and attending festivals to receiving awards.
The transition is "write on with bar" for those interested. I'll probably
end up re-hashing the banner at a later date.
15-Nov-06 More major revisions done as we proceed to register
the domain name wyongdramagroup.com.au and prepare to shift the site to the new
host. Due to the fact we are paying commercial hosting rates, we have an
enormous amount of space at the new address. This means the historical
section needs a substantial revision into years, with 3-4 pages per year for
each show.
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12-May-04 MAJOR revisions to the website given that Blithe
Spirit is now over. There has been a simplification of layout, and a
few old Blithe Spirit pages removed. A restructuring of the layout
was reasonably successful, and I think the site is a little easier to navigate
now. With all the old stuff moved, a lot of new material has been added
particularly to the Bush Bash and Theatre Festival pages. I have also decided to change the THEME. The
old theme, for those interested, was LaVerne. The new one is: Neon.
It represents a major change in look and feel.
13-Apr-04 Woops! I had been putting the last few
newsletters online, but not activating the hyperlink. To see the official
WDG Newsletters as released by the secretary shortly after each meeting, click
on the button to the left, or here. They are
all accessible now, up to April 2004. By the way, if you've recently
visited these pages, you might have to use the "refresh" function in
your web browser to see the changes I've made to a page. Sometimes your
web browser remembers a page, but it has been changed on the website. The
browser still can display the old version. You need to "refresh"
the page, to force it to read the revised version off the website itself and
show the newer version of the page.
08-Apr-04 The Encore! Theatrefest has had to be moved
forward a week, owing to a clash with the Olympics Opening Ceremony! It's
now on 6-8 August 2004.
02-Apr-04 Added a lot more publicity for Blithe Spirit,
including some magnificent rehearsal shots taken by
Cathy Stone's other half, Peter Santangelo. Also, some more touching up to
the web layout has been done, but nothing major.
05-Mar-04 With the adoption of the site by the drama group, a
few files have been removed, and a general check of all statements
has gone ahead. See the "Error Policy"
on the home page if you should want something on the site corrected, changed or
deleted.
04-Feb-04 The Working Bee is now scheduled for Sunday 15
February at 10am. We need all the help we can to shift things around
under the stage and in the side room. A skip will be onsite for discarded
material. On another front, this website is still unofficial - a motion to
officially adopt it was withdrawn. The motion will be presented again at
the next meeting, allowing more people check the site out this month.
30-Jan-04 More miscellaneous changes to the site, including a
new header-strip.
20-Jan-04 Business Plan presentation given, attended by over a
dozen members. Discussions to be brought up at the next meeting.
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17-Dec-03 Still more additions, the site is becoming quite large
now... I have added a few of my own (non-WDG) pages, and also moved the
Monty Python section there. I've added the Logos page, and added some more
pics.
16-Dec-03 More minor revisions. Put an individual hit
counter on every page now, so we can see what's being used and what's not.
Will be placing the Blithe Spirit Media Releases online, so added all we
have so far in HTML format so they look nice. Please note that the site is
unofficial at the moment, until it is sanctioned by the group hopefully in Feb
04.
14-Dec-03 First minor revisions to the site - Monty Python links
now all work; a few miscellaneous errors fixed, and so on.
09-Dec-03 Web site first let loose on the public.
04-Dec-03 Coming dates: Tues Jan 20th, 7:30pm Business Plan
Presentation. Sun Feb 22nd, 10am Working Bee - all areas.
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