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Here are the older entries from the Weblog

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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Copyright © Feb-07 by Peter Deane   -  Last modified: Monday, 05 January 2009 01:08 PM