About this Site
Technology:
WordPress 3.0.1+ Content Management System (link)
cPanel 11.25 running on Apache web server software (link)
PC made from parts from three other PC’s (literally) running Windows XP SP3 (old, I know) Dell Studio XPS 8100 (Yaaahh!)
Tea and buttered toast. With the occasional biscuit.
Coding
Apart from the widgets in the footer, and the excellent plugins (see below), the site is entirely hand-coded and built from scratch. The structure is built using XHTML syntax with occasional bits of HTML 5, the styling as much as possible done in CSS 2 – although some of the plugins are using elements from CSS 3 (which doesn’t validate yet!). The content is delivered via WP’s excellent PHP code library (link)
Content
90% of the content comes either from Tom, or directly from the CPBS, while the remainder comes from our readers sending in updates. I throw in the odd post as well. The photographs are generally from the same sources, to the same ratio – although special mention has to be made to Satu Pitkanen and Susanne Lehmann for giving us photos that really show how it’s done.
Plugins
*note – I update these plugins as I go along, so the version numbers may have changed (upward, obviously) since time of writing. I highly recommend Noel Jackson’s ‘Art Direction’ plugin – it’s the easy way to achieve unique post styling.
- Akismet Version 2.2.6 by Matt Mullenweg
- Event Calendar Version 3.1.4 by Alex Tingle
- Event Calendar Widget Version 3.1.4 by Darrell Schulte
- NextGEN Gallery Version 1.4.3 by Alex Rabe
- WordPress.com Stats Version 1.5.4 by Andy Skelton
- WP-Polls Version 2.50 by Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan
I also made use of at one time or another:
- Art Direction Version 0.2.1 by Noel Jackson
- the_excerpt Reloaded Version R1 by Kaf Oseo
- Dean’s Permalinks Migration Version 1.0 by Dean Lee
- Customizable Post Listings Version 1.5 by Scott Reilly
- Google XML Sitemaps Version 3.2 by Arne Brachhold
- Homepage Excerpts Version 1.0 by Daniel Scocco
Those most excellent archives were based on original code written by Ben Gillbanks over at Binary Moon.
The Recent Posts listing on the home page is not core WP functionality, but there are widgets available – for those, Google is your friend – if you want to code them in yourself, let me know and I’ll post the code up somewhere.
Quirks
At the moment, the site is on its fourth incarnation since we launched in February 2009. The reason for so many changes in such a short space of time is simply down to the fact that our viewership is growing at an exponential rate and the site must change to meet the demand. As the site grows, so too do we further refine what exactly we’re about and emphasise certain aspects of our content more and more. This particular redesign is far more robust and streamlined than previous editions, and so should better withstand the site’s growth (I hope).
It works fine on all up to date(!) versions of the main browsers: IE, Firefox, Opera, Safari, and Chrome. If you come accross any problems, let me know. To be frank, if your browser isn’t up to date, viewing this site properly is going to be the least of your problems internet-wise.
