The first LHCRT homepage back in March 2001
L&H Website gets a make-over
Regular viewers of our website may have seen that the site has periodically received a change of look and functionality in order to keep up to date, and it’s time for another. Online media has been under constant development over the last 20 years or so, since the use of the internet at home became commonplace.
The Trust was into hi-tech fairly early on and launched a new official website in March 2001. Before that there were no less than three websites run by enthusiastic supporters. It was built by Sue Williams after a crash course in HTML from Ian Nelson of WRG and “Neltek”, and operated primarily by Sue.
It developed over the next few years but the look and the technology remained largely the same until our present webmaster, Paul Marshall, took over in 2013 when Sue retired from the role.
A major change was of course brought about by the growing use of mobile phones and portable tablets with their wide range of screen sizes and aspect ratios. At first it was necessary to have two different webpages for desktop and mobile users. That’s why some URLs have a ‘.m’ in them to indicate mobile, such as: https://lhcrt.org.uk/mobile/m.membersapply.html
Nowadays we only have one page which adapts to any size of screen, but in some cases it is the mobile version that has survived.
Other changes brought improved security. The ‘s’ you see in a URL ‘https:’ indicates that the data is encrypted between you and the website. That was accomplished by changing our website provider to our present host who were offering it for free.
Perhaps the most significant change is in the rise of social media like Facebook and we are lucky to have one of the very best thanks to our Communications Trustee Christine Howles.
That means the website is no longer the go-to place for news of how the restoration is progressing. Since 2014 we carried Working Party Blogs with weekly (at that time) updates on the workparty progress. Here is an archive from 2014/15.
Whereas social media posts are virtually instantaneous, it takes far too long to update a traditional website. And that brings us to the reason for this 2023 change.
Paul explains: “Over the years I have developed my own way of working to keep the website up-to-date. First of all, I used a program called Serif Web Plus which was easy to use but it could not cope with the mobile revolution so I started using a newly developed program called Mobirise. It was basic, but free to use. It has developed hugely since then, and while still free various premium extras are needed to add the ‘nice-to-have’ features.
So then I started using more and more hand written HTML code as more advanced features were introduced. Not entirely written from scratch, a lot of copy and pasting went on using helper programs, some bought, and some specially written by myself. All to keep the cost to the Trust to a minimum!
“So, this next change is to remove dependency on me so that when I pop my clogs the Trust is not stuck. The latest version is built using a content management system (CMS) that is used by 43% of the world’s websites.
This means that once set up anyone with a few IT skills can be authorised to update the content remotely. It may still look familiar and many of the pages will be exactly the same – for now – maybe forever. So please bear with us if there is a lot of switching back and forth between old and new.
The main change will be to the news pages. The News, Working Party Blogs, and Environment Matters will all use the same ‘blog’ system. The latest will pop up on the home page and all will be readily accessible. Events will be handled better too, including integration with Eventbrite, for online booking and ticketing.
“Finally, I have decided to change my title from Webmaster to Website Administrator. I am concerned that in this modern age someone may be offended by the term Master and visualise me wielding a whip over my team! Only joking, I don’t have a team.”
Paul Marshall
LHCRT Website Administrator