This could be just the first update today, as there are several pages and other bits nearing completion, but I have just put up a photo gallery of Portsmouth, with 20 photographs I took two days ago (and there will be more to be added in that gallery very soon, plus other photo galleries to follow.

You can access this gallery via the Galleries Index link tabs on the navigation bars on each page, or click the icon below this to go straight there:-

Oh dear - apologies to any of you who tried to access the various features/galleries via the Gallery Index tag at the top of the page yesterday. Yours truly decided to spend about half an hour sorting the entries into a rough alphabetical order and checking the links - yeah, brilliant, I did just that, but at sometime, during the reconstruction, I sent the initial workings to the server and never got around to sending the final version (well, I reckon I did, but I didn't press the SAVE thingie first - sirry iriot!).

Result? Well, throughout the day, if you clicked on any of those links, you could have ended up on almost any of the other features; roughly five or six went to the right place, but the others were a bit of a selection box gamble! Sorry about that, but it's sorted now ...

One other thing to add - been doing a lot of trawling, trying to confirm a few facts that are shown differently on different sites (that is ALWAYS so annoying) and ended up looking through more of a site that I love, if only because it told me that Gladys Avenue (where I live) used to be called Muddy Lane.

Well, this morning I wandered around the site in a bit more depth - the pages are all (or mostly) in PDF format, but that's fine, once Acrobat has loaded - give it a go, because you can find out all about the street/road you live in, or were brought up in, and there's loads more besides - brilliant site and the link is right below here:- Stephen Pomeroy is the author/webmaster and you can visit him with just a simple CLICK - http://homepage.ntlworld.com/stephen.pomeroy/local/local.htm - fascinating stuff, believe me ...

And that's me for tonight - more later in the week, and cheers for now ...

A very long-seeming weekend, with plenty of new stuff written up and set out and finally, just a few minutes ago, all posted up to the site here, hopefully with all the appropriate links from the index pages all in place, too!

Weather's been quite pleasant, as any readers from Portsmouth itself will know, of course, although I know we're starting to get a few more of you who are "ex-pats", either living elsewhere in this country, or in some cases half way around the world.

We're not yet getting overrun with visitors, but the numbers are increasing now and several of you are coming in here regularly, which is excellent news. Thanks to those of you who have pointed out the odd typo and even the odd small blunder - I could do with a continuity officer around here at times, believe me!

Thanks also to those of you who have taken the trouble to sign our guestbook - we'll have the automatic spam filtering code in place soon, I promise, but we have to make sure it's "storm proof", because already there are little web bots trying to post unsolicited and somewhat unsavoury entries.

In the week ahead, I'm hoping to sort out a few more really good features - I've already managed to assemble most of the research material and a lot of good images, so it's just a case of sitting down here and getting stuck into it, although I also have to get out and about and chat with a few potential sponsors and future supporters.

This website is intended to be non-profit making, but I would like us to be able to cover all the overheads that are inevitably involved, at the very least. I also have to arrange to let all the schools know that this site is available for free and that they might eventually find at least some of its content useful as a teaching resource. If you know any teachers, anywhere in the world, who might find this site useful, please let them know.

And that's it for another night - time for a nightcap (non-alcoholic tonight, I think) and then a stretch out in front of the idiot box. So ta-ra for now and see you again soon.

Yes, once again, after a pretty awful grey start, the evening is clear, with blue sky, although the sun has just dipped out of sight, if I'm honest.

Good day today - posted feature galleries for the Kings Theatre, the Black Death and Britain's Narrowest House. That house is in Manor Road, in Buckland or Fratton, depending upon your point of view. It was built by my granddad, as it happens and is two doors down from the flat where I was born.

So, 'cos this is "my" website, and because I can (yah-boo-etcetera), I added a bit to that page and included a photo of the building where I first saw the light of this wicked world - and added a little something to it that maybe one day ...

Well, you'll have to take a look at the page for yourself, and if you can be asked, you can find it here on the red button:-

The old eyes are a bit red now, so I reckon that's going to have to be it for today - I've got a couple of books to look through, just to check up on some facts that will be going into tomorrow's pages.

Oh yes - spoke to the lovely people at Express FM today - they have their local history programme every Sunday morning, but they also have a decent schedule the rest of the time and it's a very listenable-to station, so I've added the icon link up here on the right.

Click on it and you can listen live whilst you browse - and the on-line streaming is really excellent quality, too, which is more than I can say for some other stations out there, which sound like a fart in a tin shoe box at times!

That's it - I'm out of here for the night. Catch up again later,

Whatever is it with this summer? One minute the sun is blazing dow, then the skies turn a sort of drab pale grey and then, almost from nowhere, dirty great black things drift over and the heavens open! Whatever happened to good old global warming, eh?

It's been a busy couple of days since I last posted here - check in the Timeline page and you can visit feature pages on Portsmouth during the Blitz, Helen Duncan, Britain's last witch, who lived in Copnor during World War II and read about Portsmouth being awarded city status in 1926.

I've also tinkered with a few other pages, but whether anyone will notice such small changes is anyone's guess. The Site Map is one such page, but it was just a case of making a few "routes" a little clearer - that page has been a popular addition, though.

At the moment, the link tab at the top of the page that takes you to the Site Map isn't in every page's navigation bar; eventually, I'll have to have a couple of hours ading it to all the various pages - there are now something like 130 pages in here, not including the Quiz answer pages - but for the moment, I'm just adding it to pages I go back to to edit, and of course it's going into every new page I add.

Chris is tinkering with the coding on the Guest Book at the moment - to prevent idiot postings (and, worst of all, links from porn sites, complete with images!), at present you message comes to his or my e-mail box and we then have to post it in by hand; with luck, we'll have a faster method in place, hopefully by the end of today. We've already had one porn site try to infiltrate the Guest Book, by the way, and if it goes the way that the Forum on the Portsmouth Post website did, that'll be just the tip of the iceberg.

As a break from the normal regime of researching, image hunting, scanning, writing and constructing normal website pages for this site, I spent an hour or so making my version of an advert for Foster's Lager - the "oil of inspiration", as I sometimes refer to it. Come the latter part of the day and it's what keeps me going here, I can tell you!

I've got a couple more I mocked up for fun for the Portsmouth Post, and I'll dig them out and include them here for a bit of fun. Who knows, if they can sponsor The Oval, they might end up sponsoring us - you never can tell ...

Yesterday's effort is posted here on the right and if you click on it, you can see a larger version, which shows the cunning detail a bit better.

Believe it or not, since Sunday I've found two more websites with excellent content on Portsmouth history, but yet again, because of the way they're tagged - or maybe NOT tagged properly - they don't show up in the search engines until you get to page eleventy seven, so I doubt anyone ever gets to read them.

This site, on the other hand, is starting to move slowly up the ratings - I stress "slowly", though, because it takes months to get into the first page or two and that relies on web crawlers and hits registered from Google and Yahoo, so far as I know. The day I type in "Portsmouth History" and we come up as the first entry, I'm going to go out and get blind drunk!

Well, it's breakfast time now - cup of tea, at least - so I'll sign off here, go and refresh myself and then on to writing another couple of pages, which should be on the site by this evening. Not sure which two they'll be, so it'll be a surprise to all of us!

Have a great day and I'll be back soon,

It turned into a sunny day, after a very unpromising start and I've even taken a little while out to sit on the balcony earlier ... well, it is Sunday, when all's said and done!

Mind you, I've done fairly well with finishing off a few re-organisation details; the Site Map page that I posted originally has now been replaced by one with links, so that you can look at the pages the "tutorial" is talking about - and several pages now have a link tab marked "SITE MAP" in their navigation bars, at the top and/or bottom of the page.

It's only a few pages who have that tab at the moment, but they are the important pages, the ones that control everything further inside the site, so they've been sorted first, as has this page - give the link a try ... I'll get to the rest as we go.

I've also put up a profile of yours truly - well, I've had a couple of people asking me about my background, so I thought I'd indulge. Not quite sure where I'm going to put links to it yet, but for the moment, you can look at it HERE.

And that's the end of another weekend, methinks, so I reckon I'll break out a couple of cans of the amber nectar and think about getting an early night and hopefully an early start tomorrow.

Until then, all the very best,

(And yes, I can now sign my stuff electronically, which is a right pose, I know!)

It's after dark here now and the end of a very long day - posted a linked pair of features on Alexandra Park (extended version of a former Post feature for the park's centenary in 2007 and have also revised and improved the former Post feature on Helen Duncan, the last person found guilty of witchcraft in Britain, back in 1944.

I've now split the BLOG, by the way; this page is the newer entries, whilst the older ones have been moved to a continuation archive page - there's a link at the bottom of this column for those of you who haven't yet read them and would like to do so.

I think we've now sorted out the various index pages, and they work thus:-

The MAIN INDEX link at the top of every page takes you to a further page, which has links to:-
(1) A brief history of Portsmouth - several pages covering from Roman times until about 1900, with additional linked gallery feature pages within them
(2) An alphabetical areas index (Copnor, Southsea, Hilsea, Town Centre, etcetera
(3) The same index, but laid out on a simple map of Portsmouth
(4) Timeline Index - chronological index of important events in Portsmouth's history, with links to the appropriate pages
(5) There are also links to some of the major features and the QUIZ section

The GALLERY INDEX link at the top if every page takes you to an index of galleries and features that are either general Portsmouth interest, or not specific to one single area of Portsmouth (some of those features and galleries also appear in several of the appropriate area indexes, as well).

The BROWN links, also at the top (or bottom) of most pages, are links for external sites of specific local interest. These should open in a fresh browser page, but if your browser usually blocks "pop-ups" you may have to hold down the "Ctrl" button whilst you click the links.

You will also notice that a lot of the internal site pages now require you to use your browsers "BACK" button to return to the last page you visited. This is because a lot of pages are now accessible via links on more than one page in here, and there is no other sensible way to make sure you get back to the page via which you entered them, so you could find yourself getting lost, otherwise.

I think I may have to include these instructions, plus a basic schematic SITE MAP (under construction) in a separate page in the near future and link it to the WELCOME page, which is effectively Page 2 in here. Watch this blog for further information ...

And that's about it for today. Tomorrow I'm in the Bookworms Plus bookshop, so I'll probably compile another quiz during the day and post it tomorrow tea time. Which leaves me with just the immortal words of Samuel Pepys ... and so to bed. Catch up with you all again soon ...

Bob (7/08/09)

Actually, it's not raining at this precise moment, but that's probably just a temporary lull - massive downpour had me awake around 3.30 this morning, so I gave up and came up here to start working on the Arthur Conan Doyle feature, which is not complete and posted in the site.

At the moment it's linked via the Southsea area index (which is where he lived) but there will be other links to it soon, as I work my way through the site. For the moment, you can access it here, by clicking on the red button below:-

We've been carrying out a major modification to the links panels; I think everything now works fine, regardless of whereabouts in the site you are, but there's the possibility that the odd icon could be missing, or the odd link might not work. If you find anything, please e-mail me and I can correct it.

Apart from the Conan Doyle article, we've now got a lot of other galleries/articles in the various area sections, including Southsea, North End, Stamshaw, City Centre, Portsea, Buckland and Fratton. Use the main index and then, from there, go to either the alphabetic index, or the index map locator, from where you first access the area you want and you will see a list of features available (did you get all that?)

I've got a session this morning, scanning in loads more old photographs. It's amazing how much there really is available - the trick is being able to hunt it down. As I said at the very beginning, Portsmouth is badly served on the Internet, not because there isn't much stuff out there, because there is.

The problem is, that of the (possibly) millions of words and thousands of images, most aren't easily found via the search engines and sometimes it's a case of just hunting almost blind and keeping your fingers crossed ... try clicking a mouse with your fingers crossed!

I've been bookmarking most of the obscure pages that have good stuff on them and eventually I'll add a special index of links to them, but not until I've cracked on with more of the more important stuff. Curiously, there's no comprehensive index like that anywahere on the web, or if there is, it's so obscure itself that nobody is ever likely to find it, except through sheer chance! I rest my case ...

I'll need to split this blog section soon - move some of the older entries to a separate page. Don't you just hate those internet pages that are so long they take five minutes to load - or even longer, in a few odd cases? We're trying to keep our pages so that they load inside five or six seconds maximum - so far I think we're managing that, but let me know if you find one that takes too much longer.

And thanks to those people again, who have sent me tips, ideas and sources - it's nice to know that the idea of this site is being so well received and that you people out there really are starting to feel a part of it.

It's still less than a month (just) since we started - though I have to admit it feels a lot longer at times! - and I reckon we've done well in the time, but you lot are also doing well, spreading the word, for which we all thank you. So, until next time ...

Bob (6/08/09)