2 August 2009

Yes! By all that bubbles and cheers, the sun icon on the left here is absolutely accurate - not a cloud over Portsmouth (and I get a good view out to the Spinnaker Tower from here) just a bit of odd stuff out over the Solent; but how long will that last, I wonder?

Been up here since not long after first light, tidying up the odd little glitch I found yesterday afternoon, so I think everything is more or less working and looking as it should do; thanks to those people who e-mailed me with observations and thanks to those of you who have taken the time to sign the guestbook so far.

One observation of my own - the longer I research any given topic on the old InterWobble, the deeper I go into the millions of pages up here, the more I find intriguing facts that aren't on some of the sites that pop up near the top of search engine results.

That enables me to use different keywords to search further, both to verify these new snippets and, because of the way these things work, to dig out even more interesting stuff, which I hope is going to help us make this the most comprehensive Portsmouth history site, in due course.

And a special thank you to Brett Rumfitt, of the Great Salterns Preservation Society, for the links and information on 19th century Portsmouth born author and historian, Sir Walter Besant - much more about him in this site later, as and when I get there ...

One final thought, before I put the kettle on and settle in for the rest of the day - if you would like to be kept up-to-date with changes and new material postings here, just e-mail and ask to be included in my updates mailbox and I will let you all know whenever there are significant new additions to the site.

And don't worry, we don't believe in giving out e-mail addresses to third parties - ye gods, I get enough trouble with spam mails myself, so I wouldn't condone or encourage it.

Here's to a pleasant, peaceful and productive weekend.

Bob (2/08/09)

PS: The sun is still shining ... shhhhhhhh ...)

Guest Book Update

The "problem" with the Guest Book apparently didn't exist as such - something to do with my main PC picking up something from its own system, so you can sign and leave messages now.

However, your message won't appear immediately, as to stop abuse and stupid entries, one of us has to click a button or two to authenticate it to appear here in the site - sorry for the odd delays, but there are always idiots out there, plus people trying to advertise web sites we don't want to be associated with, if you know what I mean!

Bob (1/08/09)

Page Problem Alerts!

Anyone pottering through the site today should be aware of a couple of problems - (1) The Guestbook isn't working, but hopefully Chris will get that sorted soon and (2) Page 8 in the Trafalgar feature is missing a load of its images - hopefully I can recover those when I get back to my usual PC, as today I'm working from the PC in the bookshop and can't access my original page workings from here.

Those two little niggles apart, it's been going quite well and regular visitors will have noticed that I've "rationalised" the navigation bars that appear on all the pages, with separate lines for links within this site and those to external sites, which I hope will make things a lot easier. If you find any problem links, please e-mail me and let me know.

Difficult to work from the shop, once it starts getting busy, but hopefully I'll get a lot more sorted out and posted up here by tomorrow night. Have a good weekend in the meantime.

Bob (1/08/09)

The section on Nelson and Trafalgar turned out to be a lot bigger than I expected - not only did I find - and verify - some interesting additional material, but the great thing about doing something like this on the web and not in a magazine is that there's more space for illustrations - and there are some good ones in there now!

In total, including its title page, there are nine pages in the main Nelson and Trafalgar article, but there are also another six pages of "galleries", either of images concerning specific events, or, in one case, a page dealing with an eye-witness report of Nelson's death, plus images from famous paintings of that event, too.

The next stage will be to make a few tweaks on the main index page, but as we also need to have a bit of a reorganisation of that, now there is so much more material going up in here, I'll add the link below here, so you can view the Nelson article(s) from here.

Chris has just about sorted a prototype guest book, which we need to test, before adding it here, but I'll continue to keep you posted on that and all other progress from this Blog.

And that's about it for today; hope you enjoy the new stuff and do pass the word on to any friends you think might also enjoy this site.

Bob (27/07/09)

I couldn't believe today's date when I entered it - that's three weeks and a bit of a day since we started work on this site and although there are bits of it you can't see on the server yet ('cos we haven't put them up just yet) there's still a fair bit up here already and we're getting a few visitors each day, which is excellent.

I'm currently working on the section about Lord Nelson, which is basically a slight reworking of my original Portsmouth Post feature for Trafalgar 200, back in 2005, plus a good few additional images, that we didn't have enough space to use in the magazine version.

Russell has also helped me set up a new e-mail address, specifically for readers of this site to contact us. It's bob@portsmouthnowandthen.com but to save you a lot of typing, you'll find auto-generating icons on various pages within the site, that you can just click on to bring up and e-mail box that you can just write your thoughts in. They look like this:-

There's also a slightly larger version in a couple of early pages, but they both work exactly the same. Try clicking on the icon above and you'll see what I mean - and why not just send me a "Hi" e-mail, even if you don't have any specific comments about the site.

Also, in the next day or so, Chris should complete the work on our guest book, for visitors to sign and add comments and suggestions. Meantime, if you have any friends or family you think might enjoy this site, why not e-mail them our home page address, which is http://www.nowportsmouth.com - we would appreciate the extra interest.

Bob (27/07/09)

Sunday - and a damp end to what has been a mostly cloudy old day; very uninspiring, but at least I haven't been tempted outside by a sun that hasn't shown up, so I've plodded away with stuff on this site.

Apologies that there isn't anything much in "genuine" material, because I decided the time was now right to start trying to put together some sort of indexing system for the galleries and articles about different areas of Portsmouth and the surrounds.

At the moment, it's all a bit experimental and very much under construction, but I've uploaded the two main indices - one is a sort of map with links, the other is alphabetical, with links back and forth - and more than 30 area indices, although these don't have any pages or galleries listed in them yet.

Really, I've only uploaded them so one or two friends and other readers can just try them out for a few days, just to make sure everything works as intended; it'll be the end of the week before I've got much content into any of them and some don't have anything in the site to link to as yet, but that will come over the summer. Mainly, I've got the index framework in now and we can fill the individual area sections as we get stuff posted.

Sounds a bit complex, but if you want to take a look, I think you'll get the idea of how it's all supposed to work when the time comes ...

Above is one of the navigation panels, which will get you into the main area index pages. If you have any trouble, please e-mail me. Cheers.

Well, another week begins tomorrow (or begun today, whichever you prefer) and by next weekend we should have a few more goodies in here for you, including an interactive tourist attractions map that Chris is working on. Have a good 'un.

Bob (26/07/09)

Breezy old morning at the moment, but at least the rain is staying away and the sun is even making the odd, albeit fleeting appearance, but as July weather goes ... well, this IS England, so I suppose this is as typical as anything!

Finished off the sixth section of the "Overview of Portsmouth History" section late yesterday, together with a couple of "Gallery" pages that are accessible through it and and even bigger "gallery" page about Alexandra Park, with a link to the Portsmouth Post website and my article from the centenary of Alexandra Park in 2007 (eventually, I'll copy that article (both sections) into this site.

Started on the seventh section this morning, which is actually Part Two of the stuff that will eventually make up the nineteenth century. Decided to break that period down into smaller sections, as there's a lot more detail to go into it - more was happening and, for a change, we have some decent documentation and archive sources to refer to.

Meanwhile, we're working on a project to give you access to the local area radio stations via your computer, so you can listen live as you browse the pages here. On the right is the first of the links, to 107.4 The Quay. Click on either image, but you may have to hold down the "Ctrl" button on your keyboard, if your browser normally blocks pop-ups. Don't worry, it's a safe link! (Hi to Carl, Louise and any of the other members of the Quay Crew who might happen by!)

Well, that's all the news so far, so back to the grindstone. Hope your day is a good one. Cheers for now.

Bob (22/07/09)

19 July 2009

The end of Sunday and it's been a long day. Started at stupid o'clock and spent the better part of eight hours working on this site, after which watched the last three hours or so of the Test Match from Lords - bubbling up to be an intriguing final day tomorrow.

The more I do on this website, the more I realise what a massive job lies ahead and it's not helped by the fact that a lot of pretty significant and important episodes and people in the history of Portsmouth are barely mentioned anywhere, especially on the Interwobble.

I've also been scouring the contents of several books I have on the history of Portsmouth and the result is the same. Just one example - Thomas Croxton, who bought up an entire chunk of land in Southsea and who was basically responsible for making the development of the area into homes, shops and all the other stuff that goes to make a suburb barely merits more than a few words anywhere.

We don't know when he was born, nor when he died, just that he bought acres and acres of land from Sir John Carter (nine times Lord Mayor of Portsmouth) and parcelled it off in affordable chunks to developers. Come to that, there isn't an awful lot available about Sir John Carter himself! If anyone can help ...

Despite that, I'm close to completing the first section of the nineteenth century brief overview of Portsmouth, though I haven't posted it to the server yet. This time around, I thought I'd complete it first, but it should be up here some time tomorrow. Meantime, I've learned a few things about Portsmouth's history that I definitely didn't know before today. We live and learn, as they say ...

And, as I said earlier, it's been a long day, so I'll just post this page, in case there are a few night owls among you, grab another beer and settle myself down for the evening. Tomorrow is another day, so I'll wish you all goodnight and pleasant dreams.

Bob (19/4/09)

Friday morning and it's grey outside again, but for the moment no rain; not that rain will make a lot of difference as far as I'm concerned, as it's going to be another day up here, glued to the old computer.

So far, so good - the "Brief Overwiew" section on Portsmouth history is coming along nicely - 6 pages, plus assorted click-on gallery pages attached, with pictures and more information. Should get into the early 20th century by the end of the weekend, unless I give up and go to the pub!

We've decided to include a series of play-for-fun history quizzes and the first one went up this morning. I've included a link to it here and there's also one in the Index Page. We'll add other odd links from other pages, as we go along.

Click on the link and it takes you to a Quizzes Home Page, from where you can select from a number of quizzes - well, at the moment, you can select from just the one, but I'm hoping we'll get some more up within a few days, but they're quite time consuming to put together with the answer pages. Hope you enjoy the first quiz, anyway ...

I've been monitoring the number of visits we've been getting and it's going up surprisingly quickly. Of course, some of those hits will be from the old web crawlers, but at least that will get us into the various search engines and up their "ladders".

A few days I said I'd be happy when we got our first 100 visitors in a single week - well, we've already gone well past that this week, even allowing for all those search engine bots that come through. Now we aim for the first FIVE hundred in a week!

Oh, nearly forgot to mention - the Introduction Page is up here now - there's a link on the navigation bar at the top of most pages.

Well, that's it from me here for today - got to visit 19th century Portsmouth ... once I've had a cup of tea, that is. Have fun and stay safe.

Bob (17/4/09)

14 July 2009

Tuesday morning, and it's pretty grey and glum, although the weather girl reckons sunny intervals later. Not that the weather makes much difference when you're sitting in front of the PC most of the day!

Slow progress since Sunday morning, but steady. Lots of reading up and refreshing the memory, plus looking for suitable images to go with the text. I make it 25 pages now in here, including the gallery pages of enlargements. Sounds impressive, until I realise that this site will probably run to a few thousand pages eventually!

Chris has been making good progress, assembling images in readiness for what we hope will become a comprehensive gallery section, with photos of different streets from as many as four different eras. Now that IS going to be a big project.

For today, though, it's back to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries ...

Bob (14/7/09)

12 JULY 2009

Sunday morning and the sun keeps appearing from behind the clouds, but so far no more rain - if it's the same in Cardiff, the England test team are in big trouble today!

As for work on this site: well, I've finished the second page in the Brief History section and made a few changes on the Index Page, but I suspect that a lot of today is going to be taken up with researching various details for the Tudor and Elizabethan periods of the Brief History pages, so from mid morning as it is now, it's likely that the pages up on the server won't change a lot until tomorrow morning.

At least I'm moving into a period where there's a lot more documentation surviving - yet I still keep finding discrepancies in various accounts of the period, so it's taking longer to check out than I had hoped.

Those of you who remember the Portsmouth Post will also, I hope, recall some of the history articles I compiled for the magazine and tomorrow I'll be going through the archives on my main office computer, lifting my original texts and illustrations, hopefully to include here.

Four years ago - was it really that long? - I wrote an extensive piece for Trafalgar 200, which I was told at the time was very popular among teachers in the schools in the area, as some of them (apparently) used the Trafalgar section as a teaching aid, to help pupils with various projects on Trafalgar and Lord Nelson, which I took as a great compliment, believe me.

That article - which was really several articles comprising an overall section - will be going up in this site shortly and, although we have a direct link to the HMS Victory website at the top of just about every page, hopefully it will add something to this site itself.

There are plenty of other articles that appeared in the Post and I'm anticipating a long day going through those archives, but it is nice to think that they won't just disappear into the mists of time and be forgotten.

And on the subject of not being forgotten, I took a quick peek at our web server statistics this morning - I wasn't expecting to see much at this early stage, but I was pleasantly surprised to see that we've actually had a few genuine visitors in the past couple of days and that they/you have indeed had a good look through the various different pages, such as they are at this stage.

Earlier this week, in a mad moment, I predicted to someone that inside a year this site would be getting a hundred thousand visitors and a million page hits per month! Mad? Maybe, but if most of our visitors keep passing on the details of this site, who knows? I'll be happy enough when we get our first hundred visitors in a single week and see how it develops from there.

Time for a tea break now and then down to that research ...

Bob (12/7/09)

11 JULY 2009

So far, so good. Four and a bit days of clicking and clacking away on various keyboards - this morning I'm writing this at the terminal in our Bookworms shop in North End, after a battle with the hardware that nearly resulted in my boot going through the screen! - and now we have at least the beginnings of the site.

Having said that, it looks like it'll be another week before there is anything much up here on the server, because a lot of work still has to be done in designing the easiest layout for readers to access the sections they want and it's best that we sort that out now, because later on, as the site expands, it'll be one heck of a job to reorganise the basics.

At least the links bars at the tops of the pages are now working, especially the ones to the outside sites - and yes, I realise we don't have a link to any Charles Dickens site(s), mainly because we think we can dedicate a suitable section of our own site to the great man.

We've made a start on building the Index Page, but even that still needs a lot of work, as we sort out a logical way to present the page and section choices - so far, all we have are links to the two pages on the "brief" overview of the history of Portsmouth and the second of those pages is still a way from finished!

Fear not, though - given the weather forecast for tomorrow, Sunday, I reckon I'll be glad of something to keep me busy for a few hours, especially as the cricket in Cardiff also looks likely to be rained off. So, back again with an update on Monday, with luck ...

Bob (11/7/09)