It is seven years since the Winsham Web Museum was launched. It was designed and set up by Bob Osborn –a professional Web Designer who was very helpful to us-described more fully   in the ‘How it started ‘section. After a couple of years Bob had to relinquish the task of maintaining the site. Faced with this problem the museum’s management committee decided that the only solution possible was to do it themselves. I volunteered to undertake the training at Yeovil College-where Bob Osborn was teaching the course - and eventually emerged with a Grade 3 City & Guilds Certificate  in Web Design.

The knowledge gained was essential, but just the start of a long learning process which could only be fulfilled by on-the-job experience, and the result of this less than expert site servicing has been, as years went by, that the museum became very 'ragged around the edges'! Even by the time the first edition was finally removed from the Server, there were parts that I never dared to explore or fully understood how they worked!

The Web Museum site had become large and complex by many standards. The 'Second Edition' now occupies some 320Mb of server space, with 800 web pages, including 300 .pdf files, 2,000 pictures and about five thousand hyperlinks. And no two pages are exactly the same format, so each is individually constructed. This is considerably larger than the first edition, which in 2002 was 80Mb in size.

Links were ceasing to work properly. The Java Applet Menu system that delighted us to begin with,  in the manner in which it collapsed and expanded as the mouse pointer passed over it, began to develop problems that were beyond my understanding to fix. We were also using a ‘Frames’ system in various parts of the site which  caused problems by preventing direct links from outside sources, such as the Winsham Parish Web site and the weekly Winsham e-letter, to individual web pages within the web museum.

The site was also beginning to look distinctly old fashioned. Nothing wrong with that you may feel, especially for a museum site! But the reality is that Broadband makes a considerable difference to the manner in which Web sites work, what they can contain, and how they are viewed . In Winsham , some 85% of on-line households have Broadband. About 70% of all households are on line.

Broadband , to a large degree releases the web designer from the tyranny of small picture files, as pictures now load quickly. Gone is the interminable wait while a large picture file gradually assembles itself. This greatly changes the approach to the design of web pages, allowing much greater use of pictures. This problem has also been greatly helped by the much faster and more powerful computers that so many of us now have. In the 'back office' new software is also taking some of the chores out web site building. This site is put together using Microsoft Expressions Web2 which I have had to learn to use, but has proved to be well worth the effort. Three cheers for Bill Gates!

Broadband and flat screen technology has also encouraged the development of inexpensive larger monitors with high levels of resolution. These are now in general use. Web pages depend on the ‘resolution’ of the viewers individual monitor and computer settings for their appearance, so the original Museum Web pages  that were originally designed for viewing at 800 x600 pixels (the first edition specification) were looking a bit odd when viewed at higher resolutions.

Part of this regeneration has also involved adding a great deal of new material, and improving the presentation and accessibility of existing information-pictures and text. Work still remains to be done in this area, and will be carried out on an on-going basis.

So there you have it. I hope you enjoy the ‘Second Edition’. It has taken hundreds of hours of work, during which I have sought the advice and encouragement of numerous people in the village, especially on matters of  information ,  appearance and access, for which I thank them. This will not be the last time that the Web Museum will need to be re-generated, but it will need younger people to do it. I am very keen to find someone who will take over the management of the site sometime in the future , to ensure that this fascinating history of Winsham passes intact onto future generations.

John Sullivan-May, 2009