New Web Site
I was tasked by the Management Committee to set up a new web site for the Marconi Veterans Association. The previous web site had been running for around 15 years, and after all this time most web sites need a refresh, also the technology behind them improves. The previous web site was on Chris Gardiner’s family host provider, who generously funded the costs, and used the free WordPress system.
Years ago when I ran some of the Marconi / Selex web sites you only needed to cater for desktop and laptop screens. Nowadays you have desktop / laptops / tablets / smartphones / TV’s and several browsers in use, so you need to use a Content Management System to automatically reformat the web page depending on what device you are viewing it on. The CMS systems use code written in php, and a database (MySQL) to store all the data, so the html pages are generated automatically to suite the device you are using.
The first task was to make a copy of the original website onto a new URL (www.marconi-veterans.com) so that all the original data / articles would be preserved.
We have then set up a new host contract owned by the MVA and moved the original www.marconi-veterans.org URL to the new host (now in the EU, was previously USA). The new web site started in October 2019 and runs on Linux servers (as most of the web does).
I have selected Joomla as the CMS system as this is an ‘open source’ system maintained by thousands of enthusiastic coders, and you get all facilities you need for free. Some other systems (such as WordPress) you only get basic facilities for the free version.
With the new web site the articles on the front page will be time limited – e.g. notification about an event will disappear after the event. But articles such as the newsletter will always remain in the menu.
Newsletter
I have taken on the task of formatting of the Newsletter from this year. I am using Microsoft Publisher to create the document, but of course rely entirely on what articles have been submitted by the Members for the content.
Up until October I thought this Newsletter would be much shorter than last year, however a substantial article from Tim Wander to celebrate the Centenary of British Radio Broadcasting has added many pages, so now not everything submitted can be included this year, but maybe used next year.