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Edinburgh is a great city for cycling. Several local cycling groups organise regular bike rides, most of which are free and open to all. These groups have their own websites where they advertise their programmes. But until recently there was no single source of information about the events on offer. Anyone wanting a day out in the saddle had to look in several places to find what was available.
In 2006, I decided to fill that gap by creating a one-stop listing of all organised bike rides in and around the Scottish capital. From the outset, my design goal was clear. My site would not be bogged down with interactive calendars, search tools, filters or other fancy gadgets. It would just provide a simple chronological list of rides, clearly displayed on a single page. |
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Although I'm an experienced software developer, I lacked web design skills. So I decided to use Microsoft FrontPage to create the site. The process was surprisingly easy - not much more difficult than using a word processor - and the site was ready to go live within a couple of weeks.
Updating the listings was a matter of editing the page within FrontPage, which I did every two to three weeks. The process didn't take all that long, but it did involve a lot of cutting, pasting, typing and formatting, which was tedious and repetitive. Sometimes, I didn't get round to it for several weeks, which meant that the site was rarely completely up to date. |
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| So in January 2009, I decided to automate the process. By that time, I had acquired a smattering of HTML, CSS and PHP skills. This allowed me to jettison FrontPage in favour of a home-brewed web-based application for maintaining the site. I used a MySQL database to store details of the rides, and wrote a PHP script to generate a listing on the fly whenever a visitor arrived at the site. My software automatically selects the events that are due to take place over the next few weeks, and disregards those that have already happened. |
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The big advantage of this approach is that I can add details of new events whenever I have a moment free, regardless of when the event is due to appear on the site. I no longer have to find time for a bulk edit or to upload the page to the server. As a result, the site is now always complete up to date.
I've also used my new web skills to add some enhancements to the site. These include an interactive cycling quiz and up-to-the-minute weather icons. The next task on my to-do list is a mobile version - aimed at cyclists who want to access the site from their iPhones or Blackberries. |
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Throughout the project, the technical support from Compila has been excellent. They always respond promptly to my calls for help, and their advice is invariably sound. As websites go, my cycling site will never have more than a minuscule audience. But the experience I gained from developing it has enabled me to create three further sites, all of which I am happy to have hosted by Compila.
Mike Lewis
1 Back Dean
Edinburgh |
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