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December 1998: Barn Weekend. Asked by DS to start looking at the Warwickshire Scout Site in order to put a page on their site for the 11th Nuneaton Scout Group.

Christmas Holidays-January 1999: Start looking round for ideas, web space, page creation programs and e-mail address's. Find a company called Xoom.com who will give you 11 MB of webspace (now unlimited) and an E-mail address for free. Sign up as cicottrell and use their own EasyPage Builder to instantly create my own site. I used this as a testing site before setting up the Scout one.

February 1999: Find a trial web page creator on cover CD of Macworld. Used it to take over EasyPage Builder. Much better to do things off-line. Use Claris HomePage 3 to design a basic page, with the help of their assistants.
Begin to write a couple of pages.

March 1999: Try to set-up a scout site with Xoom.com but fail to find a suitable name that wasn't already used. Look up in magazines for similar companies and find one called Tripod. Set-up account as Scouts_11thNuneaton. Download (from Xoom.com) a program called Fetch! which is an FTP program that allows you to upload your pages to your server (eg Tripod).
Continue adding to the Sites content and layout.

April 1999: Upload the first Website of 11th Nuneaton (Weddington) Scout Group. http://members.tripod.com/Scouts_11thNuneaton
Fail to get Email address with Tripod, so go to Yahoo!, as mine was already. Use Scouts_11thNuneaton again so not to get confused.
Sign up with WEBSTAT! so I can keep track of how many people are visiting us.
Find several programs for creating animated banners for the site. Have several attempts which are all tried out on my site first, but decide they are two big and take too long to load so trash them.

May 1999: Continue adding to site, including graphics and the monthly Newsletter.
Signup with The Guestbook.com to get a guestbook. (Had previously used one from Xoom.com, but it was rubbish).
After weeks of not working I dumped WEBSTAT! and signed up with Tracker.com to keep track of the number of visitors and Extreme! to track everything else.
Receive Email from Scout in Panama.
After finding some graphical links not working, I design a text only site, in addition to the normal one.

June 1999: Used company called Addme! to add the address of the site to all the major search engines on the web.
Register on Scoutbase as an official Website.
Awarded an Officially Recommenced badge by Scoutnet.
Continue updating the site. Try a top-bar frame but withdraw it after a week due to technical problems (ie it didn't work). Instead of a top bar, I try a Java approach. Go to the JavaScript source and download several scripts for hi tech navigation and auto loading pages. Try several on my site, (including one that automatically sends an email from every visitor to the site), but only one worked (millennium countdown) so give up with this idea (for the time being...)
Find a company called ZapZoneNetwork who setup up email address's. Register 11thnuneatonscouts so get email address chris.cottrell@11thnuneatonscouts.zzn.com. Hope to get all leaders an address soon.

September 1999: Decide major chances are needed. The No Images site is dumped, the graphical Home and Email Me links are removed and replaced by a new side bar frame, (which this time works!) Cool sounds are added (although more work needs to be done on these) and the basic font colour is changed to bright green rather than boring brown. Change the plain World Membership Badge title page to a better, more informative picture link.

October 1999: Create new Baden Powell page with picture, text and even one of his speech's (if I can get the file size down from 12.6MB!).
Visit as many Scout Websites from the UK and around the World as possible and record their URL.

November 1999: Complete the BP page and a Promise page, as well as a mini history of Scouting Page and add a Scout Group Links Page with all the address's from the sites I found in October.
Continue updating the sections page and create a "Can I Join?" page. Create a new top bar with a pull down menu for links, instead of the side bar.
Change the front page to include a No Frames site. Insert a Necker as the background image on each page.

December 1999: Find and download Gifbuilder, a free program for creating animations. Use it to redesign the front page.
Run a spell check throughout the text!!
Re-design the Newsletters page so it is sorted by year rather than month.
Try to advertise the site around the Scout Hut using full colour posters. Decide that "http://members.tripod.com/Scouts_11thNuneaton/" is too long so sign up as "go.to/11thnuneatonscouts" and "turn.to/scouts" This is easier to write on posters and people are more likely to remember it.
Run the site though Addme.com again, this time using different Keywords so more people will find the site.

January 2000: After taking the site off-line over new year, its back, now with an updated leaders page, new front page, new contents page and a new counter.
The whole site is rewritten to fit in with Scout Association guidelines.
The front page is updated again, this time using graphics created in Fireworks. The topbar is simplified so it fits in on 640 x 480 screens.
The whole site is redesigned and the top bar frame is no longer. I found too many people didn't realise how the pull down menu worked, so its gone. The site isn't uploaded for 3 weeks while I redesign it.

February 2000: Awarded another ScoutNet UK Recommended Website Award.
Signup with Scouting Spider to keep track of visitors since to the relaunch on 7/2/2000.

March 2000: Re-design the graphics on the 'Enter' button, the name-bar on the top of the contents page, a motto and all the sub-contents pages with rollover images. Check them out! All work created with Fireworks.

April 2000: All nav-i-bars at the top of ever screen are updated to graphical rollovers.
Signup with freenetname and finally register http://www.weddington-scouts.org.uk as our URL . Its free (I told you I'd do it) and looks much more professional. Have to re-write posters and links. Draw (in Photoshop) our new 50th birthday badge and put it on the front cover.
Re-arrange the home-page to fit in all images. Go though addme again.

May/June 2000: Only the Newsletters are updated during the exam season.

July 2000: Preparations for the Canada Trip start, including setting up a page that can be updated from Canada.

August 2000: The update page idea failed due to lack of internet access, but the Canada 2000 site is being flooded with photos and reports. Watch this space! 100'S of photos have been scanned for the Canada 2000 site! check it out!

September 2000: Cosmetic changes to the Canada Site, new Canada Link Pic on front page and Newsletter go up.

October 2000: More photos go on the Canada Site, which is then declared 'finished'.
Lots of minor changes to the site.
Our Email address changes to weddington_scouts@madasafish.com which is a pop server and better than Yahoo!

November 2000: Activity photos posted.

January 2001: The Enter page is removed, so you now go straight to the Main base page.

March 2001: A Flash animation intro is added, to jazz things up a bit.

May/June 2001: Activity photos posted.

August 2001: After returning from summer camp, the whole site is completely rewritten, with navigation and colour schemes changing.

October 2001: A load of minor updates done whilst at University.

December 2001: The last 3 months of updates can finally go on the web!!!!!

March 2002: With the www.weddington-scouts.org.uk address about to expire, I buy www.11thnuneaton.org.uk

June 2002: With uni finished for the year, the ENTIRE site is rewritten, totally from new, using new software. Freeway 3.5 replaces the ageing Claris Homepage.

September 2002: Due to problems with the rollover link colours clashing, i change the colour scheme of the site from scout green and purple to 11th Nuneaton Red and Yellow.
A Poll service is introduced, aimed at giving people a chance to interact with the site and express there opinions about Scouting.

January 2003: Wow! into our 5th year! A few minor updates and a link to the Warwickshire Jamboree contingent website (also written by me!)

February 2003: More minor updates, a text only site is written and we're on our 3rd poll!

March 2003: 100s more photos posted... a new video gallery is created, with movies optimised for 56 k or broadband users.... A new image rotator is added to the graphics home page. The right hand nav i bar is changed from a graphic link to text links so it loads quicker and can be updated easier.

May 2003: More polls, a few more pics.

June 2003: Group Camp pics added.

July 2003: A new right hand nav i bar is added for the sub section links (Leaders, section, photos etc).

September 2003: New campfire page is added, more group links and more knots as well. Small tidy ups, lots old activitiy pics and videos removed, old homepage screen grabs are added.

October 2003: A sad day as our guestbook service is withdrawn, as they want me to pay for it! Hopefully a new service will be installed...

November 2003: Massive behind the Scenes changes! A brand new server, which means better uploading for me, faster viewing for you and general all round better ness! Also, as i now have a cgi-perl bin, we have a feedback form and server side includes are possible, which is useful! Also I've written our own guestbook to replace the old guestbook. Also new email address, info@11thnuneaton.org.uk can now send and receive and we also have webmaster@11thnuneaton.org.uk too! And a new memories page and a new quotes page for our Venture Only subscribers....

January 2004: Coming up to 5 years! Wow! Minor updates, most significantly an updated banner on the top of every page and a legal disclaimer thing.

May 2004: Wow, this hasn't been updated for ages! lets think, a few minor updates, a few photos and now a new Events Calendar... lets see if it works! Even our 5 years go unnoticed!

September 2004: The random pics on the front page are replaced by Scout branded Scouting cartoons. a new google search feature is added.

January 2005: Lots of little updates, James Boucher takes over the Explorer site, the Network site is updated with an online membership details updating form. I design a new Scout Record Card and 2005 calendar.

January 2006: Lots of updates to keep the content fresh, some pages go (Opinon poll, the yearly calendar etc). An attempt to widen the page (it was originally designed to fit on smaller monitors, largly unneccessary nowadays) proves harder than I thought and is temporarily abandoned.

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