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codnor_webmaster
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Joined: 10 Oct 2005
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Location: Codnor, Derbyshire

PostPosted: Mon Oct 10, 2005 10:15 am    Post subject: Codnor Parish Council Website Reply with quote

We would love comments on our website, which has only been live for a couple of months now.

http://www.codnor.parishcouncil.net

Please let us know what you think.
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angie456
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PostPosted: Tue Oct 11, 2005 9:46 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I like your website. How did you get local weather and travel on it? I live near Ripley in the South East, but I take it that the weather it is showing is for another Ripley in Derbyshire?

Angie
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stretpc
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PostPosted: Tue Nov 29, 2005 9:11 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hi,
I like your website, and as the writer above said, I really like the news and weather bits.

One question I am posting to all the other Parish Councils on this forum is how much time it takes to keep your website up to date? I note that you have news, minutes, weather and all the rest on your site - do you have someone doing all this full time?
Thanks.
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dsjwebmaster
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Joined: 28 Nov 2005
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Location: Deeping St James, Lincolnshire

PostPosted: Tue Nov 29, 2005 10:45 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

stretpc wrote:

One question I am posting to all the other Parish Councils on this forum is how much time it takes to keep your website up to date? I note that you have news, minutes, weather and all the rest on your site - do you have someone doing all this full time?
Thanks.


Codnor Webmaster,

I presume you use a feed from outside providers for the news and weather (as I do), but I would also guess that the local services have had to be typed in by an individual. How are you going to ensure that it remains up-to-date as time goes by? The advantage of someone managing all the information is that it is far more likely to be complete than the way we do it, which is waiting for people to add their own - which most never bother to do - but the disadvantage is that t is unlikely that any one person will know everything that needs to be posted!

Mark
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Deeping St James Parish Council
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dsjwebmaster
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Location: Deeping St James, Lincolnshire

PostPosted: Tue Nov 29, 2005 10:54 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

angie456 wrote:
I like your website. How did you get local weather and travel on it?


Right-click on the news and weather links and copy the link locations to a word-processor and you'll see that they are to other sites that syndicate this sort of information. The weather is from the BBC:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/5day.shtml?id=1645
The traffic reports from the AA, and so on.

These sites usually (though I cannot speak for Codnor) give full instructions on how to use their information.

Hope this helps.

Mark
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codnor_webmaster
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PostPosted: Tue Nov 29, 2005 11:22 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

You are quite right about the weather and travel. To my mind there is no better service than the BBC for services such as weather and national news, and the AA do a very good job with the travel.

As for the rest of our news, we decided to use one of parishcouncil.net's website. This means that we can add news and new diary appointments by ourselves. It does not take that long to do, and you do not need to know much about computers to be able to do it (other than being able to open up a website and type!).

I guess it does mean that the site will not have as much recent news as it would were we using RSS, but we do have complete control over what it posted.

In terms of agendas and minutes, these are simply sent to Parishcouncil.net who put them all on the website for us, which really is nice and easy!

Looking forward to seeing the snow again on your site - as good a weather indicator as any I've seen!!
Mr. Green
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dsjwebmaster
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Location: Deeping St James, Lincolnshire

PostPosted: Tue Nov 29, 2005 12:33 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

codnor_webmaster wrote:

I guess it does mean that the site will not have as much recent news as it would were we using RSS, but we do have complete control over what it posted.

Looking forward to seeing the snow again on your site - as good a weather indicator as any I've seen!!
Mr. Green


I do worry slightly about the RSS content, but most of it is from our County Council or from local newspapers, but the front page stuff is from the Guardian. We used to use an American feed that searched the world for British news from a wide variety of sources but it was not ever so good at being relevant!

The virtual snow is only as good an indication as my ability to get to my computer (where the code is kept) to get it pasted into the webpage as soon as snow is falling. I would not rush to get the next bus home, and if not at home I might not even know!
Wink
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ParishCouncil.net
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PostPosted: Tue Nov 29, 2005 1:43 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

We have been quite interested in using BBC RSS feeds on some of our sites for some time. The benefits that we can see with the BBC over some of the other RSS sources is that it is:


  • Quite easy to put into the site
  • Probably the most trusted news source in the world
  • Can be broken down into regions around the country
  • Does not use any advertisements


I also second your comments on using feeds from the USA. Our research has shown that this is perhaps slightly shaky ground for a Parish Council, as you cannot guarantee to get the feeds that you really want.

However, it is all positive stuff, and I am particularly glad to see your comments that people in your local community use your website as their homepage. This is exactly what other Parish Councils should be looking to achieve for their websites.
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tom
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 12, 2006 1:36 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Codnor Webmaster - I noticed that the weather icon on your website is sunny at the moment, but when you click on the weather it shows that it is cloudy and raining. Does this icon change at all? I have noticed on some websites that it shows a different icon depending on what the weather actually is?

Thanks,
Tom
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