The website is whole again!
The current iteration of the village website was launched some 15 months or so ago and needed to be divided into two parts for various technical reasons. One part was the site you are viewing now (the compact “main site”) whilst the other contained a large amount of information, divided into sections on village history, past news and weather data, and these had to be hosted separately.
Unfortunately, the host we used was unable to continue supporting the extra sections and we lost access to their pages in May last year. The process of reconstructing both the 532 pages involved and the complex hierarchical structure in which they were organised has taken some time.
We had saved most of the pages beforehand, but in a format which made it very difficult to add to the new site we needed. This task was made a little easier when we selected WordPress as the preferred platform and, when local expert Jon Petrie wrote some code to aid the process, Jon and David May managed to upload all 532 pages to the WordPress site.
The task didn’t finish there however as many of the 991 associated images did not upload successfully but, bit by bit, all these issues were dealt with - and we were nearly ready to go live! All that was needed was to ensure that the recovered sections could be linked seamlessly into the existing main site, something which seemed a straightforward task in theory but which took several weeks in practice to achieve.
Finally, over a glass or two of wine an evening or two ago, Jon (particularly) and David found a solution to integrating these sections into the main site and it finally went “live” again after a year’s absence.
So, please have a look at the “new” sections as there will be something of interest for everyone there. They can be accessed from News>Past News, links within History>Local History and Weather menu items, or directly from the link annexe.penallt.org.uk.
There are three main headline menus
Past News - news stories from the past 10 years of Penallt interest, past newsletters and Film Night data.
Village History - a treasure trove of articles and images related to Penallt’s past. Well worth perusing.
Penallt Weather - current weather conditions in the village along with data from the last 10 years as well as stories of notable weather events.
Some work still remains to be done however. Although navigation via the menu structure works correctly, it has a “clunky” design and can be awkward to use. Also we’re not yet able to embed live weather data into the Weather section.
It is still not perfect, so please send any comments, including any links which don’t work (there will be some!), to the webmaster.
One final word - none of this would have been possible without the support and encouragement of the Pelham Hall Trustees.