Site News Archive
In this archive you'll find all of the Site News published on the Home page of this website since its launch. Everything archived here relates either to all of the Lyndenlea websites, or just to this site in particular. For Site News specific to another Lyndenlea website please see the Site News Archive on that site. Note that the archive is arranged in chronological order, so the most recent news in a particular year can be found at the end of the page.
Site News 2011
Tuesday, 3rd May 2011
- A word of advice to anyone seeking a new website hosting company: AVOID WEB MANIA LIKE THE PLAGUE. Their support is either non-existent or worse than useless, their security is so bad it allows their servers to be hacked, and since last Friday, 30th April at least half of their web servers have been offline. Yes, that's FOUR DAYS, during which time I've received just two emails from them, neither of which was in direct response to the one I sent. Consequently I've now moved to a new hosting company – Tsohost – which actually keeps its customers informed when things go wrong.
- So now that little rant's over, may I offer my sincere apologies to anyone who's tried to access any of my websites over the weekend, and ask you to please bear with me – and ideally drop me an email – if you find anything's not working as you expect it to. I'm pretty sure I've uploaded everything now but you never know, I may have missed an essential file somewhere...!
Monday, 6th June 2011
- Further to my news item last month about avoiding the UK hosting company Web Mania, it seems they've recently changed their name to YorHost (evidently a poor pun on their York location), quite possibly to hide a large number of disgruntled customers from any future business. Customers who were NOT informed about the change to the company name, I might add – this is clearly not the way to run a business. Therefore I will not hesitate to suggest that you might also avoid YorHost if you're currently looking for a new UK-based web hosting company, and recommend instead that you look at Tsohost who are currently doing an excellent job of hosting my own websites.
Tuesday, 5th July 2011
- While I was adding today's successful attempt to my Quarter Peals page, I decided to add a bit more information about each tower as well, so you'll now find the number of bells and the weight and strike note of the tenor (heaviest bell) following the name of the tower for each Quarter Peal I've rung. I've also added some explanatory notes about the weight notation we bell ringers use in case you're not familiar with it.
- A little overdue – but arguably premature as I'm still tying up a few final loose ends – is an update to my Committees page following my resignation from the Mangotsfield Village Festival committee. The next AGM isn't until September, but the Festival was back in June and I've already handed over nearly all of the relevant paperwork, so now seems to be as good a time as any.
Wednesday, 24th August 2011
- For the latest in a long (i.e. stretching back YEARS) line of tweaks to the Site News feature, I've changed the formatting of the dates to also include the day of the week. This is simply so I can refer to "last Friday" (for instance) without having to specify what date last Friday was.
Thursday, 20th October 2011
- A week and a half ago I rang my very first Peal – that's just over three hours of non-stop ringing, which in this case resulted in sore hands (but remarkably few blisters) and a brain like mush! Since then, when time has allowed, I've been tweaking my website to add a new Peals page for it and any other Peals I might ring in the future, a task slightly hampered by my endeavour to make as much use as possible of the code already behind my long-established Quarter Peals page. And inevitably, as so often seems to happen when I try such tricks, I ended up rewriting most of that code anyway. But it's done now, and while I still have a few more unrelated edits in the pipeline (which may or may not be announced here, depending on how significant I decide they are) I wanted to publish the details of my Peal here before it became really old news.
Sunday, 4th December 2011
- I planned to publish the fifth part of My Ringing Career back in March, in an attempt to start a trend that I still plan to continue with a 20th Anniversary (of my first ringing lesson) part in March 2013. And nine months later, here it is! Entitled From Strength To Strength it summarises my first two years as Tower Captain at Keynsham and the many successes and achievements I've had throughout that time, both at Keynsham and elsewhere.
Friday, 30th December 2011
- For what is surely my last website update of 2011 I've spent the past couple of weeks (yes, over Christmas!) researching, rewriting and even renaming my page on Religion and Philosophy. It's now longer and more comprehensive, and I hope it more fully explains my thoughts on the subject.
- And while I was in the area, in addition to a few typographical tweaks I've also added Keynsham Bell Ringers to my Committees page – rather belatedly considering I've been Tower Captain there for more than two years now...!
