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Skegness Lifeboat Station was one of the first RNLI stations to get online.
Our website has been through several evolutions since the original site was
launched in 1998. SkegnessLifeboat.org is the result of four years
(part-time!) of trials, tests and, general messing around really. The RNLI has
been impressively consistent in moving with the times, with their own
award-winning
website now a comprehensive source of up-to-date information about the
lifeboat service. There are now lots of RNLI lifeboat stations that have
their own website (there's a page listing them in the links
section). One of the aims during development of our site was to produce one of
the most informative, exciting and usable station websites online.
If you have already taken a look around SkegnessLifeboat.org you will
have noticed some of the improvements and new features available...
- Improved, original style and colour scheme with greater consistency
between pages.
- News and Press Release section for up-to-date station information and
launch details.
- Service record database enabling launch details to be searched and listed
by specific criteria.
- Individual crew photos and details page, with crew service statistics.
- A selection of high quality background images available to download
free-of-charge.
- New guestbook with child-safe "naughty word filter" built in. [Contact me
if you want a copy!]
For anyone who may be interested I thought I should note some details of
how the site was developed and how it works. There are now several thousand
lines of code working behind the scenes on the SkegnessLifeboat.org
server to produce the dynamic site you see. I would be happy to help and share
code with other lifeboat stations wanting to improve their sites -
email me!
The site pages have all been written using a combination of HTML, ASP with
VBScript and JavaScript/JScript. Most of the main sections rely on the
Microsoft Access 2000 database used to store the service records, news and
press releases, guestbook entries, personnel details, events and links among
other "behind-the-scenes" data. The advantage of implementing a
database-driven site using Access and ASP is dynamic content. If you look at
the service record section you will see how, because the services records are
stored as records in the database, it is easy to display a specific list of
launches based on supplied criteria for example, launches for a particular
crew member.
The site itself is hosted on a Microsoft Windows 2000 Server machine
at WWWServer.co.uk.
Visual design and layout was originally done using a combination
of Microsoft FrontPage 2000 and Macromedia Dreamweaver UltraDev
4 (and lately, Dreamweaver MX) and Adobe Photoshop/Microsoft Image
Composer for image and photo work. The database was created and
developed using Microsoft Access 2000/ XP/2002. ASP, VBScript and
JScript programming was done with the HTML-editor of FrontPage or,
just simply, with Notepad.
If you want further technical
details or any help please contact the
webmaster. |
