Club
Croquet
Wrest Park
300 up!
In WebPlus a request for a new website page brings up a Page Properties dialogue box in which the Page Name and File Name fields have default values of Page xxx where xxx is the next page number. The number had little significance as it was immediately replaced by something more descriptive, but when xxx recently became 298 it was obvious that a landmark was in sight. The page count recently passed 300, almost exactly coincident with the website’s fifteenth anniversary.
Much has changed since 2010. The rise of the smartphone means that the website is more likely to be viewed on one of these than on a desktop monitor. This was not foreseen and is the reason why some page titles get cut off when viewed on an Android phone. Android doesn’t support Times New Roman (used for page titles), and makes a font substitution which is wider. If the fixed width of the text box isn’t enough it forces a new line, which won’t appear in full unless the text box is deep enough to accommodate it. The only solutions are either to keep page titles short or deliberately use two lines and split any that might overrun – it’s not something that can be checked without publishing the page first. And the content is hard to read at normal size, regardless of what phone you may have.
Quite apart from technical considerations, it’s a good moment to consider the website’s purpose. The initial motivation was that by establishing an online presence for modest cost anyone could find out all they needed about the club. Other clubs had one, so should we. It supplanted the newsletter, but compare the two media. The newsletter went from hard copy to an email attachment and was active in the sense that it arrived in the inbox and was (one assumes) bound to be read. It could also include a variety of material apart from tournament or match reports, and it was expected that these might not appear until weeks after the event. The website is passive in that one has to make the decision to visit it, but with that comes the expectation that what is on view will always be up to date. The website is also more restrictive because the occasional photos and observations that could be easily fitted into a newsletter become more trouble than they are worth when they have to be turned into web pages. It is interesting that CqE should have decided to revive the active medium of the newsletter (with croquet competing with cruises and conservatories).
As the website will be coming under new management we would like to ask what you want from it in terms of content and presentation. We are obliged to provide the basic information to answer casual enquiries and hope to retain the historic content, but the rest is up for grabs. If you have any comments or suggestions please pass these on to any member of the committee.
© Wrest Park Croquet Club