• This page provides answers to some of the questions often asked about the web site.

  How many visitors does the website get?

• In the 10 months from January to October 2007, data for approximately 33 pages are available:
  • 2058 page loads per month.
  • 575 visitors per month (of whom 175 are known to have visited previously).
• In the same period, the 38 pages relating to the 2005 Fete were monitored separately:
  • 526 page loads per month.
  • 180 visitors per month (of whom 10 are known to have visited previously).
• In June 2005, when the Fete was held:
  • 3569 page loads from 551 visitors (of whom 210 are known to have visited previously) were recorded for the Fete web pages.
  • In addition, the 30 main village web pages for which data is available recorded 1807 page loads from 647 visitors (of whom 209 are known to have visited previously).
• None of these figures include visitors who viewed the other 270 pages, for which data was not collected.
• To put the figures into perspective, there are approximately 373 households in Sherington.
• About 10% of the visitors are from outside the UK. The majority of these are from the US, but Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa are also frequently represented. Overseas visitors have also included France, Germany, Romania, Argentina, Japan, Israel, China amongst many others.
• The hits counter is provided by www.statcounter.com. Their web site describes how the system works and how the data should be interpreted.
• The statistics also include information on visitors' operating system, browser and screen resolution. The following information is for 2004 (when this was last analysed):
• The most popular operating system was Windows XP, used by just over half of visitors, with Windows 98 and 2000 second and third. Only about 3% used systems such as MACs.
• Over 90% of visitors used Microsoft Internet Explorer, with the majority using Version 6.
• The most popular screen resolution at that time was 1024x768, used by just over half. About 20% were using small screens with a resolution of only 800x600.

  What software do you use?

• Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 - for browsing and testing new pages.
• Notepad - for creating/modifying the text
• Paint Shop Pro 7.04 - for processing the images
• miFiles 1.12d - for uploading pages
• Opera 9.24 and Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.1 - for occasionally testing the compatibility of pages with a non-Microsoft browser
• Pages are created directly in HTML. We do not use tools such as Microsoft Front Page.

  What hardware do you use?

• 2 year old Mesh Computers AMD Athlon 64 3800+ PC, with 19in flat screen
• 6 year old Dell Dimension XPS R450 Pentium 2, with 128MB RAM and 19in screen
• HP Scanjet 2400 Scanner (A4)
• Epson Stylus Photo 830U Printer
• HP DeskJet 540 Printer
• Olympus Camedia C-350 digital camera
• Fuji Finepix Image Memory Card Reader DPC-R1

  Where is the web site?

• The web site is now hosted by Heart Internet.
• Until 10 November 2007, the web site was hosted by Pipex. The webmaster has a Pipex Xtreme Solo ADSL account, which provided 50MB of web space. The webmaster did not need this for his personal use, so it was available for the village web site.
• When the web site was first set up it was hosted by AOL, again using the webmaster's personal web space.

  How big is the web site?

• There are currently around 350 pages and 750 images (including the School, Pre-school, Parish Council and Fete pages).
• Total file size is approximately 55MB.

  Who provides the URL 'www.sherington.org.uk'?

• Nominet is the organisation responsible for the registration of all '.uk' URLs.
• The URL is arranged through Heart Internet.
• Heart Internet also allows up to 1000 'sherington.org.uk' email addresses/mailboxes to be created. These can be full POP3 mailboxes, but there is also a facility for emails to be forwarded automatically to other email accounts. The spare addresses not used by the web site itself are available to Sherington community organisations. Pre-school and the Parish Council are amongst those using this facility.

  What does the web site cost to run?

• The main cost is the £6.09 fee for the URL for a two year period, plus the £2.95 per month cost of the Heart Internet 'Starter Professional' hosting package.
• As the webmaster would have the computer hardware, software, and broadband link for his own personal use in any case, the only other costs are for consumables such as paper and ink.

  When did the web site start?

• The web site started in July 1997.
• Initially there were just half a dozen pages with basic information about the village. The web site grew slowly with additional content steadily being added over the next five years. Growth has substantially accelerated since May 2003, with the web site more than doubling in size with the addition of the Fete, Parish Council, School and Pre-school sites. This reflects the increasing participation by other villagers and village organisations in providing material for inclusion. The increase in contributions is paralleled by the increase in users.
• In November 2007, the website reached the 50MB Pipex limit, and has therefore moved to Heart Internet, where the capacity is now 2500MB. This will allow the website to continue to grow, e.g. short video clips can now be included.

  How do you achieve the page layout?

• The pages are created by using HTML tables. The cells in each table are given different background colours to create the various rectangular regions on the page. Some cells have another table inside them, eg: to create the right hand menu.
• The page width is fixed at 722 pixels. Fixing the width means that the appearance of the page will be more independent of the screen resolution being used. The choice of 722 pixels is to cater for those using the smaller 800x600 screen resolution: it is less than 800 to leave space for the vertical scroll bar, anything larger would result in a horizontal scroll bar too.
• The main content area has a width of 610 pixels to leave room for the menu on the right.
• The main text on each page is in a slightly off-white area. The paragraphs are formatted using bullets, for appearance reasons.
• The web site uses the same basic layout throughout. However different colours are used for each of the main sections, eg: light blue for the School (the sweatshirt colour), brown for Pre-school, green for the Parish Council, red for the Fete and dark blue for the basic site.
• The pages are designed to look best when viewed using the Internet Explorer 'medium' font size setting.

  Who provides the 'Search' facility?

• The 'Search' facility is provided by FreeFind. They 'spider' the site every week or so in order to record any changes. A list of all the keywords people have used for searches is emailed to the webmaster each week. They also provide the Site Map and What's New features. Their service is free, as it is supported by advertising.