Theo Todman's Web Page - Notes Pages
Status Reports
Status: Web-Tools (2015 - September)
(Text as at 07/10/2015 00:27:22)
(For other versions of this Note, see the tables at the end)
Rationale for this Project- This Project was alluded to briefly in a footnote on research methodology in my original Research Proposal1 under the head Research - Internet Technology2. When last at Birkbeck, I wrote a more extensive paper3 defending the Project and describing its rationale. Now that my PhD is in suspense, I have decided to take this Project further. There’s a lot to do: still quite a few items on the “wish list”. It is fairly critical as an enabler for my research, so I need to get a move on as I want it all out of the way before I re-start4 formal research.
- For documentation on my website (currently password protected) follow the links below:-
- Functional5 Documentation: Note6.
- Technical7 Documentation: Note.
- Other websites
- I established the Hutton Bridge Club Website (Hutton Bridge Club) in 4Q11 using the standard Bridgewebs service, but with a couple of competitions using my own routines.
- As of 1Q15, I have taken over the support and development of the Essex Contract Bridge Association (ECBA) website (Essex Contract Bridge Association), which also uses Bridgewebs, but is very much larger. I have written a lot of code to make this job less tedious.
- Over the last few years, I’ve been collecting data on bridge activity in the area (needed for a project to set up a new consolidated club) – by “scraping” data off web pages, consolidating it into a database and modelling it in various ways – and have booked this time to this project as it enhances (or at least maintains) my IT skills in this area. I’m now using this data to generate websites for small clubs (Essex Bridge Results).
- I’ve created a new website for the First Class Bridge Academy (First Class Bridge).
- About 10 years ago, I created a website for Dr. Sophie Botros (Sophie Botros), one of my supervisors at Birkbeck. I’ve recently taken it back on and spruced it up a bit, though it requires more work.
- Finally, I’ve created a small website for a music group Julie and I attend – the Enigma Ensemble (Enigma Ensemble).
- I did consider returning to work part-time as an MS Access/Excel developer, with a spin-off into website generation, but have done nothing about it so far.
Summary of Progress during July – September 2015- This project retained its prominence, absorbing about half my project time this Quarter, though largely not for my own website.
- A repeat disappointment was that I didn’t pursue my web-training with Sitepoint, despite having – in anticipation – extended my membership for another couple of years.
- During 3Q15 I expended 279 hours on this project (947 hours YTD, where for “YTD” – Year to Date – I mean the academic year that commenced in October 2014). That’s 118% of planned effort, 158% YTD. Overall, 45% of my project effort in the Quarter was directed towards this Project (making 38% YTD) – as against 36% planned (23% YTD).
- While again considerably more than half the time booked to this project was expended on the behalf of third parties, I did make quite a lot of progress on my own site. Most of the detail is available in the task lists below, but a few highlights were:-
- Completed the upgrade of Sophie Botros’s website (Sophie is an old friend and supervisor from Birkbeck); see Sophie Botros.
- Created a small website for a music group Julie and I attend – the Enigma Ensemble (Enigma Ensemble).
- Created a new website for the First Class Bridge Academy (First Class Bridge).
- Made a lot of progress on improving the hyperlinking in my own website – I’ve broken the back of this project, but there’s still work to do in the coming quarter. The links now work accurately, but I need to ensure the efficient propagation of linkage changes across the site without requiring a complete regeneration.
- Tidied up the archived Notes.
- Conceived a (probably fanciful) plan of selling or marketing my “MS Access Documenter”.
- Started investigating Facebook, with the intention eventually of using it seriously.
- Upgraded to Windows 10 without too much mishap.
- Ported my “handicap / improvers” routines from Hutton to “Mini Websites”.
- Lots of routine website maintenance for the ECBA and some for the “small clubs”.
- Further details are given below:-
Website (Total Hours = 102.75)- Website - Development (Total Hours = 86.5)
- Website - Documenter - Marketing Plan (1 hour)
- Website - Generator - "Authors" pages - Correct Bug (ignoring papers from a single / first book) (0.75 hours)
- Website - Generator - "Authors" pages - Investigate process Bug (missing papers from new book) (0.5 hours)
- Website - Generator - Bug in Summary Task List generation (0.5 hours)
- Website - Generator - Fix bug in "later Archived Notes" List (0.75 hours)
- Website - Generator - Performance & Timeliness Improvements (15.5 hours)
- Website - Generator - Remove Duplicate Archived Notes (3.25 hours)
- Website - Generator - Review of Google standards for Webmasters (0.75 hours)
- Website - Generator - Show length of Archived Notes (3.5 hours)
- Website - Generator - Xref re-engineering (60 hours)
... See "Software Development - Website - Development"
- Website - Education (Total Hours = 5.25)
- Website - Infrastructure (Total Hours = 8.5)
- Website - Maintenance (Total Hours = 2.5)
Website Others (Total Hours = 176.25)- Website Others - Bernie's Website Development
- Website Others - ECBA Development (Total Hours = 46.25)
- ECBA Website - "Customer Feedback" (1 hour)
- ECBA Website - "Mini Website" - Advertising, Configuration & Take-on (2.75 hours)
- ECBA Website - "Mini Website" - Domain Name - Re-Configuration (5.5 hours)
- ECBA Website - "Mini Website" - Improver / Handicap Competitions (14.75 hours)
- ECBA Website - "Mini Website" - Master Points Ladders (3.25 hours)
- ECBA Website - "Mini Website" - Monday Club Take-on (4.75 hours)
- ECBA Website - "Mini Website" - Player Synonyms Audit (1 hour)
- ECBA Website - Clubs / Teachers investigations (5.25 hours)
- ECBA Website - Development - "Mirroring" ECL Butlers (0.25 hours)
- ECBA Website - Essex / EBU Logo investigations (3.75 hours)
- ECBA Website - Friendly League / ECL Butlers (2 hours)
- ECBA Website - Suffolk-style iPlayer ECL Results (2 hours)
... See "Software Development - ECBA Website - Development"
- Website Others - ECBA Maintenance (Total Hours = 48.5)
- Admin - ECBA Website - Routine Maintenance (41.5 hours)
- Bridge - Butler IMPs - Data Output (1.25 hours)
- Bridge - Friendly League - Results Oddities Investigations (5.75 hours)
... See "Admin - ECBA Website - Admin & Maintenance"
- Website Others - ECBA Membership - Development
- ECBA Website - Membership Database Investigations (7 hours)
- Website Others - ECBA Tournaments - Development
- Website Others - ECBA Tournaments - Maintenance (Total Hours = 8.25)
- ECBA Website - OneDrive - Maintain Tournament Entry Spreadsheet (6.25 hours)
- ECBA Website - OneDrive - Maintain Tournament Entry Spreadsheet - Handover to Linda (2 hours)
... See "Admin - ECBA Website - Admin & Maintenance"
- Website Others - Enigma Ensemble (Total Hours = 11)
- Enigma Ensemble Website - Domain Name (0.5 hours)
- Enigma Ensemble Website - Website - Creation, Admin & Maintenance (10.5 hours)
... See "Admin - Music - Administration"
- Website Others - Hutton DBC Maintenance (Total Hours = 10)
- Website Others - Joint Project Data Collection
- Website Others - Sophie Botros
Plans for the Near Future
To acknowledge the continued (but hopefully declining) large amount of effort on other people’s websites, I’ve maintained the weekly effort on this project at 18 hours. Given that activity on this project for my own site is (supposed to be) high at the moment, and to avoid a long straggle of items on this report, I’ve created a document8 listing outstanding items, together with those completed since the document was created. As a result, only the more important items likely to be addressed shortly appear here. - General Developments:
- Install MS Office Professional Plus 20139.
- Undertake a trawl through the code for all functions within the generator – making improvements for efficiency and function.
- Investigate the error reports from the Documenter, especially unused variables & queries.
- Supply rudimentary functional documentation as a spin-off from the above.
- Undertake a trawl through all (categories of) web-page, making aesthetic improvements, and correcting content.
- Look into Optimizr10.
- Specific Developments:
- Read the Google documentation (Link) to investigate where I’m going wrong in the (failure to) use META tags to ensure my stuff sorts correctly in the search engines.
- Technical Documenter:-
- Separate from the main database & code, then add a parameter so it doesn’t necessarily document itself.
- Investigate & fix “Query Fragments” issue.
- Enhance to document Macros.
- Look at ways of documenting other (MS Access) databases & trial on Northwind.
- Investigate possibilities of retailing the documenter.
- Complete XRef-re-engineering project:-
- Ensure all links and link-pages use the new XRef table, and pension off the old tables.
- Check all link-types still work and fix any errors.
- Ensure all pages format correctly (especially with “Horizontal Rules” and multiple callings of the same object from a single page).
- Complete the auto-triggering of regeneration of “associated” link pages.
- Fix update bug in Convert_Webrefs.
- Bug: PaperSummary pages seem to have “Works-” and “Books/Papers-“ Citings that refer to the same link-pages.
- Enable reproduction of archived “Printed Notes”.
- Fix problem with bespoke links to Printed Notes from Archived Notes (revealed by the Spider).
- Solve the problem of the size limitation for Notes (eg. by allowing their concatenation, but check in Access 2013 first).
- Subsequently, remove all large “Comments” that have been utilised to expand Paper abstracts (by moving them to Notes).
- Utilise my Web Spider – in particular, regenerate and enhance the external links page, and see if I can get JSpider to work (or utilise some of its code) to check the links.
- Enhance my backup routines to allow pruning of the backup disk itself, and easier location of items to restore.
- Allow direct Note-links in Footnotes (as well as the “Click here for note” style).
- Fix bugs in multi-level footnoting in Printable Notes – the referencing is going wrong.
- Bridge Websites:
- Bridge website generators: segregate from my Philosophy website generators. Then document with the documenter.
- ECBA website (ECBA Website):-
- Investigate ECL Butler reporting, along the lines of Suffolk (Link).
- Routine maintenance (no small task).
- Joint Project / Small clubs Websites (Essex Bridge Results, "Admin - Bridge - Joint Project"):
- Continue data collection & modelling.
- Continue to maintain & “market” websites for small clubs (Link).
- Bernie’s Website (First Class Bridge):
- Promote to live.
- Re-point existing domain name (First Class Bridge Academy)
- Routine maintenance.
- Other initiatives:
- Plan an update of Sophie Botros’s Website ("Admin - Sophie Botros Website - Creation, Admin & Maintenance", Sophie Botros).
- Maintain the Enigma Ensemble website (Enigma Ensemble) as necessary.
- Upgrade my Facebook page ("Facebook - Understand Facebook & Build Personal Facebook Page") using "Abram (Carolyn) - Facebook for Dummies: Fifth Edition" for inspiration / guidance.
- Convert the “static” pages of my website into Notes.
- Education:
- Continue with "Sitepoint (Learnable) - Sitepoint Learnable Web Development Courses":-
- Complete, "Allsopp (John) - Learn HTML5", and
- Restart, and complete, "Weakley (Russ) - Getting Started with CSS".
- Read "PC Pro - Computing in the Real World".
Summary of Progress to Date
This is hived off to a separate11 document12. A summary of time expended across the years developing my website13 is at "Software Development - Website - Development".
In-Page Footnotes
Footnote 4: - Well, I’ve missed the boat, so will need to continue with both projects in parallel.
- This was always likely to be necessary, as new features will always arise in use. It’s a prototype methodology, after all.
Footnote 5: This is very tedious to produce and consequently is both incomplete and out of date.
Footnote 7: - This is much more fun, as it’s a purely technical task.
- I’ve written a vastly-improved general-purpose technical documenter for MS Access.
Footnote 9: - I’ve been dithering over this, as MS Office – particularly the VBA part of MS Access – is central to virtually everything I do, and I don’t want to mess things up!
- You never know what functions might be discontinued, or work differently, in a new release.
Footnote 10: - For Optimizr, see Optimizr. A quick look doesn’t show it to be an obvious scam, but I need to double-check.
- An unsolicited analysis of my site turned up, listing a large number of “problems” that I think I know about, but which are in the queue to address.
- I suspect that this software will try to get me to buy something – maybe to fix the problems – but because I use a generator it’ll be no use.
- But I do need to address the problems validly itemised.
Footnote 11: - This document requires significant updating as it hasn’t been touched since December 2010.
- It may also be largely superseded by other documents – eg. the Outstanding Developments (Click here for Note) and Functional Documentation (Click here for Note).
- But it may provide a different “take” on what I’ve done. Maybe higher level.
Footnote 13: As distinct from developing other peoples’ websites – time which is also recorded against this project, but not against this task.
Live Version of this Archived Note
Table of 12 Earlier Versions of this Note (of 58)
Table of 12 Later Versions of this Note (of 17)
Summary of Notes Links from this Page
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Summary of Note Links to this Page
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Text Colour Conventions
- Blue: Text by me; © Theo Todman, 2020