Post by Jenna on Feb 9, 2006 12:36:20 GMT
The report on the first year for Major Winchester's Website.
It is now almost a year since the first version of Major Winchester’s Website was launched and what a year it has been.
Month By Month
Jan 2005: Plans were made for the launch of a website that would focus entirely on the character Charles Emerson Winchester III. This was decided after the admin got fed up of the Hawkeye orientated M*A*S*H websites. Hosting was looked at and purchased. The site was going ahead.
Feb 2005: Design work for the site began and it was a very simple template produced by the hosting company. On its launch on the 8th February the site had 7 pages. It included a simple bio about Charles, one about David, a pictures page. Other content included links and a guestbook. Because fans of Charles may want to discuss the character a Yahoo group was launched and proved popular in its early days. Even so some people couldn’t use the Yahoo group on their computers so there had to be another solution. A forum was looked into.
March 2005: On March 19th a forum had been found and was made available to members. It started off in a grey and yellow colour scheme and was promptly changed to a dark blue. Members joined promptly and the forum became the place to discuss Charles. Meanwhile the new site was already having problems. The collection of images was growing and the site wanted to expand further than the 8 page limit set by the hosting company. The admin also wanted more control on how the pages looked and so it was decided to abandon the website creation software provided by the host and design the pages using something else. FrontPage was the new tool used to design the site and the newly re-designed site was launched on March 21st.
April 2005: As the forum was growing and some members had reached 100+ posts more staff would be needed on the forum. Two staff members were chosen and given the rank of General. They each had one section to moderate and we’re and still are good staff members. The forum was redecorated in green to match the army theme of the board and the website was growing.
May 2005: New sections were added to the website and these included Avatars and Charles Moments. The Charles Moments page, it was hoped, would become a useful tool in proving that Charles was a good man underneath all the arrogance.
June 2005: The website received a makeover and was changed from light blue to green and the homepage was re-designed.
July 2005: Due to the amount of discussion about David Ogden Stiers taking place on the forum, The Stiers Place was launched, where fans of David Ogden Stiers could discuss him and all of his work. A website was also launched for David Ogden Stiers.
August 2005: The forum received a new colour scheme in a green and tan colour and it was decided that the websites could be enhanced if different software was used.
September 2005: New software was purchased and work began on re-developing The Stiers Place. The Stiers Place was chosen as it was a smaller site than Major Winchester’s and it would allow for some experimenting.
October 2005: The Stiers Place received its own domain and became the partner site to Major Winchester’s Website. Due to the popularity of the new design of The Stiers Place, re-designing Major Winchester’s Website was considered. The forum also received yet another change and the old colour schemes were deleted.
November 2005: Thoughts turned to the hosting of the website. It was decided that the site would move to the same host as The Stiers Place. This new host offered more services such as a guestbook and a free domain name.
December 2005: Work began on designing the new site and the first of the Season 9 Screen caps were uploaded to the forum temporarily.
Finance
The cost of the websites this past year has been more than what is predicted for future years, this was due to the software costs.
Hosting: £30
Domain: £2
Software (approx): £ 250
Other Costs: £50
Total Cost (approx): £320 ($558.30 in USD)
It is predicted that the costs for 2006 will be much lower reaching the maximum of about £80 - £100.
Time
The amount of time that has been spent on the website and forum has been too much to give a total figure but these are some of the things that need to be done:
Writing Content
Taking Screencaps
Resizing and Marking Images
Making Site Graphics
Forum Moderating
Checking Content of Other Sites.
Aims
It was the aim of Major Winchester’s Website to provide his fans with information about the character and pictures. A lot of the general M*A*S*H sites had a bias towards Hawkeye and although they had some good information it was decided that Major Winchester needed his own website.
Into 2006
The aims for 2006 are to continue to provide Charles Emerson Winchester’s fans with information and pictures of their favourite character. It is hoped that the site’s popularity will increase over the year.
Admin’s Comments
When I came up with the idea for Major Winchester’s Website I wasn’t entirely sure what I wanted the site to do. All I knew was that I wanted some information and pictures, I really had no idea on what would make the website successful and there was very little planning involved. I now regret the lack of planning because a lot of mistakes were made in the early days due to lack of plans. I somehow managed to overcome them and managed to produce a website that was just about good enough to be published. I was very nervous on the day I released the address to the members of the David Ogden Stiers Bulletin Board. They were very supportive of my efforts and gave me lots of helpful feedback. It was the same after every change I made. I always acted on the feedback I got because these were the people that I had to impress.
I’m the sort of person that was never quite happy with how the site so consequently there was a lot of experimenting in the first year. I’m glad I had patient visitors and I have always made it clear that I am not a professional web designer. They knew not to expect too much. I learnt a lot about different software through my experimenting and I’m grateful for that.
This website and forum has given me the opportunity to meet some great people whose friendship and encouragement means a lot to me. I feel proud to be part of such a wonderful online community.
I would like to thank each and every one of the friends and visitors of Major Winchester’s Website.
Here’s to the future
Major Winchester’s Website – Our First Year
It is now almost a year since the first version of Major Winchester’s Website was launched and what a year it has been.
Month By Month
Jan 2005: Plans were made for the launch of a website that would focus entirely on the character Charles Emerson Winchester III. This was decided after the admin got fed up of the Hawkeye orientated M*A*S*H websites. Hosting was looked at and purchased. The site was going ahead.
Feb 2005: Design work for the site began and it was a very simple template produced by the hosting company. On its launch on the 8th February the site had 7 pages. It included a simple bio about Charles, one about David, a pictures page. Other content included links and a guestbook. Because fans of Charles may want to discuss the character a Yahoo group was launched and proved popular in its early days. Even so some people couldn’t use the Yahoo group on their computers so there had to be another solution. A forum was looked into.
March 2005: On March 19th a forum had been found and was made available to members. It started off in a grey and yellow colour scheme and was promptly changed to a dark blue. Members joined promptly and the forum became the place to discuss Charles. Meanwhile the new site was already having problems. The collection of images was growing and the site wanted to expand further than the 8 page limit set by the hosting company. The admin also wanted more control on how the pages looked and so it was decided to abandon the website creation software provided by the host and design the pages using something else. FrontPage was the new tool used to design the site and the newly re-designed site was launched on March 21st.
April 2005: As the forum was growing and some members had reached 100+ posts more staff would be needed on the forum. Two staff members were chosen and given the rank of General. They each had one section to moderate and we’re and still are good staff members. The forum was redecorated in green to match the army theme of the board and the website was growing.
May 2005: New sections were added to the website and these included Avatars and Charles Moments. The Charles Moments page, it was hoped, would become a useful tool in proving that Charles was a good man underneath all the arrogance.
June 2005: The website received a makeover and was changed from light blue to green and the homepage was re-designed.
July 2005: Due to the amount of discussion about David Ogden Stiers taking place on the forum, The Stiers Place was launched, where fans of David Ogden Stiers could discuss him and all of his work. A website was also launched for David Ogden Stiers.
August 2005: The forum received a new colour scheme in a green and tan colour and it was decided that the websites could be enhanced if different software was used.
September 2005: New software was purchased and work began on re-developing The Stiers Place. The Stiers Place was chosen as it was a smaller site than Major Winchester’s and it would allow for some experimenting.
October 2005: The Stiers Place received its own domain and became the partner site to Major Winchester’s Website. Due to the popularity of the new design of The Stiers Place, re-designing Major Winchester’s Website was considered. The forum also received yet another change and the old colour schemes were deleted.
November 2005: Thoughts turned to the hosting of the website. It was decided that the site would move to the same host as The Stiers Place. This new host offered more services such as a guestbook and a free domain name.
December 2005: Work began on designing the new site and the first of the Season 9 Screen caps were uploaded to the forum temporarily.
Finance
The cost of the websites this past year has been more than what is predicted for future years, this was due to the software costs.
Hosting: £30
Domain: £2
Software (approx): £ 250
Other Costs: £50
Total Cost (approx): £320 ($558.30 in USD)
It is predicted that the costs for 2006 will be much lower reaching the maximum of about £80 - £100.
Time
The amount of time that has been spent on the website and forum has been too much to give a total figure but these are some of the things that need to be done:
Writing Content
Taking Screencaps
Resizing and Marking Images
Making Site Graphics
Forum Moderating
Checking Content of Other Sites.
Aims
It was the aim of Major Winchester’s Website to provide his fans with information about the character and pictures. A lot of the general M*A*S*H sites had a bias towards Hawkeye and although they had some good information it was decided that Major Winchester needed his own website.
Into 2006
The aims for 2006 are to continue to provide Charles Emerson Winchester’s fans with information and pictures of their favourite character. It is hoped that the site’s popularity will increase over the year.
Admin’s Comments
When I came up with the idea for Major Winchester’s Website I wasn’t entirely sure what I wanted the site to do. All I knew was that I wanted some information and pictures, I really had no idea on what would make the website successful and there was very little planning involved. I now regret the lack of planning because a lot of mistakes were made in the early days due to lack of plans. I somehow managed to overcome them and managed to produce a website that was just about good enough to be published. I was very nervous on the day I released the address to the members of the David Ogden Stiers Bulletin Board. They were very supportive of my efforts and gave me lots of helpful feedback. It was the same after every change I made. I always acted on the feedback I got because these were the people that I had to impress.
I’m the sort of person that was never quite happy with how the site so consequently there was a lot of experimenting in the first year. I’m glad I had patient visitors and I have always made it clear that I am not a professional web designer. They knew not to expect too much. I learnt a lot about different software through my experimenting and I’m grateful for that.
This website and forum has given me the opportunity to meet some great people whose friendship and encouragement means a lot to me. I feel proud to be part of such a wonderful online community.
I would like to thank each and every one of the friends and visitors of Major Winchester’s Website.
Here’s to the future
