It is almost unbelievable to think that the Irish Sea Shipping web site in 2010 will enter a third decade of operation. Commencing in the mid 1990s as Mersey Shipping News and gradually evolving and expanding in scope the site will enter the second decade of the 21st Century in 2010 and mark 15 years of operation since switching from a weekly news letter posted to the UK Forums of CompuServe. Since 1998 the web site has been edited on successive editions of Microsoft Front Page – versions 98, 2000 and currently 2003. TIME TO MOVE ON However, since 2006 Front Page has been an obsolete product. Those with knowledge of this software will be aware that this software requires the web hosting company to provide Front Page extensions for web sites created with Front Page to function correctly. Microsoft replaced Front Page with Expressions Web several years ago and it is to this software that I intend to migrate the editing of Irish Sea Shipping over the coming months. There are further pressures for the change, the editing computer, needs replacing before it wears out – it will be 7 years old next year. Running old software on new operating systems is not to be recommended and may not in the case of Front Page and Windows 7 be possible. Hosting companies will eventually cease support for Front Page Extensions it is therefore imperative that something is done before this happens as the web site as it exists now would become uneditable and unusable Investigations have been made into what is required to effect the change from MS Front Page to MS Expression. Initial experimentation with Microsoft Expressions indicates that any change over will require significantly more work than just switching editors: - Each web page will have to be recoded to XHTML standards – ME Expressions indicates where the coding needs changing to become XHTML compliant but doesn't effect the change. This has to be done manually! Experiments on a small website I operate for a third party indicates that one page alone had 40 coding changes required for just one page! There are nearly 2,000 pages on Irish Sea Shipping!
- All Front Page enhanced features which require the presence of extensions on the server, plus shared borders [ISS uses these on each page – one stores the page top menu] will have to be removed and alternatives provided.
WHAT ARE THE IMPLICATIONS ? None of this work can be undertaken quickly and will require a significant amount of time given the size that the site has grown to in recent years. Since around 2005 Irish Sea Shipping has grown on a weekly basis, apart from time sensitive material, nothing has been deleted and a fine archive of material has been built up which readily shows up in search engines. This continued expansion has been facilitated by the web hosting company increasing the amount of web space periodically. To illustrate how the site has grown there the point there are around 12,000 images on line. That is quite a collection! Obviously, a situation has been reached in which the site has become too large and effecting the change to the new editor would require such an amount of work that it will not be possible to effect the change with the web site at its current size. Irish Sea Shipping is run as a hobby – not as a full time job – though sometimes in terms of time commitment your web master often thinks this is the full time job and his real job just provides the income to keep it going! TIME is the problem! – Something has to be done and sooner rather than later. Your web master is currently evaluating several possible strategies to effect the change over but what is certain the Irish Sea Shipping web site will probably have to shrink considerably before it can grow again. Thus it is very likely that a significant amount of older material will have to be removed. Visitors to the site are strongly recommended to save any material dated 2007 or earlier if they wish to retain it. Availability of such material cannot be guaranteed beyond the end of November. Further information information concerning the change over will be posted in the coming weeks. John H. Luxton November 08, 2009 | 
