I think we're there

I certainly hope so. When I agreed, several months ago, to take responsibility for the Lions District web site I knew darn well that my knowledge of html was far beneath the level of the outgoing webmaster. All the same, I reasoned that I should be able to produce something that would (a) look not too amateurish, (b) work - with navigation that was simple - and (c) not require too much effort to keep up to date. Then I came across a snag. Once my predecessor had given me the necessary access codes to the host server, I found I could not get in to upload the new pages. I spent several weeks trying at various times; I emailed my predecessor (with no reply) and I telephoned the support line of the hosting company. I was cut off in mid-sentence but had been unable to understand what I was being told anyway as the person on the other end had such a strong Indian accent.

I mulled this over for a while before coming to the conclusion that the best way forward was by transferring to a different hosting server, one that I knew all about. Now the old server allowed sub-domains and several clubs had taken advantage of this. Most of those sites were hopelessly out of date - I suspect the clubs concerned had forgotten all about them - but there were a few that appeared to be live. Anyway, I emailed all the clubs involved, advising them that the facility was to be withdrawn at the end of July because a change of host server was needed and giving them three weeks or so to make different arrangements. I got a very quick - and very shirty - reply from one club. They have a fund raiser at the beginning of September and have advertised their web address for people to apply to take part in the run. I agreed to hold off the transfer until the end of August.

It was on Friday last week that I started the transfer process, thinking it would take a week to ten days. It took two hours. I then uploaded all the new pages and thought I was done. But for some reason, when I typed the address of the web site into my browser, the old site came up. I tried again and got the new site. The again (just to check) - and got the old one again. This went on for most of the weekend. I tried clearing both the cache and my history without it making any difference. Then I booted up the laptop and switched on my usual browser (Firefox). I got the new site! I switched to Explorer - and got the new site! But the tower PC, running Firefox (there's a problem with IE on that machine) kept switching between the old and the new. Until this morning. Every time I have tried today I have got the new site. I sincerely hope that is the end of it.

Oh yes - if you're interested, it's at www.lions105se.org.uk