Swiftscripts & Webmaster News

Missing Images - Very Odd - 15/3/2008

Sat, 15 Mar 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Hi everyone, this is just to apologize for the lack of images on the website recently. I only noticed today when I was just checked a few things, and I've no idea how long the website has been like this. Somehow, the images/ folder on our domain had mysteriously disappeared. Odd indeed. My hosting company has been having a lot of trouble with their linux servers recently, but I doubt that the lack of the images folder could have been caused by this. I'm continuing to investigate how this happened, but meantime, I've uploaded the folder of images from a backup I have. Again, sorry for any problems this caused.

New Version of the FMO released - 1.9.9.3 - 2/12/2007

Sun, 2 Dec 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Hi everyone. I haven't posted in ages I know. Things have kind of got on top of me. However, I have been doing loads of work to the field service organizer and a new version is now available for download. For more information please check out the Field Ministry Organizer project homepage.

A few changes - Bug Fixes - 19/7/2007

Thu, 19 Jul 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Hi everyone. Over the next couple of days you will probably notice a few small (very small) changes to the web site. I am just working my way through the code to remove any bugs or queries which are slowing down the loading of the site. You probably won't notice but I've managed to fix the fault on the who's on-line counter at the bottom of the page, where even after log out it would continue to show you as on-line. I still have no idea why this was happening as I couldn't find any MySQL query which could have caused the problem, but by commenting out different areas I appear to have solved the issue. I hate doing that, but I had spent hours looking at about 50 lines of code last night and I really just couldn't see why it was happening. Anyway, the main thing is that it is now fixed. If you spot any bugs or things which bug you (get it?), then please contact me and let me know, and I'll try to sort them out.

edit: I have done some work on the Profile page again and there is now a new About Me section. You can fill this in by clicking the ''view/edit your profile link'' on the members area.

I've been doing someting else for once - Making another website - 12/6/2007

Tue, 12 Jun 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Yes, that's right, I have a programming life outside of swiftscripts.co.uk and the FMO. I don't normally do website projects for other people (well unless they're willing to offer me £500000, but no one has done this yet). But as a one off I did my Dad a favor and put together his website for him from his strictly specified layout rules. The coding behind the website is a work of art (to me at least), done prestinely in php, but the design, well, let's just say it's not my usual style. I found it hard to work with the layout of his design (what with having no strict width to the page, no real areas to put things in apart from the main banner, the huge font sizes, and the massive white spaces) but, it's done now, and we are even still speaking. Woo Hoo! If you fancy taking a look, the website is hosted at http://www.michaelswift.co.uk/.

A Momentous Occasion - swiftscripts's 17390th page - 3/5/2007

Thu, 3 May 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Hello everyone. I'm really sorry I haven't been posting many new news items recently, I'm in the middle of a lot of stuff and I don't really have a lot of free time to go crawling the web in search of news just now. Remember though, if you have a news item you think is worth telling me about, please send it in via the contact us form. Anyway...
I do have a little free time today so I am doing a little maintenance on the log system. While doing this I noticed that, hey, swiftscripts.co.uk has served over 17,390 pages (and those are just the ones that are logged). I know this isn't a specific number to celebrate over (numbers like 10,000 100,000 etc.) but it's a lot for this small time website. The website has been logging it's pages properly since 4/7/2006. If you break that down thats, 304 days that have been logged making an average of about 57 pages a day (main pages, not message board pages). That's quite a lot for this website. 203 users have joined, logging in a total of 1035 times on the website (an average of 0.7 users joining per day and 3.4 logins per day). The main index page of the website has had 6504 hits so far (an average of 21.4 hits per day). And all of this has been logged by my very own (and old) log system - swiftlogs.
As I said, this is not a special occasion, I just have never really collected all the stats together like this before. I know other websites get a lot more visitors a day (you don't even want to know how many visitors google get), but for such a small website that hasn't had a single penny spent on advertising I am quite pleased with the results. Of course, if you would like to help make the website bigger and better feel free to put links on your website or add content to this website via the script library or message board (hint hint). Anyhow, back to work...
note: I found this site very usefull while doing this: timeanddate.com

Linux pre-installed - On dell PCs and Laptops - 2/4/2007

Mon, 2 Apr 2007 00:00:00 GMT

It's something that the Linux community have been dreaming of for years now. Linux as the standard operating system of one of the worlds largest supplier of PCs - think of it. OK, so it's not going to be the standard operating system just yet, but the main point is that you should be able to just order a standard dell PC or Laptop and have it arrive with Linux pre-installed. Dell aren't giving much away with regards to which distribution will be included on their PCs but I think for Linux users the whole thing is a mightily exciting prospect. I'm not anti-Microsoft (for example I am typing this post on Microsoft's flagship OS - XP), but I do use Linux and I will be glad to see more of the public become aware that there are alternatives, and ones that mean you no longer have to sell your PC to use them. For more information try this BBC News article.

Free Broadband - from google tisp - 1/4/2007

Sun, 1 Apr 2007 00:00:00 GMT

So, another bill has come through from tiscali, AOL, BT... whoever, and your thinking Oh if only there was some way to get free broadband. Well, why don't you try out google's new tisp free broadband service. Head on over to http://www.google.com/tisp/ and read through the pages as thoroughly as you can be bothered to. Go on, I'll wait.... OK, you're back? Well, if you haven't guessed by now I'll relieve you from you misery. Yes, this is another of google's famous April Fools practical jokes. It joins the ranks of other jokes from over the years such as the Google MentalPlex, the all new Pigeon Rank, Google Gulp and many more. It's nice every once in a while to see a such a huge company as google having a little laugh not just at it's users but also in a way at themselves. Who knows, maybe one day even the great Microsoft of Apple will have a giggle on April Fools day too (or should that be a google too.)

Mobile version of the script library - PDAs and smartphones - 14/2/2007

Wed, 14 Feb 2007 00:00:00 GMT

I'm not sure how many of you out there own a PDA/SmartPhone, but I know from my own experience as an owner of such a device that although the mobile web browser (pIE in this case - Pocket Internet Explorer) is very good considering the size of processor and screen space available, it can be a pain trying to view some desktop designed websites which have frames and other intrecate bits of layout on your PDA. That's why I have put together a mobile version of the script library for PDAs, SmartPhones and any other devices that can view basic HTML pages. (That's pretty much all of the modern, box standard phones). The mobile script library has a greatly simplified layout - no frames and sidebars, and uses your box standard anchor tags to move around instead of the current JavaScript ones on the main script library. How do I access this wealth of knowledge and information I here you ask? Just go to www.swiftscripts.co.uk/mobile/ on your phone and you'll see it for yourself. The mobile version can of course be viewed by a standard desktop browser but it's kinda pointless doing so, as the normal script library is vastly superior. Have a go and let me know how you get on with it.

edit: BTW. I have just updated the mobile version again to allow the news to be read from there as well. Let me know what you think

Google allows webmasters to view - ALL LINKS - 7/2/2007

Wed, 7 Feb 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Since the dawn of mankind (not literally) webmaster all over the world have been plaguing google to let them see who really links to their website. For the normal everyday user you can just do a link: search for your domain on google, (e.g. link:www.swiftscripts.co.uk). This will throw up a couple of sites which do link into you, but if you have ever bothered to really look, you will know that these are not the only sites which do so. Webmasters have often put this down to an inefficient system at google's end, but at the same time, they secretly suspected that google weren't telling us everything. Yesterday these suspicions were confirmed with the launch of the new ingeniously entitled 'Links' page on google's webmaster tools. This page allows you not only to view all the site's who link to you (that google know about) but also the pages on your own domain which link back to yourself. When you compare the site's listed here with the sites that the site: search on google throw up you will see a big difference. This update means a lot for webmasters. By using this new data, webmasters will have a more complete view of how their site are seen by other users of the internet. That should be invaluable in determining marketing strategies and their effectiveness.

You can now search - the entire site - 26/1/2007

Fri, 26 Jan 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Thanks to all my hard in getting google to notice swiftscripts.co.uk's vast content library (see below) it is now feasible to use google to search this website. This is particularly handy for the script library because it can often be quite hard to find the script you're after despite the hierarchical layout of the library itself. So with this thought in mind I have updated the main search box on the home page of the site and also added a shiny new search button to the script library to work with google, searching only within the remit of swiftscripts.co.uk. As it currently stands, google have indexed about 190 pages from swiftscripts.co.uk out of our 200/300 pages. Be warned though, google does have a nasty habit of indexing frames and their container pages separately so in reality there is only about 100-130 pages indexed. I'm sure that in time though all of my wonderful site will be shining like a beacon from google, or not. Go on, give it a go.

The coolest - JavaScript effect known to man - 13/1/2007

Sat, 13 Jan 2007 00:00:00 GMT

I've just found this little beauty while browsing digg. You'll Love it. Grim from destructoid.com has posted with this amazing bit of JavaScript. Just past his code into the addressbar of any website (once it's loaded) and all the images undick and spin around in a cool 3d circle. You've got to try it. Just go to this address:
http://www.destructoid.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1271&highlight=

Linux - We're sorry all you Linux users - 13/1/2007

Sat, 13 Jan 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Hey everyone. In my attempts to ever improve swiftscripts.co.uk and diversify my computing experience I decided to install SimplyMepis 6.0 the other day. As always with newer versions of Linux it installed like a breeze even on my often awkward, troublesome and driver-needing Fujitsu-Siemens Laptop. Is it just me or has Linux changed since the old days when Mandriva used to be called Mandrake and you had to tweak just about every single install? I booted up my pc and was just astounded at the professionalism and ease-of-use of this OS. Anyway, I booted up Firefox to see if the net connection was automatically configured, and what do you know, it was. I typed in swiftscripts.co.uk to see what all those hours of hard programming looked like on all those Linux computers, and well, I was not too pleased. There were some obvious faults (which have now been resolved) at first glance. The iframe containing the who's online bit at the bottom right seemed to be calling our 404 (page not found page) and by doing so had got it's self stuck in a never ending loop of iframes. I managed to resolve this fairly easily but there are some other things which are quite annoyingly wrong. For example Firefox seems determined to add a blank line at the top of every page for some reason I wish I knew. Also, the amount of fonts which come with Linux seems very restricted and I can't find one which seems to site as well as the default one for windows. Actually, although I love Linux I must admit that I absolutely abhor the default font for the web browsers and can't understand why anyone would ever create such a font or willingly set it as a default. Anyway the point of this spiel is basically to let you know that I am slowly working on making swiftscripts.co.uk display properly under Linux
Just as a little note for those of you who are interested: You may remember a while ago I changed the the coding to set out the site to use tables instead of CSS. The reason for this was that when I had an opportunity to check how the site looked under Linux Firefox had decided to if not ignore my position:absolute; tags at least completely misread them saying that 100px really meant 2px or 560px etc. So in reality the site in it's current state looks much better under Linux then it ever has.

Swiftscripts - Well Dugg! - 9/1/2007

Tue, 9 Jan 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Yep, as you'll be able to see from the splattering of little icons next to each message (if you are reading from the members area), swiftscripts.co.uk has finally decided to get into the whole digg thing. If you haven't come across digg yet, it's basically the news version of google,msn, yahoo etc. Most websites with news sources will have a 'Digg this' link next to their news items so that if their readers like the story they submit it to digg who then rank it and index it on their site. To see the best of the news on the net just go to digg.com and you are instantly presented with the top stories (as voted by digg users). I've implemented this on swiftscripts.co.uk as you should be able to see just next to each message. If you like what you see, click the link next to the message and let the world know about it. If you are the first person to do this you will be taken to digg's website to fill out a short form, whereas if someone else has already done this for you ,your rating will just be added. Go on give it a try!

Down time - network issues - 9/1/2007

Tue, 9 Jan 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Hi everyone. This is just a brief post to let you know that we are currently having some temporary problems with our hosting company which are resulting in connection problems for our users. Please be patient with us as we try to sort this out. Thanks.

edit: This issue is now resolved although site response times are very slow.

Brand new google product - Google Gulp - 8/1/2007

Mon, 8 Jan 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Before reading any further at all in this article (I mean it!) go to this link and browse around as much as you can: http://www.google.com/googlegulp/
You'd better have followed that link! Anyway, I'm not actually sure when this page was posted (I've just discovered it) and so some of the brighter readers out there may have already seen this. If you did look round the linked site above you're probably feeling very confused at the moment. Let me tell you know and put you out of your misery - it's a hoax. Yep, the whole downloading your DNA and transmitting it to a secret server is just a joke. I'm quite impressed that google have such a good sense of humor in that they can poke a bit of fun at themselves and rely on people not suing them etc. etc. To my knowledge Microsoft have never been so daring as to have a sense of humor let alone try to intentionaly mislead Millions of people, oh wait, scrub that last bit. This isn't the only prank google have pulled though. In this Wikipedia article the writer describes in detail some of the other jokes google have made over the years and how some really obvious jokes turned out to be real things - things such as GMail. When you look into it just about every site seems to have pulled off some April fools jokes at some point or another. I particularly like this one at tomshardware.com. Enjoy and keep Laughing!

Useful website for webmasters - linkreferral.com - 5/1/2007

Fri, 5 Jan 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Linkreferral.com is a website that you webmasters out there might find very useful. The basic idea is that you submit your site to their ordered database and a description and link are visible to anyone browsing their database. 'But why would anyone want to browse their database?' I hear you ask. Well to improve your ranking in their database you visit other members websites and write brief reviews on them. This really does end up generating mountains of traffic to each website. For example, I have only just started using this service and I have already had 20 visitors this month (that's in 5 days) for free with about 10 minutes work. Of course you do have to spend the time browsing their database but you very often find useful websites that you'll remember and return to in the future. Why not try it out: www.linkreferral.com

An even more google friendly - swiftscripts.co.uk - 3/1/2007

Wed, 3 Jan 2007 00:00:00 GMT

You might remember a while back that I posted a news item talking about a script I had made which reads the file system of our script library and creates a site-map (a list of all our pages) for google (this is because google cannot understand our javascript browsing system). Well I have been doing some more tweaks to the site so that the right page title is displayed in google to make the search listings more understandable. Some of these changes are already showing up in google's index but it could be a week or so for them all to update. To help google out even more I have also thrown together another site-map which maps our message board/forum. As google is the only search engine to understand the google site-maps I have also made two files which create html versions of these site-maps for other search engines (and low spec browsers) to read. So hopefully in the future all our content will be available by using search engines to find it.

The dawn of a year - of MS versus Google - 1/1/2007

Mon, 1 Jan 2007 00:00:00 GMT

It's been well recognized that Microsoft and Google have had a long running battle to be the software and web giants. With the dawn of the new year the time for Microsoft to release their brand new Windows Vista draws ever closer (yet again). What are your expectations of Vista? To be honest I don't really expect much of it. Ok, there is a nice shiny new design but as always with more graphics there is the problem of more RAM being sucked up. Apparently this is the most secure version of windows ever, which at first glance sounds good... but I'm sure we all remember the mad rush starting in 2005 of patches and service packs from Microsoft for their super secure Windows XP, as they realized that they had left billions of computers wide open to anyone to hack into by just 'forgetting' to put any type of security in XP. I doubt I'll be too impressed with Vista. Their are millions of reviews about Vista out there on the net and they are all saying how incompatible Vista is with programs from XP and before, and to be honest I don't really want to be dishing out mountains of cash for 'Vista Versions' of the software I have already bought for XP.
But what about Google? Where do they stand in all of this? Well news has recently been released about the new 'Google Phone' which is rumored to be taking on MS in their mobile phone monopoly. The idea behind it is to make surfing the Net on the move so much more easier then the current experience. Read more here - The Guardian.
So both company's have massive projects in the pipe-line. All we as consumers can do is sit back and reap the benefits of some company finally daring to take on Microsoft and forcing them to actually think of their consumers. It will be interesting to sit back and watch this rivalry develop - who knows where it will end, free Windows?

FMO - unavailable for download - 29/12/2006

Fri, 29 Dec 2006 00:00:00 GMT

I've been meaning to do this for a while but I have not had the time to do it, that is to take the Field Ministry Organizer (FMO) off of the downloads section. This may seem like a strange thing to do but I have had to do it now as the current release of the FMO has become obsolete. The new version which is soon to be released will be incompatible with the current version and so no new downloads are being allowed at present. I am hoping to have the new version of the FMO available for download around February/March although some beta versions may be available in January. As always the FMO will remain completely FREE when version 2 is released. If you are interested in testing out some beta versions of the FMO and are pretty computer literate then please contact me at fmo at swiftscripts dot co dot uk. [I've stopped writing out my full address as I am getting to much spam]. For more details go to the Projects page.

Adverts - Aghhh!!!! - 11/12/2006

Mon, 11 Dec 2006 00:00:00 GMT

Yep, the day has finally come. I am just so fed up with trying to log in on to this website, and my keyboard being redirected to those stupid bravenet pop-unders, so annoyed that I have decided to at last dispense with them. They have brought a lot of traffic to swiftscripts.co.uk but I think now they have just become so annoying that they are now starting driving people away. I am also looking into the TrueAds banners which are periodically displayed at the bottom of the page. They are not too annoying as they do not make sounds, move around, cover over things or take a huge time to load. But the banners which are currently being displayed are really not the kind of things I want associated with this website.
While I am fiddling around with a new ad system the block/unblock popunders link will still be displayed, but hopefully banners won't be popping up anymore. Remember, if you want to advertise your website on swiftscripts.co.uk, we don't charge for ad space. Just email us (root at swiftscripts dot co dot uk) or use the contact us form on the website. Check back later for more info about the ad removals.