Since the last AGM in April 2019, my webmaster’s activity in 2019 was much the same as in previous years, adding reports on the Annual Dinner, the visits and holidays that took place and the Christmas Social.

2020 as we know was a completely different year, my activity was basically removing details of events as they were cancelled and advising site readers of the cancellations. This continued into this year too, as no events took place.

Out of the blue earlier this year, Google wrote to me advising that their classic website format, on which our website is based, was being phased out, the final closing down date 1st September.

In the same email they advised I could easily convert our website into their new format by simply clicking on a link they included, stating however the switch was irreversible.

This irreversible step concerned me for a while and fortunately, it turned out, I decided not to follow that route. 

I remembered I had a spare website, only available to myself, on which I used to try out new ideas in the early days, before putting them on the proper website.

I volunteered this practice website, also based on Google’s classic website format, for the conversion. 

The result was a disaster! Nearly all the short-comings of the classic sites, which had accumulated over time and was understandably why Google was phasing them out, such as misaligned photos, captions not lining up properly, carried over to the new format.

Forms did not copy over at all, it also didn’t look at all presentable, it was a mess.

I was quite relieved I had taken this approach, our original website was still intact. The experience was rather like trying to put old wine into new bottles, it wasn’t going to work. 

Given this situation, I decided to start a fresh and create a brand new website, based on Google’s new format.

I drew up a list of the essential content in the existing website, such as rules of the club, the committee organisation charts, the club’s policies on data protection and privacy, and the items which I felt should be included, such as all the Heritage stories and the latest reports of Annual Dinners, the last held AGM and Christmas Social. 

I then set about building up the new website, copying over the identified content from the existing website, a couple of hours a day during the summer, kept me out of mischief! 

The new website went live during August, running parallel to the existing one, with notifications about the change, giving viewers a chance to get used to the new one, before I switched the old website off on August 31st. The new website now comes up when someone googles the Perkins Long Service Club and its address is virtually the same as the old one, just one word changed, ‘site‘ became ‘view‘.

The new website certainly has a fresher, cripser look about it. Viewers have reported back to me that it looks smart and is easier to navigate around than the old one.  I am pleased with the result.

For information, all the reports on the old website, that didn’t make it over to the new one have been placed in an Archive and these can be provided upon request, as has been done once or twice.

Any comments or ideas for improvement of the new website, please email me, my address is on the website. 

David Foster