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1.
Edinphoto Web Site History
2001-2017
I set up the EdinPhoto web site in 2001 and
have updated it most days over the past 16 years. It now has over
27,000 pages and over 26,000 photos.
The site has been my own personal,
non-commercial project. I do all the updating of the site, myself.
The site is still receiving lots of
visitors. There were over a million page views last month and
there are visits from over 100 different countries, most days.
2.
My Backlog of Work
EdinPhoto
and
emails
Recently, emails about the web site
have been arriving here faster than I've been able to reply to them.
This has left me very little time for updating the EdinPhoto site.
I have lots of material that I'd consider
adding to the site if I had the time, including several thousand
images:
- my own photos of Edinburgh.
- my old postcards and stereo views of
Edinburgh.
- my cartes de visite and cabinet
prints by Edinburgh photographers.
- photos and recollections of
Edinburgh sent to me by others.
However, it can take me up to an hour to add
a single image to the web site, so I'm not intending to work my way
through the above.
3.
Technology Changes
I'm still using Microsoft 'Front Page 2003'
program to update the web site.
I find it easy to use, but the program is now very old and has not been
supported by Microsoft for many years.
It still works (most of the time) with my
current PC running Windows 7, but each time I change hardware or update
the operating system, there is a risk that FrontPage may stop working.
I've investigated other ways of updating the
web site, including:
- 'Expression Web' (which took over
from Front Page) but that's also
now being phased out by Microsoft.
- 'Dreamweaver' which is powerful, but
I would have to work hard to become proficient in using it.
It would not be realistic to consider
starting again with the web site, and making a successful changeover to
any new platform for the site would be likely to require a
disproportionate amount of work.
CONCLUSION 1: So,
I've come to the conclusion that at some stage it will no longer be
possible for me to continue to update the EdinPhoto web site.
4.
Other Resources Available
When I created EdinPhoto, sixteen years ago, a
web site seemed to be the obvious way to go, even though I had to build
the site from scratch, rather than use one of the many 'off the shelf'
templates that are readily available now.
However, in recent years, blogs and social
media have become far more numerous and popular. Blogs and social
media allow users to input their own data and are generally easy to use
and responsive.
- Facebook now has a lot of
information on Edinburgh, including the 'Lost Edinburgh' site
(incidentally, soon to be followed by 'Lost Glasgow). 'Lost
Edinburgh' has a very large collection of interesting old photos.
- Historic Environment Scotland has
Edinburgh photos and info on its 'Canmore' web site and its 'SCRAN' web
site.
- City of Edinburgh Libraries have
added their large collection of Edinburgh photos to their 'Capital
Collections' web site.
CONCLUSION 2:
In view of all the alternative sources now readily available,
and easy to use, I feel that it
might be the time for me to make no further significant updates to the
EdinPhoto web site.
5.
Long-Term
Copy of EdinPhoto web site
The National Library of Scotland told me,
several years ago, that they planned to take back-up copies of a number
of web sites, so that the sites could still be made available to viewers
even if the authors were no longer able to maintain the sites. The
sites chosen by NLS included the EdinPhoto web site.
CONCLUSION 3: I'd
like to ensure that all the material currently on my web site continues
to be available. - both my own research and collections of photos and
the wide range of other people's recollections of photos -
So I plan to have further discussions with
the National Library of Scotland to gain a better understanding of their
arrangements for taking back-up copies of web sites and making these
back-ups available to be viewed.
6.
iPads
I bought an iPad in 2015. Over the
past couple of years, I've gradually made more use of the iPad and less
use of my SLR cameras and my PC.
I've been impressed by the quality of camera
on the iPad, and the ease with which photos can be taken then uploaded
to sites such as Twitter and Instagram.
The iPad can also take videos, including
slow motion and time-lapse. I've enjoyed taking the videos and I
plan to show some of them to photographic societies and other groups.
I may also add some of them to 'You Tube' at some stage.
I look forward to taking more photos with my iPad,
and not feeling under constant pressure to catch up on my emails and
outstanding work for the EdinPhoto web site.
7.
eMails
I still have 620 emails that I've not
yet replied to, but most of these are quite old and have come from
people who may have since changed their email address and/or lost
interest in the subject that they wrote about.
CONCLUSION 4: I'll
concentrate on replying to the 85 most recent emails. These were
all sent sent between Jan 2017 and Jun 2017.
I've added a message to the web site asking
the senders of any of the earlier emails to contact me again if they
would like me to reply to any of their earlier emails.
8.
Thank You
Thank you to all EdinPhoto visitors for your
contributions, support and encouragement, and for your understanding
when it has taken me a while to respond to some of your messages.
I hope you'll appreciate my reason for only
being able to update the web site occasionally in the future.
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