Creating a Web Site

[dionaea]

O.K. so now I've got my Weather Station set up & working & now I've got the bug. I think that it is great that so many of you have your own web sites & anyone can check your own weather. A couple of friends living in other parts of the region have also shown interest in setting up WS's. Now I know nothing about the creation of web sites - I have searched the forum but have only succeeded in being bewildered by the knowledge of several members - but I haven't a clue what they are talking about. I have a few questions:-
1) Is there any information for noddies on what to do ,step by step?
2) I appear to be allowed 50mb website with my present ISP + the possibility of adding up to a further 50mb. if I add more email addresses???? Is this enough space to show my weather + a couple of pictures & say 6 lines of non related information??
3) Do I need to sort out a domain name, purchase a program on web design for idiots (if so, can anyone recommend one). I see that Steve mentioned that it is possible to put a small amount of information onto some site for about £5.00 per year. Are there any details of what to do?
As an old wrinky - I don't want to dig too deep into the pension. I see that various programs are on sale on the web but dont know where to start. Any advice will be much appreciated.
4)On Cumulus, is it just a simple case of filling in the blanks in the internet box in 'Configuration' & it then appears on the web site? - I have read the relevant Help section but there are parts there that I do not understand.

Cheers,
Chris

[steve]

1) Is there any information for noddies on what to do ,step by step?

If you just want the standard Cumulus pages, the help info should get you going, and you can ask any questions here.

2) I appear to be allowed 50mb website with my present ISP + the possibility of adding up to a further 50mb. if I add more email addresses???? Is this enough space to show my weather + a couple of pictures & say 6 lines of non related information??

That's more than enough.

3) Do I need to sort out a domain name, purchase a program on web design for idiots (if so, can anyone recommend one). I see that Steve mentioned that it is possible to put a small amount of information onto some site for about £5.00 per year. Are there any details of what to do?

You don't have to have your own domain name, particularly if you're using your own ISP. If you want to use our hosting, it would be better to have a domain name, but we can give you a subdomain of sandaysoft if you want, eg. <yourname>.sandaysoft.com.

If you do want your own domain name, we use 123-reg - http://www.123-reg.co.uk/ and find them pretty good, and cheap.

As an old wrinky - I don't want to dig too deep into the pension. I see that various programs are on sale on the web but dont know where to start. Any advice will be much appreciated.

There are some reasonable free programs available - Nvu - http://net2.com/nvu/ or Kompozer - http://kompozer.net/ which is a sort of enhanced Nvu. Or just use a text editor!

4)On Cumulus, is it just a simple case of filling in the blanks in the internet box in 'Configuration' & it then appears on the web site? - I have read the relevant Help section but there are parts there that I do not understand.

Pretty much, yes, but there is a little bit of work to do uploading some files to the web site first. It's easy enough, and just ask if there's anything you don't understand.

[dionaea]

Many thanks for that Steve - Watch this space!!

Cheers,

Chris

[dionaea]

Hi all,
If you look at the following website you will see how far I have progressed. http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/thorpeweather

I have not done this by myself however - I have received invaluable help from Dave. Apart from little points like 'Thorpe Weather weather' I have been unable to upload the files in the Webfiles folder on the Internat Files box. I click on browse & the pathway for say Index T is found & the whole pathway appears in the left hand column - that seems OK . When I come to the remote filenames column I don't seem to be able to get the pathway right. Cany anyone offer any advice please.

Cheers,
Chris

[steve]

You need to upload the webfiles files using an ftp program, not Cumulus. They just need uploading once, not periodically, which is what Cumulus does.

Using your ftp client, create a directory called 'images' in the directory containing your index.htm file. Then (optionally) upload the picture.jpg file into that. Create a directory called 'dbimages' and put the contents of the 'dbimages' folder from Cumulus into that. Finally, upload weatherstyle.css, wz_jsgraphics.js and CumulusRealtime.swf into the same directory as your index.htm.

Steve

[dc1500]

Steve, I'm in contact with Chris and can talk him through that as I've got him to download the same HTML/FTP program as me. Blind leading the blind but I got there!
Thanks,
Dave

[Samuel]

I use Firefox webbrowser with a add-on called fireftp
both are for free and are very good.


http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox (search for fireftp)

[dionaea]

Hi all,
With a great deal of help I have arrived at the state shown in my website - please look

http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/thorpeweather

I still have a couple of problems which I don't seem to be able to solve - 1) the data only updates when I manually click on web update in Cumulus. 2) The gauges do not seem to be working & in Trends - the Temp.Max/Min graph is a thumbnail - oddly when I click on it to enlarge it it shows! Any ideas please?

Thanks,
Chris

[steve]

I don't know why it isn't updating automatically, if you've ticked the automatic update box, and set an update interval. Try restarting? The missing thumbnail may have been a timeout while uploading. The two wind gauges work off the realtime.txt file, so you need to tick that and set an interval. If you're not using one of the later builds, you'll need to restart before the realtime upadting will start.

Steve

[dionaea]

Hi Steve,
Checked all you mentioned & all those things had been done. I went out last night & on return found that the graph had appeared & all the gauges except the Wind speed & direction dials were functioning. However it is still not updating automatically although the boxes are ticked. It will only update if I do a web update in File.Could it be that the program has become corrupted?

Cheers,

Chris

[steve]

It's unlikely to be a corruption. Can you try turning on the ftp log and see if it produces an ftplog.txt and realtimeftplog.txt? And turn on the debug log and send me the debug.log and your cumulus.ini. Note that the latter will contain your ftp password, so you might want to edit that out before sending me it. And don't attach them here, email them to steve@sandaysoft.com

Thanks,
Steve

[dionaea]

Hi Steve,
Have managed to sort out most of the problems without bothering you further but have 2 left - both in the gauges section.Firstly the realtime gauges - I cannot get them to update or the date & time to change beneath them.They worked on the first web update on installation but not since. Secondly, if you hover the cursor on, say, the rain gauge, or any of the others for that matter, a box containing html programming appears.
Enable realtime is ticked & set to 120 seconds.

Cheers,
Chris

http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/thorpeweather

[steve]

Hi Steve,
Have managed to sort out most of the problems without bothering you further but have 2 left - both in the gauges section.Firstly the realtime gauges - I cannot get them to update or the date & time to change beneath them.They worked on the first web update on installation but not since.

Your realtime.txt file isn't getting uploaded. If you turn on ftp logging, the realtimeftplog.txt file (if the ftp component can be bothered to create one) may shed some light.

Secondly, if you hover the cursor on, say, the rain gauge, or any of the others for that matter, a box containing html programming appears.
Enable realtime is ticked & set to 120 seconds.

This used to be a common (intermittent) problem, until Stuart (broadstairs) found a work around, which was to make sure the boxover.js reference was the last one on the page. Since we did that change, it doesn't seem to have been a problem. Until now. And you do have the boxover.js reference last. As I've said elsewhere none of this is my code so I'm afraid I'm not much help at fixing it.

Steve