The Welney Website

Privacy & Data Protection policy

• Personal names may be used in text or shown as captions to photos.
• Other details will NOT be published without permission.
• Contact details are kept and used only to enable communication from the webmaster (see Contact below).
• Under no circumstances will ANY details be passed to third parties.

Cookies

• To compile visitor statistics and viewing patterns a "cookie" (a file which identifies your computer) may be placed on your computer by our agent Statcounter. The cookie is accessed by Statcounter when you visit our site in future in order to identify you as a "returning visitor" (as opposed to first-time visitor). The cookie also provides details of your computer's operating system and version (ie Windows XP, Windows 7, Linux Ubantu 10, etc, monitor size, and country or county location, all of which assist the Webmaster to design suitable page layout and provide appropriate content. No personal information is collected, nor information that could identify individuals.
• If you want to delete any cookies that are already on your computer, please refer to the instructions for your file management software to locate the file or directory that stores cookies. Our cookies will have the file names ending in @statcounter[2].
• Information on deleting or controlling cookies is available at www.AboutCookies.org
• Please note that by deleting our cookies or disabling future cookies you may not be able to access certain areas or features of our site.

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Ownership & Management

• The domain name (welney.org.uk) is registered directly with Nominet, the UK domain name registry. The 'registrant' was originally the name of the first webmaster. It was changed in April 2009, at the curent webmaster's expense, to "The Welney Website" at the address of the webmaster (as bottom of page). In effect it is 'privately owned' (as are the vast majority of sites, although that is very rarely made clear). The use of an impersonal name for the registrant will enable future transfers of 'ownership' & management to be completed simply and without cost, in line with the webmaster's aims shown below.
• The site is maintained by the Webmaster (see Contact below) with occasional contributions from a small group of supporters.

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Webmaster's aims

• to provide an all-inclusive website for the community of Welney and surrounding area.
• to keep running costs to the lowest amount possible by sourcing free services and software.
• to encourage participation and contributions from individuals and organisations.
• to provide information on present day life for visitors and residents past, present and potential.
• to maintain and increase historical archives and make them freely available to everyone at all times
• to provide links to other local sites and those providing related material.
• to provide a forum for residents views.  Free-speech is encouraged, but obscene or racist material will not be published.
• to expand the site's management and to create an organisation or society open to ordinary residents and friends of Welney.

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Copyright

• All text, images, design and layout (including drawings and photos) are © welney.org.uk (this website), the webmaster, the Welney Parish Council or the original source (which will be acknowledged where known)
• Copies can be made for personal use only.
• No material on this site can be included in any other website or publication or used for public display without written permission from the webmaster or the original source.

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History & Funding

• 24th December 1999. Created by the Welney Millennium Arts Project (WMAP) team and funded by them until 2004. Webmasters: Ian Warrington and Martin Kyne-Lilley.
• xxxxxxxxxxxx  2002. New webmaster: Mark Farrow.
• mid  November 2004. Site dormant, webmaster unable to commit sufficient time in Welney to maintain the site.
• 14th November 2004. New webmaster: Peter Cox.
• 15th November 2004. Treasurer of WMAP declined financial assistance to re-start site owing to "insufficient funds". (Some years later the WMAP treasurer admitted that the funds were nearly £1,000 which she then gave to the Parish Council without offering this website any asistance.)
• 17th November 2004. Site re-activated with private finance.
• 16th February 2005. Welney Parish Council joined the site for a 3 month trial with their own sub-site designed & maintained free by the Webmaster.
• 1st May 2005. The website host service terms changed from a 'p.a.y.g.' account (no annual fee, dial-up charges at cost) to a 'justmail' account (annual fee £20 but no call costs).
• 29th June 2005. Welney Parish Council renewed agreement for further 6 months & donated £20 to webmaster's costs.
• 12th December 2005. Welney Parish Council renewed agreement for further 6 months & donated £25 to webmaster's costs.
• 14th June 2006. Welney Parish Council decided not to renew agreement. (In Sept 2006 the Parish Council launched its own site. The sub-site on this web was then removed)
• In Aug 2006 a six-person management team was formed to run and oversee the site. One proposed aim was to promote greater use of IT within the community by distribution of second-hand computer equipment to poor and elderly residents. Unfortunately our application for funding was turned down because a grant for (new) IT equipment had already been made to an organisation within the Parish (the Parish Council, for their history committee) and another grant within the same Parish was deemed inappropriate. Is does seem rather unfair that a small amount of money given to us would have benefited many who are unable to afford computers, whereas the large grant to the Parish Council has benefited only one or two families who can well afford to provide their own. As a result of the failure, at our first attempt, two key members withdrew, and the team disbanded. Since then the site has been managed by the webmaster with encouragement and occasional contributions from several website supporters.
• In early 2012 the current webmaster wished to retire and called for volunteers to take over. Just one person came forward and following discussions agreed to do so but wished to completely redesign the site beforehand. That process is ongoing. In the meantime the site is not being updated except for the Parish Council's minutes and the cricket clubs's pages.

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Technical stuff

• The site has been managed since Nov 2004 on the Webmaster's personal PCs (to Jan 2010 on a home-built PC with a 40Mb hard drive running on MS Windows XP Pro; since Jan 2010 on a PC running on Windows 7 and with 500Mb hard drive.
• Web pages are in HTML code designed using MS FrontPage 2002 until Jan 2010. Since then, a donated software suite has been used to assist in page design. All new pages are styled using CSS in addition to HTML and are fully compliant with current www standards. Older pages will be upgraded as time permits. However, some Parish Council minutes are MS Word documents, and a few large documents are in PDF format.
• As the site is privately funded, all software used is limited to that which can be obtained free - often cut-down versions of retail packages. That can impose restrictions on design, layout, functionality and content.
• The visitor counter on the home page (added in Dec 2005) is a free version from www.statcounter.com but still provides a basic variety of statistics.
• The site search facility (added in June 2006) is a free version from www.crawl-it.com. The site is re-indexed monthly, or on demand.
• The original website "host", or "ISP" Freenetname was taken over by Madasafish in Aug 2006. Service deteriorated when they were absorbed into the BT group and in November 2012 they gave notice that the site was more than three times the size they allow and would be deleted unless reduced below the limit. That would have wrecked the site, so it has been moved to another ISP, 123-Reg, at the webmasters expense.
• Pages and documents are uploaded to the host's server using 'Filezilla', a free 'FTP' program. (Prior to 2009 'Coffee-Cup' FTP was used) via an Orange (Wanadoo) broadband internet connection provided at the webmaster's expense.
• The web space provided by Madasafish was only 100mb (increased from 20mb on 19th April 2005). With the vast number of pages & photos on this site, that limitation severley restricted the use of many modern website features. The arrangement with 123-reg is virtually unlimited.
• The host uses a "UNIX" server (as do most ISP/hosts). Unfortunately UNIX does not support MS FrontPage 'extensions'. That meant that some pages or features did not work correctly (e.g. Photo galleries) or at all (e.g. the Guestbook). That problem is gradually being overcome through the use of CSS code. 

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Contact

• e-mail webmaster at admin@welney.org.uk
• or write to: Peter Cox, the Welney Webmaster, c/o White Hall Farmhouse, Welney, Norfolk, PE14 9SF.

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