Thetownend.com

What's happened to this website? I try go on there to check some old player stats and it's trying to sell me Ugg boots  ???

How much?

Works fine for me.

Yep, I'm getting offered Ugg boots as well.

Fine for me too.

Can you post a link please?

ugg boots here

No boots on mine:

http://swindon-town-fc.co.uk/

Looks fine to me apart from the page title, but the page clearly has something going on.

(http://i.imgur.com/O0c0ERy.png)

No ugg boots here.

Nor here.

Tis working for me as well now... however, if you do a google search for swindon-town-fc you get the Ugg boots page.

www.cheapuggzone.co.uk I think is the website if you are looking for Ugg boots, presumably with a STFC badge on the back?

Ah I see what you mean.... http://www.swindon-town-fc.co.uk/ is fine but http://swindon-town-fc.co.uk/ is an ugg page.

Well spotted Venkman. Cheers.

Welcome, no idea why they chose that link for the ugg website though.

Thanks all... turned out it was a security flaw on the Windows server that as yet hasn't been fixed by a patch - had to have it move it to a different server with a more recent OS.

Typical that this happened while I was away and couldn't do anything about it!

Cant seem to get the ugg site at all

Out of interest does it cost much to run this website or do you make any return from it? How many hours go in to maintaining it?

It's a cracking website it has to be said.

Thanks. 

It costs me two or three hundred a year, I purposely don't make any money from it. As for hours.... depends what I'm working on - I've always got lots of projects on the go for the site, but progress is slow depending on work & family stuff.  I spend far longer on it than I should, have got lots of things in progress right now but lots still to do to get them in a state to be ready for the site, and loads of ideas that I've not started on yet.... I haven't even got around to updating last year's player profiles yet. 

What I really need is a lottery win and early retirement!

Excellent site. Have you considered contacting the club and asking them to integrate it into the OS?
Perhaps you could take a share of the advertising revenue for maintaining it.

Yes, it's a great site. An amazing piece of work which, clearly, has taken a huge amount of time and devotion to build and maintain.  I use it regularly as a source of reference.  Thanks!

Its like the anti-wikipedia of Swindon Town. A one man (or women) project full of accurate facts. Its great.

This is my favourite site on the World Wide Web.

Thanks all, much appreciated.


I haven't, no.... I'm not really interested in making any money out of it.  Besides that, I've used photos and videos that I don't hold copyright for - don't want to run into any issues on that front.

Dedication....it is appreciated. If I ever get that lottery win myself I'd cover the costs for it myself. It's a type of site a lot of clubs aren't fortunate enough to have I would think.

Not really fair that you stump up the cost of £200-£300 a year as well as the time and dedication. I'm thinking there must be some obvious way to raise the funds but no light bulb going off in my head just yet.

Give him 300 quid. Or ask for donations.

Talking of copyright Chalky, didn't you nick your avatar off his site? I'd say that's punishable by a fine of, say, £300.

 :rofl2:

Have you not thought about rewriting the site in PHP for costs sake? I expect I could provide hosting free if that were the case. 

Wouldn't it make sense for the most popular and well known Swindon Town forum to join forces with the most accurate and complete Swindon Town historic archive? (with ownership remaining the same) 

This way Mr Swindon-Town-FC.co.uk might find some willing assistants to help him with keeping it up to date to allow him to work on some of his new ideas?  Also it would mean that there would be somebody to keep an eye on the site when he is away to deal with issues like the one that started this thread?

We could also have some fun fund raising threads that go towards the running costs of both sites, e.g. fantasy football/prediction leagues etc. where half of the entrance fees go into the pot, the other half is winnings.  There are plenty of ideas for raising money that would not cost much but add a bit of fun to forum, especially with the numbers we have now.

Just a thought.

Would I have to do anything?

It's a good idea, but not possible unfortunately.

swindon-town-fc.co.uk is built using (Microsoft's) ASP, which only really works on a Windows Server. This site is built with PHP, which will run on any server and currently runs on Linux. However, for a long list of reasons, there's not a cat in hells chance of this site going anywhere near a Windows box and all the joys that entails. :)

It's a great site and one we should do more to support if there's anything that's needed.

 Richard's site is undoubtedly a very great thing....a few years ago, I was asked to write some stuff for a book being published, which included biographies of historic players. It was amazingly difficult to find stuff out as so few clubs have really detailed sites on historical stuff....certainly next to none officially and not too many unofficially.

 Occasionally something has cropped up on here which Richard has been able to use like the list of televised games which we developed...and some video clips...speaking of which are the bits like the Chelsea Simod cup game that bigbobjoylove posted up recently there?

It's a labour of love...and all the better for it, long may it prosper.

I remember back in the day, when there were plans afoot, to turn the TEF from a humble forum into something much more sexy...there were all sorts of wizard ideas what it might include..think I may have been a bit sceptical at the time, given the seemingly pissed  or drugged up nature of the participants that it would ever happen, bit like the CG redevelopment.

SY, I recall got in some Smoggie mate of his who designed a sexy new headline banner...

Fair enough, maybe we could become unofficial homies.  Still think we could contribute in some way, if he welcomes it of course.

I did think perhaps the TEF could've become a precursor to The Washbag but frankly it would never have worked.

With s-t-f-c.co.uk, the washbag and TEF, we're much better off than many clubs our size

They all serve a different purpose as well.  Tie ups (as The Washbag has with s-t-fc.co.uk) are great, but no need to merge them all in my view.  It's great as it is.

Even the Adver site, which many deride on here, serves a purpose.  Add in the radio coverage on BBC Wiltshire, and I have to agree we are very well served.

I miss searching for snippet of Town news on page 312 on Ceefax :(

I was thinking that earlier, the new red button stuff rarely covers anything Swindon related.

I miss going to reserve games , to get a half time score over the tannoy from some norvern backwater like Halifax...only to discover that our 2 -0 half time lead has evaporated to a 4-3 defeat with 3 in the last 10 mins, in the Pink at 18:00.

Used to leave the CG in my teens,walk home then go out delivering the football pink
Was great for its day

 :D nice one

actually, I'd have to add Moosehead (and even Jed) on Twitter gives us another good angle.

Definitely this.  I opened a new twitter account recently basically to follow Sam on match days.

I did this as well Ardiles. Very handy way of keeping up to date with goings on at the CG.

To be honest, I do it as much for myself as anyone else. More than happy to do it - would probably be doing something similar anyway even if I didn't have it out there on a site.

I did consider this a few years back, but at the time MySQL wasn't developed enough to do everything I needed to.  Sure it would be fine now, but the thought of rewriting everything isn't very appealing! I never learnt PHP, and I'm well out of touch with newer solutions. I dread the day that MS stop supporting classic ASP - all is fine in Windows Server 2012 so should be good for another five/six years at least.

Like Ugg boots, for example...

I posted the goals from that game a few years back - have got 60 mins of highlights as well which I'll post in the run up to the Chelsea game.  I've also still got the rest of the 'first game' videos to upload that I haven't done yet... I've slowly been working my way through all the footage I've got, everything pre-2003 has now been converted to individual files (about 800 of them), ready to upload to YouTube.

And talking of Football Pinks, that's something else I'm working on... eventually want to get match reports for every game... long way to go on that one though.

Thanks all again for your comments and donation offers etc - if I ever fall on hard times I'll know where to come :)

 :)

The microfiche at the library, has all the Advers with match reports. For some reason, to do with circumstances, I gave up looking at very early stuff when the Ref, moved into the new build, and was amalgamated with the general banks of computer strangeness, that now pervades the place.

I haven't the first clue about how it could be done...but it would be beyond awesome.

I don't even know whether the facility to look up old games in the Adver is still available

Does the club have an official Club Archivist?  Just a thought.  Maybe Richard wouldn't want to formalise things in that way, but for a retainer of - say - £500 a year, maybe the club could help fund the site.  It's that good, I think they might consider it.  Just a thought.

I always thought it was Paul ploughman, although maybe he wasn't official?

I thought it was Dick Mattick a few years ago under old co

My old history teacher, it was definitely him for a while in early 2000s

I think you're getting into a pickle.

He knows his onions, though.

Maybe he just did it at lunch time

Stop with the cheese guys.

Had a ploughmans lunch today...poor fucker wasn't amused.

Cant get on the site today - same for anyone else ??

Not working here either.

I went on the other day and there were loads and loads of spam topics on the forum, so i guess Richard has taken it down to resolve that.....

Tis back up now

Whilst rummaging in the loft earlier came across 20 vhs tapes - most recorded off the tv during 80/90s plus some proper club ones.
Probably footage on there you dont have up on the site.
Any use to you ??

Richard would definately want these i'm sure, any footage he hasn't got is gratefully received.

I'm sure he'll see this at some point, you could always contact him through the site as well?

Yeah did PM him before but he didnt reply so thought would post this on here
No rush  :)

Hello - yes, definitely interested.... not sure how I managed it but missed your PM - was away at the time.  Will reply now...

Thanks!

I also have about 30 VHS cassettes in my loft containing all of our games from ITV in the 90s. The only concern I have is that snippets of Channel 4's Eurotrash are tagged onto the end of the games and saucey bits from films. Kids with the internet in their rooms don't know how well they've got it in this day and age! The lingerie section of the Debenhams catalogue and towel clad ladies in shower units in the Argos catalogue were my porn staple back then  :nod:

:clap:

(http://i.minus.com/ib7XvFfK1n96k.gif)

 :D

I've got this scene on one of the vids, my favourite clip of all back then. It's from Nuns on The Run. Some screen shots:

http://forum.ns4w.org/showthread.php?14271-Group-Shower-Scene-from-Nuns-on-the-Run

Never reached for the record button so quick  :I'm a complete mofleakin Deak

I'll try and get the footage, back shortly