Site Information

...this is where it gets an eeency bit technical...

By my count this is about version 4 of the site with the latest major addition being the extensive introduction of php and user system. The site currently stands at somewhere in the region of 2000 files and 50MB of data. We have about 50 registered users and there's usually a new contribution to the site every couple of hours.

The style and look of the site was introduced somewhere around 2000/2001 largely motivated by a website competition run by the Union (which we didn't win, but we're not bitter). It was designed both to hold the astounding quantity of data and archive we were building up and to look stylish and different at the same time. The two distinctive halves of the site were introduced to emphasise the two important aspects of the societ - the social and the library.

Website Layout

The social half of the website is the dynamic bit - it's all about the changing stuff - the news, people and events in icsf and the larger world of fandom. With the introduction of the user system icsf members and associates can have their own homepages with information about themselves and their sf tastes and preferences. The news board is a great place to find out about what's going on in the wider world of sf and post interesting things you find out.

The library section is actually where the bulk of the data is located - it's basically an archive of the society (we never throw *anything* away, even if it's virtual). It's an interface to our real library, with information on it's contents, location and history. But also forms a virtual library with the society history and archive of past fanzines and newsletters. For the wider world of sf there's a collection of reviews and articles on books, tv shows and films and also an extensive links database for once you've finally got sick of the icsf site.

Finally there's a few overarching pages like this one that don't quite fit in either half. There's the contact details pages, text based site map and a page listing the most recent updates - both by users and by webmasters.

Resolutions

This website was designed for a minimum resolution of 800x600 but is better viewed at higher than this. If you are using the lower resolution then I'm afraid you'll lose the cartoon images in the corner of the screen. There just isn't space for them. You may also want to open some sections (e.g. the histories and fanzines) in a new window, to give them the space they deserve.

XHTML/CSS Validation

Our overall aim when writing code is to use valid XHTML 1.0 (the most up-to-date version of 'HTML') combined with CSS (cascading stylesheets). The intention is to make the source code as 'clean' and future proof as possible. However in a site as large, complex and fluid as this one it is difficult to conform to every validation. There is also a balance between spending additional time adding in extra features/fixes which affect 0.5% of users compared to introducing new content and features for the other 99.5%. As many of the pages are also generated by users it is not possible to validate all this content. We hope you understand this attitude and that it does not cause offence to anyone.

Browser support

Some of the code and functions we use do not work equally well in all browsers (that's life on the web!) So far, we have tested (please let us know if you test others and have problems):

• IE 5+ PC (everything works)
• Netscape 6 and Mozilla 0.7+ (minor alignment bug on portal, everything else works fine), Netscape Communicator 4.6+ PC (extremely broken CSS support), Netscape 3 Gold PC (no CSS support and chat applet doesn't work)
• Opera 5 PC (excellent but chat applet fails), Opera 3.5 (good but chat applet fails)

Web Editing Team

These pages have been created and are maintained by a small group of society members. Content is donated, generated, stolen and coerced from the society and it's associates at large.

Webmaster - Lorna Robinson is the current webmaster. She is in charge of all the actual content and making sure things are up to date but finds most of the high level php and mysql is over the top of her head. If the content is coming over as faintly sarcastic , the chances are she wrote it. Supposedly works as a professional web developer having left college.

Codemaster - Michelle Osmond is our genius coder. She writes all the complicated stuff that happens in the backend to make the front end do nifty stuff. She also spent many many many hours converting all the past fanzines and newsletters to html and scanning in dozens of posters. If that's not reason to learn php, cgi, perl and lord know what else this thing runs on, I don't know what is. She's a PhD student in DoC now, so tends to live in front of pcs.

Stylemaster - Michael Wright is our art guru. He designed and built all the page looks and layouts on the site and produced all the pretty little icons and pickies. He's recently also developed a nice line in coding so deals with all the user interface issues associated with the new user system. Nifty huh? He's doing a PhD either in Chemistry or Biochemistry depending on his day.

These three have been aided and abetted by John Kirk who's been churning out guides and articles at a remarkable rate, as well as doing some validation, Peter Muir & Jakob Whitfield who've worn their fingers to the bone typing up fanzines, Lloyd Kilford who's been filling up the bio pages and James Shirvill our helpful cartoonist.

If you have any comments on any aspect of the site, please contact us, e-mail is safest.