Change Log
Background
See also Welcome to this website.
In 1995, we were one of the first Parish Councils in the country to have its own website. The original website was optimised for fast loading on slow telephone lines, but by the end of the first decade of the 21st century it was showing its age.
In 2011 the website was relaunched based on the WordPress framework, which as of November 2015 was reported to power 25% of all websites on the planet.
Log of major changes to the site since 2011
In case you wonder why the dates in the table below are imprecise, it’s because many new features have been introduced incrementally over a period of weeks or months, as we find the best ways to exploit them and iron out bugs.
Click once or twice on the Sequence column to sort it with the most recent changes first or last.
| Sequence | Date | Description | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 24 | May-18 | Updates for GDPR | GDPR compliance: review personal details published and ensure permission has been obtained. Where possible, replace other organisations’ personal details by a link to those other organisations’ own websites; encourage the use of task-related email ids rather than personal ids; and broaden the use of contact forms (which bypass the need to reveal email addresses) |
| 23 | Apr-18 | Use Google Sheets on the Facts and Figures page | replacing the Easy Chart Builder plugin which hasn’t been updated in five years |
| 22 | Mar-16 | Usability enhancements | Introduce mega menu for better navigation on desktop and portable devices + immediate access to contact form |
| 21 | Mar-16 | Migration to new hosting provider (SiteGround) | Major changes include: new domain name; SSL; new theme designed for faster loading + better accessibility + responsive adaptation to different size screens; improved search; |
| 20 | Feb-16 | Compton school catchment area clarification | Catchment area follows the ecclesiastical parish boundary |
| 19 | Jan-16 | Add buttons below tabbed sections to assist navigation with screen readers | |
| 18 | Jan-15 | Show permissive bridleways | Parish Paths map (which used to be called Parish Rights of Way) now also shows permissive bridleways |
| 17 | May-14 | Stop using Event Calendar | Slow to load, and problems with repeated Gcal events when one of a series is changed. |
| 16 | May-14 | Caching change | Use the Falcon caching engine imbedded in WordFence instead of Supercache |
| 15 | May-14 | Link to new Facebook page | CSPC on facebook |
| 14 | Mar-14 | Selected 2011 Census data added | Facts and Figures page |
| 13 | November, December 2013 | More live mapping features | Parish Boundaries and Open Spaces display |
| 12 | Aug-13 | New contact form | Provide choice of which councillor to address queries to. See contact us |
| 11 | Aug-13 | New table tool | Allows better presentation of tabular data, such as this table, with optional sorting. |
| 10 | Aug-13 | New General Interest category | Inspired by QI, we introduced the General Interest category to highlight articles of human or historical interest relevant to our parish. |
| 9 | Summer 2013 | Live mapping features | Many mapping features added to the site, including a proof-of-concept of planning application visualisation. More detail in Maps Maps Maps |
| 8 | Jul-13 | Caching | By comparison with the legacy parish website site, this new site has more content rich pages. To help offset the consequent additional page load times, we have started to exploit a page caching tool (specifically, WP SuperCache). |
| 7 | Jul-13 | Under the covers changes | Following a self-assessed site audit, added some security and integrity features, better anti-spam tools and Search Engine Optimisation |
| 6 | Jun-13 | Changes to Twitter | Not necessarily visible to users of the site, changes were needed because Twitter changed its interfaces. See for example the Traffic Updates panel in the right sidebar. |
| 5 | 2Q 2013 | Document management system | Allows more structured presentation of downloadable documents, with several display options, including usage statistics. See Electronic documents and, for example, Governance documents |
| 4 | Early 2013 | Events Calendar becomes the default | Because of the striking presentation of the All-in-One Events calendar, the ease of selecting which individual calendar to view, and the ability to delegate maintenance (via Google Calendar). |
| 3 | Autumn 2012 | Performance Analysis | Activated statistics collection tools (part of the WordPress JetPack package) |
| 2 | Autumn 2012 | Subscribe to updates | Visitors can register to be notified by email when new articles are added. See box in right sidebar. |
| 1 | Summer 2012 | Smartphone support | Recognise when the site is being accessed from a smartphone and tailor the presentation to suit. |
| 0 | May-11 | Soft launch of this new website | The first major redesign of the Parish Council website since it was created in 1995. We were one of the first Parish Councils in the country to have its own website, so there were 17 years’ worth of archive material to migrate, some of which still remains to be done. The new site is based on the widely-used WordPress framework. |