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INFORMATION Last Updated :: Sunday 27 April, 2003 |
. The site is best viewed using Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5+ and with a screen resolution of 1024 x 768. Whilst it will work at 800 x 600, and with other browsers, it may not look exactly as intended! Our aim is to keep the Latest News regularly updated, and bring you details of all the upcoming Releases (so you know what you can spend your hard earned pennies on!). If you've got anything you want to submit to us, then please feel free to do so. You might have written a Review, penned a piece of original fiction or you could be a budding graphics wizard and come up with some stunning desktop wallpaper - if so, whatever you have to contribute then we'd love to hear from you. Likewise if you're organising or running some kind of fan event or a celebrity signing, then get in touch and we'll give it a mention and hopefully send a few more fans your way. We've got some lively Discussion Forums and always welcome any new members to bring a fresh approach to burning issues, so if you feel like chipping in then please do pop over and participate. (Please bear in mind however that we will not tolerate any troublemakers such as trolls, flamers or spammers. If that description sounds like you, then we suggest you will be more at home in the newsgroup "rec.arts.drwho" where you should fit in nicely - neither can we allow the advertising of any 'duplicated' copyrighted merchandise such as DVDs, Videos, Audios etc). We also
now added a Mailing List, so that you can sign up and be advised
whenever we make any major updates to the site and advise you of
any important breaking news - don't worry though, we won't pass
on your EMail address to any third party (we hate spam just as much
as you!) and we will only use the facility when we make important
updates, so you wont get one simply saying for instance; "We've
updated the TV Guide as BBC1 are showing The Web Planet on Tuesday"
- heaven forbid! |
» G5 STAFF |
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»
SPECIAL THANKS |
. • Shaun
Lyon :: The editor of Outpost Gallifrey (www.gallifreyone.com),
proved a great inspiration to me when I started out and has continued
to show support. He's also got probably the best Who site that's
out there, the big 'Daddy' of them all you might say. Nigel. |
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AWARDS |
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SITE HISTORY |
. 1998 » A little while later, now into early 1998 and having thought things through a little more (although not by much), I relaunched as Gallifrey5 - This time, the title derived from the fact that as I was sat watching Channel 4 at the time and what should come on, but Babylon5 .. The rest they say is history and Gallifrey5 was born. (I wonder if J. Michael Straczynski is after royalties on the '5' .. ah well!). In the early days, the site was accompanied by a continually looping midi soundtrack of the shows theme, and you wouldn't believe the amount of mails I got saying "Please turn the music off". Personally, back then I liked it, but it soon began to get on my nerves so I changed it to play once and then stop, rather than looping infinately. Not long after that I got so fed up of the damn thing myself, so got rid of it once and for all. In hindsight, it was a terrible thing to add, so my belated apologies for putting your speakers through it!
A small screenshot of this version is shown above right, and although it does look extremely basic and dated now, at the time, I thought it was rather good, as did others judging by some of the positive feedback that I recevied back then - including a 'Web Guide Gold' Award from Paul Harman, writer of the regular 'WebGuide to Doctor Who'. This version was last updated in October 1999, and due to unforseen circumstances outside my control (one of which included my PC exploding), it wasn't updated again for the next five months ... Enter version 2!
As you can see from the screenshot opposite, we had a new logo, new layout (well sorta!), and the site was much more dependant on banners and graphics welcoming you to the site and to every page. Now, this seemed like a good idea at the time and must have served me well as this version was still with us three years later. However, page loading time suffered as a result. 2002 » I once again found myself in a position in early 2002 whereby I let the site stagnate by not updating for months (again due to other committments), I returned and updated the news once or twice during April/May and then that was it .. There were no updates made to anything from May 2002 onwards. Obviously this wasn't ideal, but I didn't have as much time as I used to meaning things simply got left. 2003 » It became evident that things couldn't continue as they were, so I made a decision to call it a day in March ... Although in true style, I never actually got round to mentioning this on the site, but I did mention it on the forums. Unexpectedly, I was quite surprised by some of the comments that I received as it appeared that I would be missed! (wasn't expecting that). So over the coming weeks, I thought a little more about it and made another decision (seemed to be making a lot of those lately!) that I wouldn't kill it off just yet. Again, as things had pretty much been static for almost twelve months, I wanted to come back with a bang, rather than a splutter .. so another image revamp was called for. I spent a while fiddling about with different layouts, logos, coding and whatnot and just couldn't come up with anything I was happy with. Then, during a break from work, I suddenly had a vision .. scribbled a few ideas down on paper and set to work. I also took the opportunity to dump Microsoft Front Page 2000 as my web editor and move onto something much more powerful and chose Macromedia Dreamweaver MX.
The end result is what you're looking at right now. Think that's about it, thanks for sticking with us through the hiatus that was "2002", and here's to the future! Nigel. |
www.gallifrey5.co.uk |
This
version was originally hosted on my then AOL member webspace, so
was limited to a website that contained a maximum of 2MB worth of
files. Not easy when you've got a barnyard full of cover images
to show off. However, I managed .. Well cheated actually as I used
webspace belonging to my other AOL screen names and also some of
the freespace that web providers were dishing out like candy at
the time. During Mid-1998, I purchased the domain name www.gallifrey5.co.uk
to make things a little more friendly and moved everything to a
bigger server and expanded the site a little to include 
2000
» After having left things alone for some months, and having
just taken delivery of a new (then) state-of-the-art PC, I set to
work on bringing things up to date. As the new PC came with some
pretty decent software, I wasn't happy with just adding new content,
I felt the desire to redesign the whole site again from scratch
... so I did.
As
the screenshot opposite shows, I decided to drop the black background
from the text areas as I'd tired of that over the last six years
and wanted something that was fresh, crisp and easy to read. My
idea was to "keep it simple" and I think I've achieved
that. A nice soft logo that blends nicely with the surrounding text,
and a consistent design throughout.» Original Site Content, Design & Layout © 1998-2003 Gallifrey5