About this Site

Content not Wrapping!

site designed by a Pre-school dad The website has been designed with an emphasis on content rather than image; it is suitable for low-specification home PCs with low resolutions, slow modems, and older Internet browsers. These pages should always be displayed and printed without any clipping at the sides; We have tried to avoid any features that prevent this (e.g. browser-dependent HTML, absolute positioning, frames). Where a linked file is relatively large, we have indicated the size. We hope that you find the site useful and comprehensive, and aim to keep the site up to date. If you have any problems with this site, find any errors, omissions, anything out of date, or otherwise have any comments or suggestions, we would like to hear from you; Please contact us.

Woodcote Pre-school Committee, plus a Dad

History of the site

The original version of this site was hand-written in pure HTML in July 2003. In September 2003, it was re-designed using PHP to generate some of the HTML. There were major updates in December 2003 and March 2004.

Creating this site

Very little money was spent producing this site.

Free Software

There is a huge number of free software packages available on the Internet. The range of quality is enormous; free software can be as good as, or better than, commercial software; sometimes it is awful, and does not uninstall cleanly. Occasionally a free software package stands out as being of very high quality. Here is some of the excellent software used by the webmaster during the writing of this site.

Subversion (SVN) is the SCM (source control management) system used. SVN is a replacement for CVS with many of the limitations and problems fixed. I have reviewed many SCMs, both free and commercial. Of the free and centralised SCMs available, SVN seems to be amongst the best. It has an easy-to-use model, and powerful command-line interface. The documentation provided with SVN is excellent. GUIs are available for various platforms.

(Of the commercial products, Perforce (P4) is my preference. The documentation is extensive and excellent, and may be downloaded from the perforce site. The software is free for certain classes of user; and includes a free 3-way merge tool.)

TortoiseSVN is used to provide a GUI. SVN and TortoiseSVN may be configured to use a 3^rd-party differencing tool such as Beyond Compare (see below).

TortoiseSVN is a Windows GUI for SVN. It integrates into Windows Explorer extremely well.

Cygwin is a Linux/UNIX-like environment for Windows. Cygwin includes, in particular:

lynx—a pure text web browser
wget—a non-interactive web page retriever
bash—a linux shell (far more powerful than DOS/batch)

PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) is a server-side scripting language. It includes an extensive standard library, and may be embedded directly in HTML without the need to call external code via CGI. PHP is used to generate the dynamic content on this site, to help maintain links, and to generate common elements on pages. There is a mod_php module for Apache. The documentation for PHP is extensive and of very high quality.

The Apache httpd web server, including mod_php, is used for local development.

The phpdev product from firepages, which includes Apache and PHP (mod_php), was an enormous help in getting started with PHP when this site was 'upgraded' from plain HTML to DHTML via PHP.

Firefox is one of the browsers used to check the appearance of the pages. Firefox is from the makers of Mozilla; it is a streamlined version of that browser. This product sets the standard for browsers. The The Web Developer Extension for Mozilla Firefox from Chris Pederick is also used.

7-Zip has been used to generate compressed archives during development. 7-Zip fully supports ZIP, TAR, GZIP, BZIP2 and the impressive 7z archive formats, and can decompress RAR and other formats. 7-Zip has an excellent command-line interface and good documentation. The GUI is in the from of a File Manager, and there is also some Windows Explorer integration.

GSView lets you view and print PostScript (PS) files from Linux, MS-Windows or OS/2.
GV lets you view and print PostScript (PS) files from X11/UNIX or VMS.
GSView and GhostView require GhostScript.
GhostScript is be used to process and PS and PDF files.

Helpful Websites

A number of high quality websites have also been very useful whilst producing this site.

The W3C group publish many of the web technology standards, including HTML, XML, XSLT, CSS, SVG.

W3 Schools provide free online tutorials on many web-based topics and technologies including HTML, XHTML, XML, XSLT, CSS, SVG.

Some other sites have been directly very helpful.

Low-cost Software

TextPad, which costs about £20, is a text editor. Many plug-ins are available, including syntax colouring schemes for PHP, HTML, Apache,... TextPad includes a spell-checker. (So, I have no excuse for typos or spelling errors.)

Beyond Compare from Scooter Software, which costs about £20, is an excellent, highly configurable, file and folder differencing tool. There are also some very useful plug-ins available. I have used many differencing tools. The only missing feature of any significance is three-way differencing and merging; however, Perforce provide a free merge tool.


This page was last updated on Thursday 05 January 2006 Copyright © 2003–2008 Rob Hubbard and Woodcote Pre-school Group

	Subversion (SVN) is the SCM (source control management) system used. SVN is a replacement for CVS with many of the limitations and problems fixed. I have reviewed many SCMs, both free and commercial. Of the free and centralised SCMs available, SVN seems to be amongst the best. It has an easy-to-use model, and powerful command-line interface. The documentation provided with SVN is excellent. GUIs are available for various platforms. (Of the commercial products, Perforce (P4) is my preference. The documentation is extensive and excellent, and may be downloaded from the perforce site. The software is free for certain classes of user; and includes a free 3-way merge tool.) TortoiseSVN is used to provide a GUI. SVN and TortoiseSVN may be configured to use a 3^rd-party differencing tool such as Beyond Compare (see below).
	TortoiseSVN is a Windows GUI for SVN. It integrates into Windows Explorer extremely well.
	Cygwin is a Linux/UNIX-like environment for Windows. Cygwin includes, in particular: lynx—a pure text web browser wget—a non-interactive web page retriever bash—a linux shell (far more powerful than DOS/batch)
	PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) is a server-side scripting language. It includes an extensive standard library, and may be embedded directly in HTML without the need to call external code via CGI. PHP is used to generate the dynamic content on this site, to help maintain links, and to generate common elements on pages. There is a mod_php module for Apache. The documentation for PHP is extensive and of very high quality.
	The Apache httpd web server, including mod_php, is used for local development.
	The phpdev product from firepages, which includes Apache and PHP (mod_php), was an enormous help in getting started with PHP when this site was 'upgraded' from plain HTML to DHTML via PHP.
	Firefox is one of the browsers used to check the appearance of the pages. Firefox is from the makers of Mozilla; it is a streamlined version of that browser. This product sets the standard for browsers. The The Web Developer Extension for Mozilla Firefox from Chris Pederick is also used.
	7-Zip has been used to generate compressed archives during development. 7-Zip fully supports ZIP, TAR, GZIP, BZIP2 and the impressive 7z archive formats, and can decompress RAR and other formats. 7-Zip has an excellent command-line interface and good documentation. The GUI is in the from of a File Manager, and there is also some Windows Explorer integration.
	GSView lets you view and print PostScript (PS) files from Linux, MS-Windows or OS/2. GV lets you view and print PostScript (PS) files from X11/UNIX or VMS. GSView and GhostView require GhostScript. GhostScript is be used to process and PS and PDF files.

	The W3C group publish many of the web technology standards, including HTML, XML, XSLT, CSS, SVG.
	W3 Schools provide free online tutorials on many web-based topics and technologies including HTML, XHTML, XML, XSLT, CSS, SVG.

	TextPad, which costs about £20, is a text editor. Many plug-ins are available, including syntax colouring schemes for PHP, HTML, Apache,... TextPad includes a spell-checker. (So, I have no excuse for typos or spelling errors.)
	Beyond Compare from Scooter Software, which costs about £20, is an excellent, highly configurable, file and folder differencing tool. There are also some very useful plug-ins available. I have used many differencing tools. The only missing feature of any significance is three-way differencing and merging; however, Perforce provide a free merge tool.