Town of Epsom, New Hampshire

Web Design Notes

Notes

This page outlines some general concepts used on the Epsom@Home website.

Links

PHP Home Page
JavaScript.com
RSS Feed Icons
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Home > Committees > Website > Notes

Calendar

The calendar entrys on the Epsom@Home website are based on a single "database"; really just a text file for now. This file is the calendar.dat file that is in the top level directory. Each line consists of four fields, separated by vertical bars. Here is an example:

20060525|-|TAG|<b>5/25:</b> Event

The four fields are:

• Start date of the event, in YYYYMMDD format
• End date of the event, in YYYYMMDD format. For a single day event, use a dash "-"
• Owner of the event. A list of tags is included below.
• Description of the event, HTML can be used.

Entries in the file don't need to be sorted, the PHP script that processes the calendar will sort the entries based on the Start Date. Once the End Date goes by, events will no longer be display, giving the illusion of an up to date website.

Ownership Tags

Tags are used for the Calendar and Minutes programs. Here is a list of tags that have been used so far:

• BC - Budget Committee
• BCEP - BCEP Recyling Center
• BOS - Board of Selectpersons
• CC - Conservation Committee
• DH - Department Heads
• ECS - Epsom Central Scool
• EOHD - Epsom Old Home Days Committee
• INFO - Generic Information
• PB - Planning Board
• PTO - Parent Teacher Organization
• RAC - Road Advisory Committee
• SB - School Board
• TH - Town Holiday
• WC - Website Committee

Minutes

Minutes shall be converted to Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF). File names shall start with TAG_YYYYMMDD_, other text may follow, followed by the .pdf extension. Files shall be saved in the "Minutes/TAG" directory underneath the top level directory.

How To Modify Pages

The best way to edit pages is to use FTP to fetch the page from the server, make the edits, then push the pages back to the server. Any standard HTML editor should be capable, but be careful that it doesn't do strange things with any path names to images, links, etc.

Update the RSS Feed

After major content changes, or to promote special events, the Epsom RSS feed should be updated. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication, and it actually is really simple. In the top level directory, there is a file named epsom_rss.xml. Each "item" in the feed is described like this:

<item>
<title>Welcome!</title>
<link>http://www.epsomlibrary.com/epsom</link>
<pubDate>Fri, 26 May 2006 00:24:00 GMT</pubDate>
<description>Welcome to the new Epsom@Home Website.</description>
</item>

Note that the pubDate (Publication Date) is specified in Greenwich Mean Time. Just copy an existing entry, adding the new entry at the top of the file, and change the content to highlite your changes.

Contact

Instead of putting the web master's email on every page, the page footer redirects people back to the Website Committee page. If, in the future, contact information changes, only one page needs to be updated.