The Mad Cumbrian's ZX Spectrum Web Site
How I Done This Web Site
In this section, I'll explain how this web site came to be. you never know, it might just help you......
Through much toil and strife, as well as good fun and excitement, I've (obviously) managed to get my first web site up and running.
I've always wanted to setup my own web site, and the inspiration for a theme really came from all the other ZX Spectrum based web sites. I grew up with a Spectrum, so I thought why not!
I started my personal project at the end of April 2001. My ZX Spectrum web site needed a 'product' i.e. games - my games. I thought 'Why not make my original games, that provided me with such enjoyment during my youth, available to everyone, so they can enjoy them too ?'
I personally find it disappointing when you cannot download games from a Speccy web site. I appreciate larger ZX Spectrum based web sites have almost every game ever made available for download in their archives, but words and fancy graphics can only achieve so much............
I needed all my original games converted to emulator format. My research discovered the procedure to be relatively straightforward. You basically plug a tape recorder in to your sound card, and download one of the free utilities from the Internet to do the rest for you. I used the ZX Spectrum Tape Loader by Joycleyn Gibart. The utility basically 'records' your tape to your PC, and allows you to save it in an emulator format.
This took me a long time to do, and to be honest, not all of my tapes worked. Dismayed at the thought of it, I downloaded the games that didn't work from the Internet (See Credits Section). Using my copy of the ZX32 Emulator, I have checked all games to enure they all work correctly. If you find this not to be the case, please e-mail me (bottom of page) and I will rectify the situation.
I then scanned in all the inlay cards and instructions using my cheap home UMAX Scanner, and Pagis Pro v2.0 Software. This took even longer than doing the games themselves. Finally I zipped all 3 'components' together using WinZip. I have approximately 100 games to date. It is an ongoing process to increase this number.
Once I had my 'product' sorted, I turned my attention to the design of the web site. I read copious amounts of literature on web page design, to grasp a basic understanding of the procedures involved, to discover the web site design do's and dont's and to grasp any other ideas that would improve the quality of this web site.
So, with my new found knowledge on board, I designed the basic layout and structure of this web site (That was not what you are looking at now though - explained further down). I wrote almost everything I wanted to say down on paper, and then collated and generated all the graphics I would need. I downloaded many loading screens from numerous sources (*.scr files were converted to *.gif files using a utility called 'Specview' by Sergei Dubarev), and used the GIF Animator application to create (surprise, surprise) several animated GIF's, based on the loading screens of the games available on this site (hope you like them).
Once everything was to my satisfaction, I 'got my hands dirty' and began coding. I used the HotDog Professional v5.5 package, supplied free by the magazine Web Pages Made Easy. I included JavaScript to run the Menu and the Bookmark link on each page, and registered with Bravenet to setup a counter and a guestbook. This site was reviewed by the above magazine in January 2002. On their advice, I made several changes to the layout of this site (i.e. what you are looking at right now).
Once the site was completed, I searched for and decided upon a suitable web hosting service. This was originally 2ITB. However, I have since changed web hosting service to Freeola. I then visited the SubmitCorner web site to generate appropriate 'Meta' tags so search engines would index this site 'successfully'. I also registered this site with the relevant webrings and major search engines. Hopefully I will receive a favourable response from all that visit.
The big problem I find with too many web sites today, is the lack of updates a site receives once it is up and running. Certain 'dead' sites that are not consistently updated usually become outdated, therefore useless, very quickly. This, quite frankly, can be a waste of hard disk space, and can also be bloody annoying at times! - Rant over for now :).
