The village website is getting huge. At the last count I totted up 11,787 files in 600 folders. That may be small compared with Amazon’s or Tesco’s, but for a village site it’s vast. It is turning into an archive of village life and landscapes this century. If the site continues to grow at this rate, some difficult policy decisions may have to be made.

Meanwhile, it has been good to see the numbers of visitors steadily growing. By 23^rd September, 21,986 people had visited the site since June 2005 and looked at 122,272 pages. It’s still a thrill to be communicating with so many even though the communication is largely one-way. I would still love to be able to identify more of the visitors if only to get an idea of who is looking at what. Regular visitors are especially welcome. They make the publication of occasional snippets of news worthwhile.

Until I get on to interactive slide shows, my biggest challenge is finding a suitable front page picture for each new month. If you try to avoid portraits and obvious single houses and bear in mind the panoramic shape of the first page together with the need for wording to show up, you can see the problem.

I am told there is a “three-click rule” for business websites. It maintains that if it takes more than three clicks to get where you are trying to go, you get bored and stop trying! That’s why I have put a direct link from the front page to Recent Items and Changes. Most new entries can be reached in three clicks. People who like to browse around, however, can usually get back to the Contents page from anywhere in the site in two clicks and the Contents page is the hub of the site. I was a bit slow to put that link on the front page. If you spot an obvious way to make navigation more sensible, let me know.

I have one or two feature ideas in the pipeline. If you have ideas, please say. I update the site in some small way most days I am at home. Some news is appropriate – like the reopening of The Wheatsheaf – but I am not actively looking for news items. That’s the province of the local newspaper.

The Popular Pages facility of the Counter is an eye-opener. The Front Page, the Introduction to the villages, and Contents always, of course, hog the top spots, followed by the Picture Galleries Index. However, some unexpected pages feature regularly, among them the Bones Apart page (Local Businesses) – although I have failed to draw a recent update from them – Eddie’s Robin (of World Cup fame), the picture of our Policewomen, and the dogs! I know I only caught a few of the villages’ dogs. I mean to supplement the collection sometime in the future – but not if it means getting up at six to catch the early walkers!

So keep logging in. Keep pestering your overseas contacts to keep in touch – and drop me a line – please!

David Farnell         (From Tail Corn  Autumn 2007)