How we Build the Site
The challenge was to build a suitable website for a local Church using only free software.
The tools of choice for this project are Ubuntu (Linux) as an operating system, Bluefish 1.0.7 which is an open source programme. Bluefish is an editor for experienced web designers and programmers, that however does not describe me. It supports many programming and markup languages, but focuses on editing dynamic and interactive websites. Bluefish is an open source development project, released under the GPL license. For more information, visit the Bluefish Website at http://bluefish.openoffice.nl.
For graphics etc. I have opted for the GIMP http://www.gimp.org. Again this is open source and is remarkably like PaintShop.Pro and Photoshop. If you are thinking about trying out either of these programmes you can access them from the links included.
The main theme of the site is to allow the user to listen to sermons and sermonettes as easily as possible and while it was easy to set this up using the menu system, which could also be updated as an independent inc file. It was noted that the menu would not immediately stream in MS Explorer but would try to download the mp3 file before playing. This was an unacceptable situation and a work around was needed. The menu system works correctly in Firefox and we would recommend Firefox as the browser of choice.
The way around the problem was to include a free flash player which could be auto loaded with the play list and also includes a resume facility should the user move to a different link within the site.
We hope you enjoy the site and any comments are welcome.
