Saturday 1 August 2015

New Web Site



At last...... the new web site is up.  It has taken me months but, I have learnt a huge amount.

The old web site was designed by my brother Robert Walpole,  when he was just starting out. Now he does exciting (for him!) work with meta data and open source. Next week he will be presenting a paper at a conference in Washington DC about some ground breaking work he did at the National Archives and I am really pleased for him.  He also pushed me  to take on the task of creating the new site  myself and I am glad he did, though, in practice, it was very difficult for me to  find the time to  learn HTML.  What time I have,  I want to use in my studio. So, last year I contacted Will Palmer who worked on the Scottish Basketmakers Circle  site and had just set up his own consultancy and asked him if he would be interested in taking  it on. It was important for  me to support someone early on in their career. Happily, for me, he agreed. I knew how I wanted it to look and that I wanted it to be a thorough archive of my work, but also  something I could  manage  myself. So Will set up the structure and taught me how to work with it. His instructions were very clear and have enabled me to have the web site  I was seeking.  A lot of people  say creating web sites is a 5 minute job, but don't believe them if you want anything more than 3 pictures!  It was very hard work  going through all the photos, press cuttings and catalogues. Putting in all that information accurately was, for me, very tedious  because I had to work so methodically and systematically and at times it just felt like punishment  but, thankfully, it is now done!
I am very grateful to Will for his patience and can recommend him to anyone who would like to create their own site but needs technical support to do it.

Please let us know what you think of it.