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Saturday 17 May 2008
With the specific exception of external links containing non-validated characters and expressions, the site validates as XHTML 1.0 Transitional. The stylesheet also validates.
Various scripts have been employed around the site, from a variety of sources - all credits are intact in their source code. Any script with no source is mine.
The Journal is powered by Movable Type.
Scripting: I use PHP to handle the Server-Side Includes.
The site is hosted by KDA Web Services - check them out - they're very friendly.
If you use AvantGo, there's an AvantGo channel configuration for the Journal (without comments) available here.
Accessibility: The site is relatively accessible to users with different disabilities, but I'm treating that as a work in progress, as I'm still learning about the various issues involved and the types of things I need to build in. The stylesheet(s) avoid the use of absolute sizes for fonts, and the pages are structured such that a screen reader will hit the main content area first, to illustrate a couple of the methods of working I've already incorporated. See also below.
Information Collected During Your Visits To This Site:
In order to assist the management of this site, certain information is collected regarding each visit, which process is not visible to the user. This information consists of that gathered by the server on which the site is hosted, and includes the IP address of the computer used to access the site and some technical details such as the web browser and operating system being used. None of this data is capable of being used by the site owner to establish the identity of an individual visitor to the site.
The analysis of these statistics is performed by an application called Webalizer.
Additionally, certain information regarding the actual use of the site, including the pages viewed, search terms used, and the number of accesses to password-protected resources is also stored. If a user is ever given a unique personalised password to enable access to resources on this domain, the number of times that password is used will be recorded. At the time of this policy's most recent revision (11th December 2003), no such passwords have been established.
No information so gathered will be shared with third parties, except that at the site owner's discretion, search terms used to find content on the site, or to link here, may from time to time be published in the Journal section.
It is assumed that comments submitted via the comments system in the Journal are intended for publication, which is automatic. Users are required to provide an email address when submitting, or the submission will be automatically rejected. Email addresses will not be passed on to any third party, but if displayed on the page (which will occur if the 'URL' field is submitted empty), the site owner will not be responsible if the address is collected by a so-called 'spambot' program. Simply entering 'http://' in the URL field will prevent the commenter's email address being displayed, but it will still be recorded in the comments database. To make an email address visible but unusable if so harvested, the site owner recommends that commenters include manually removable anti-spam elements in their submitted address.
A cookie is a file sent from the website server and stored on a visitor's computer. It is designed to store information to make the site more responsive and useful to the visitor. This site uses cookies only in the commenting system in the Journal to record user details in order to avoid repeated entry of the same information. This cookie is set on an opt-in basis, and the opportunity to opt-out is provided via the "forget me again" link on every comment page.
The site owner recommends that all web users make a conscious decision regarding how they prefer to have their browser deal with cookies, in order to be fully informed regarding the ways in which site owners use them. Web browsers provide varying degrees of control over and protection from cookies, and the individual browser's help files should be consulted.