About
the purpose of this site
This site was created in July 2009, originally just to document the creation of a Digitisation Best Practice Wiki. Along with the blog, it is intended to provide an insight into the process of creating a Wiki, building an online community, and so on. The blog also contains other topics relevant for Information Professionals, so this site houses relevant articles, papers and so on.
about the site
This site is hosted by Clook and the domain name is registered with them too. It was drawn from templates I’ve created in xhtml, and tweaked and edited using DreamWeaver MX.
The blog is a wordpress blog, using wordpress.org software which you install on a server, rather than wordpress.com software which allows you to create a blog (with slightly less flexibility) without having to pay for hosting. I have written a blog post about the mechanics and logistics, costs and issues of creating your own website, which you can access here.
about the photos
The Wiki which the site was created to document is, at heart, about how to use a copyright licence. Therefore I’ve decided to be s crupulously copyright conscious in its creation, and avoid using images for which I don’t have permissions or rights.
The wikiman logo is adapted from a photograph taken by Matt Fairview, which I found on flickr. It is a picture of the M5 Wicker Man, in Somerset; the original can be seen here. Matt has kindly given me permission to use the image on my site – I think it’s a fantastic picture, and its colours indirectly inspired the colour-scheme of the whole site, so I am very grateful to him.
The textures for the header, the menu bar, and the wiki and blog buttons also originate from flickr. They are all versions of this picture of some old photograph-paper, taken by someone calling themselves ~Essence of a Dream~. I have not had to obtain direct permission to use this, as it is in flickr’s creative commons area – which consists of images whose copyright holders allow varying degrees of use by others.
This particular image is licensed under the
Attribution License. This means the copyright holder (always the person who takes the photograph, unless copyright
ownership has been legally transferred) allows others to use their work (copy, distribute, display and perform) and derivatives
based upon it, as long as they are credited. The important thing for my purposes is that ‘derivatives’ are allowed – meaning
I was able to crop the image to get rid of around 90% of it, then use Corel Paint Shop Pro X to alter the hue and saturation.