Thanks
Acknowledgements
First thanks are due to my partner, both for the proof-reading and for letting me spend late night hours with my computer.
I have consulted many other sources of help in constructing this website and would like to thank everyone who has made information and software available. Many thanks are due to all the providers named below. Any errors or problems that remain with my site are my own responsibility!
Site Development
Software
I have used various editors for various purposes, including PSPAD (www.pspad.com), HTMLPad 2008 and Rapid PHP 2011 from Karlis Blumentals and gvim (www.vim.org), although I have settled on Eclipse IDE as my main PHP development environment for drawshield, and Rapid PHP 2011 for the html, css and WordPress stuff.
All images were managed and modified where necessary using either the GIMP image manipulation program or paint.NET
The site was tested using the Apache web server, MySQL and PHP provided by the Zend Framework and Firefox and Chrome. I have found the Firebug add-on for Firefox and Chrome absolutely invaluable in decoding the results of my CSS stylesheets. The WinSCP program is used to upload to the site.
The site is hosted by ukhosts4u and will be for some time as I have paid for 3 years in advance!
Layout and Scripts
The page layout was adapted from the examples used in Elizabeth Castro’s book "HTML?for the World Wide Web – A Visual Quickstart Guide". I’d like to thank Shaun Hughes for his advice on typefaces, leading and hierarchy, and all the "Large tea, two bags please".
The favicon was created using the generator provided by Dynamic Drive tools.dynamicdrive.com/favicon/.
The WordPress theme and colour scheme was created from scratch by me, but used Chris Coyier’s BLANK theme as a starting template.
The cascading menu javascript and associated CSS are from javascript-array.com
The WordPress search engine plugin is Search Unleashed.
Books
I have bought and read several books, but have not found any to compare with those from the O’Reilly catalogue, as no others have the combination of accuracy, relevance and density of information. My "Web Developer’s Essential Library" consists of Programming PHP, Javascript the Definitive Guide, HTML and XHTML Pocket Reference and CSS Pocket Reference. I learnt about WordPress themes and usage from the book Smashing WordPress by Thord Daniel Hedengren.
Websites
I have tried in my CSS coding to implement good web typography practice and have made use of Mark Boulton’s "Five Simple Steps", and several of the other resources referenced from the " Web Typography Sucks" presentation.
Some of the tips that appear on the Blender Pages are taken from Geneome’s Blender Tip List.
Heraldry
The sources for my heraldy information, for the shield generation program were the Encycolpedia Britannica, (15th Edition, printed on real paper); and the 1970 revised edition of Boutell’s Heraldry by J.P. Brooke-Little. I also made use of The Society for Creative Anachronism’s Heraldic Primer; Mistress Eowyn Amberdrake’s Heraldry for Scribes; and Heralds Net Glossary of Terms Used in Heraldry. I’d also like to thank the original members of my undergraduate group project, Lucy, Paul, and Nigel; and our project supervisor, Dr. David C. Wood.