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Alnwick
on Lion : the Lion Goes from strength to strength |
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This page is provided as a public service (for the people who have asked me to write it) and for my own personal entertainment. It is a review of the other Alnwick sites. Before you read on, I ought to make it clear that I'm very well aware that Alnwick on Lion has plenty of faults. For example, it isn't updated very often, it contains typos and the HTML isn't top quality. But I don't mind at all if you want to send me an email to tell me that I live in a glass house and shouldn't throw stones. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I know Alnwick on Lion was the first proper site about Alnwick. The possible exceptions to this are: * The first Alnwick District Council site. My excuse for not counting this is that although it looked quite good, it was entirely information free until the new site launched in January 2002. * Charlie's Alnwick Page. My excuse for not counting this is that I'm not sure if it actually is older than Alnwick on Lion and also it is more of a personal homepage than an actual guide to Alnwick. In the last couple of years there has been a proliferation of Alnwick guides. I have deliberately given these sites an opportunity to become established before commenting on them. The other sites are: www.alnwickonline.com (formerly known as www.ACWUK.com the Alnwick Community Website) You might straight away notice that with one exception they all seem to have similar names to Alnwick on Lion. You might think that there are only a few possible names for an Alnwick site. But there are plenty of options. There is no alnwickguide.com, no alnwick.com and no visitalnwick.com. www.alnwickonline.com
(formerly? ACWUK) If this site delivered everything it promised it would be great. However, it doesn't. In fact it hardly delivers anything. If you follow virtually any of the options on the menu then you either get access to an empty database or an 'under construction' sign. At one point it had photographs nicked from this site but they were removed and then a year later the webmaster got round to taking some photographs which he has put on the site. For a community site it is remarkably anonymous. It claims to be run by something called "Xenocom Productions", but even this name was pinched from an IT company in York called Xenocom Limited whose owner was none too pleased about it. Here are some of the highlights:
Given the site's lack of content it seems surprising that hasbeen BBC Fivelive DJ Simon Mayo listed the site in his top 10 community sites on the internet. His researcher can't actually have looked at any part of the site except the index page because although recommendation says: "check out the best of Northumberland's Alnwick - all in one place. From shopping and sport to religion and entertainment" but the links to 'shopping', 'sport' and 'religion' take you to an "under construction" page. The link to 'entertainment', on the other hand, takes you to another menu which offers you either a 'whats on' database of events etc which appears to be empty or an undated list of top 10 albums etc sold in Alnwick. My (possibly unfounded) suspicion is that the webmaster has teamed up with local retailers by WHS or Woolworths by visiting the store and copying down their top 10 list every now and then. Unofficial portal for Alnwick businesses who are clearly, it seems, not happy just to rely on me listing them in the links page. I'm not sure what an official portal would be but this isn't it. Site is run by Kompliant computing. I'm not sure what the criteria for listing is, but it certainly seems to help if your site is designed by Kompliant Computing whose web designer has a liking for animated gifs. Nothing wrong with that of course. Maintained by Blackwolf whose postal address is at the Duke of Northumberland's estate office. Mainly an advertising site. My favourite quirk is that rather than having an 'accommodation' category, it's called 'sleeping'. You half expect it to tell you which park benches are the best places to have forty winks. But it doesn't. www.alnwicksucks.homestead.com
Not so much a website as a stream of consciousness. The webmaster is much braver than me and is happy to have a go at anyone and anything even if factually it is sometimes wide of the mark. An entertaining read if nothing else. For some reason lots people think I write it. I don't – so send the court papers elsewhere.
Pictures
of Alnwick A Bob
Mouser Production © 2002 |
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LU 5/5/2