There are a number of sites with information on aspects of life in Wellesbourne and Walton. Look on the More... page, under Neighbours for the latest links.
www.wellesbourne.co.uk, the original site set up by Mick Stallard to address businesses in Wellesbourne and Walton, was relaunched summer 2011 to give residents a convenient listing of local businesses and services at a click of a button. All Wellesbourne businesses are entitled to a free listing, and advertising opportunities at a reasonable rate.
http://warkcom.net ("Warwickshire Communities") included Wellesbourne in Bloom and WAG et al, but closed in June 2010; they have moved to new hosts.
www.wellesbournepc.org: is the Wellesbourne Parish Council site since the demise of The Local Channel. It holds Parish Council minutes, agendas etc., and lots of useful links. From May to August 2012 it was without a webmaster, but a new one has now been appointed and updates should occur weekly. Meanwhile the Wellesbourne and Walton News has moved to a new site - see below.
www.wellesbournepc.info (WPC Unravelled): a temporary site (until the 3 May'12 election) set out possible shortcomings of the Parish Council, and urged the public to stand in the election and bring new blood into an organisation seen as moribund, out of touch and mired in bad practices. It appears to have done the trick, as the PC is now rejuvenated with 4 highly active new members.
St Peter's Church has created a succession of sites, starting in 2008 with a forum, www.saintpeterswellesbourne.com, but that suffered a security breach, and was closed down in December 2009 in favour of www.stpeterswellesbourne.btik.com. In October 2010 it migrated to www.stpeterswellesbourne.btck.co.uk and in December 2010 it moved again, to www.stpeterswellesbourne.org.uk. Meanwhile the Catholics have www. stfrancis-kineton.co.uk & the Methodists www.wellesbournemethodistchurch. org.uk . In July 2012 the Church launched a dedicated Wellesbourne and Walton News site https://sites.google.com/site/wellesbourneandwaltonnews .
www.wellesbourne-business.co.uk aka Protect Wellesbourne: activated in August 2009 to concentrate information regarding possible adverse developments in the village.
vision4wellesbourne.org was set up in 2010 to co-ordinate creation of a new Village Plan for Wellesbourne. It was renamed www.wellesbourneparishplan.co.uk, but has now run its course. The Parish Plan can be found at www.wellesbournepc.org/Welles bourne%20Parish%20Plan%20[2011]small%20(NXPowerLite).pdf (5.9mb, 40 pages).
Wellesbourne has been at www.facebook.com/groups/27050885464 on Facebook for some time (there are posts going back to 2008!) In July 2012 Dave Harris launched a blog-based site, www.mywellesbourne.co.uk bringing the various sites together, and now including a Twitter feed.
Wellesbourne now has a forum, www.wellesbourneforum.com providing information for residents and visitors of Wellesbourne.
www.wellesbourne.f9.co.uk, this, the Community site, where you'll find stuff about the two villages and their communities.

This was set up in around 1998 by Rev Norman Howes and a dedicated band of enthusiasts who gradually dwindled away until there was just me to keep it going. In 2005 I streamlined the entry pages and monthly news sections, with each page fewer clicks away than before, in a more logical and up-to-date layout. Most of the old-look pages are being kept on, such as amenities, clubs etc., as there seems little point in changing them, but whenever a page is updated the mouse code is stripped out (as it doesn't work any more). I also take the opportunity to try to bring the page up to W3C standards. When the 2009 Index of Shops and Amenities came out I started checking that all the links are up to date. Some may transfer to the Council's website (see above). It will evolve with any suggestions I receive, otherwise as I see fit. I have enlarged the welcome screen picture as most people now have 1024x768 screen resolution and above: if anyone's bored with it and wants another one in its place, send it in and I'll consider it. I had thought of putting up 4 views of the same scene in rotation over the 4 seasons, but didn't take it any further.

For some time this site was in two parts:

1. the monthly news, the Web equivalent of a paper newsletter, Wellesbourne and Walton News, distributed monthly to the householders of the two villages.
2. Static information, which I maintain as and when I get any feedback.

As a permanent web presence it aimed to bring the Newsletter to people outside the parish and provide ready access to static information about the villages. It is now maintained solely by myself, partly out of the goodness of my heart, and partly as practice for my web building skills, so please be patient if it doesn't get published as soon as it might be. I was getting hard and soft copy up to a week before the end of the preceding month as part of the distribution chain, and I have fairly good OCR software to scan it with if the soft copy failed. Up until March 2012 I used to encode it all in HTML with a script to show the pictures in 2 different resolutions, but this was very time-consuming. By early 2012 the Parish Council was starting to put the Newsletter up on its site, in colour, which meant I was expending a lot of effort for very little gain.

From March/April/July 2012:

When the WPC started putting the WWN on their site I stopped publishing fully formatted HTML here, and started linking across to the WWN on the WPC site. However, as that version consisted of images of the pages, and as such was not searchable, nor could any links be followed, I started summarising it here and including any links which appeared on the pages. Page 1 on this site effectively became the menu, so there was no need for a separate News menu, and that has been dropped, but the duality remained, in that there still needed to be 2 framesets, one with the News as default view and one with the Welcome screen (Home view), but for most purposes they were interchangeable. In July 2012 after 2 months without a WPC webmaster St Peter's church stepped in and created a dedicated News site (see above) with a PDF for each month, clickable links and a search engine, so I have scaled down my work still further, and no longer publish the news at all. I still maintain the advertising pages, though, on an occasional rolling basis rather than separately by month. I still use 'hotspots' on the home page for quick publicity.

I have now retired, so I am able to publish material fairly quickly, but I still take holidays, so there may be delays at some times; Pam Copson sadly passed away in November 2006 after being in poor health for some time, and the rest of the people who set the site up have either left the area or are too busy.

There's a full list of who's who on the W&W News on page 3 of the News section; I thought of moving it here, but the credits vary from month to month. Historically it was on page 2, and I kept it there on this site, but you'll find it on page 3, where Mac moved it some time ago for reasons of space; for anything you want on this site, please write to me:
Peter Davies, 38 Gloster Gardens, Wellesbourne, Warwick CV35 9TQ 01789 841755, peter@davies3847.freeserve.co.uk .

Update Alert

Someone asked for notification when the site changes, in particular, the Action Plan, which came out of Village Voices in 2002-3. I make changes 2-3 times a month, mainly to add in the current month's news, but also to revise pages such as this one as and when I am asked for something or I think of something I think my visitors will find useful. The alert was triggered by a change to the page nominated in the subject of an e-mail created when you click on the link provided on that page. It hasn't functioned for some time so I removed the link from topmenu. I placed links on the Top Menu page (topmenu.htm, formerly wwnlead.htm, which became a redirector for this month's news, but is now its frameset), which changes 1-2 times a month, and in the menu (apmenu.htm) for the Village Voices Action Plan, which was reissued early in 2007 - I would have updated it, but I didn't have time and there wasn't any interest, and it was superseded by a new Plan in 2011.

Technical Information

This site was originally designed for a screen width of 640 pixels. That was a long time ago. When I took it over I mainly designed for 800, with an eye to the 640 people. In February 2006 we got a new counter which told us what resolutions, browsers and operating systems our users have, so I could tailor the site accordingly. Nowadays there's no-one left on 640, but new visitors have appeared on even lower resolutions down to 240x320 so I don't know how they manage, but I got myself a smart phone to experience for myself, and am studying small screen techniques. There is only one 800 user, 1024 is the most popular, and 1280 is next; so I'm not too bothered if there are occasional scroll-bars at 800: 1024 and 1280 should be OK. The most popular browser is Internet Explorer on 79%. Netscape is on 18%, but that includes Firefox, masquerading... I try to make sure the pages work with Firefox. Things that don't, including wmf pictures, alt tags, status line messages on mouseovers, and limiting cell widths, have been removed from new and updated pages, but most of these are in such widespread use that it would be next to impossible to take them out, even if I knew of a workaround. I have made a start, by changing the one wmf to a transparent-background gif, and adding a title as well as an alt tag to each picture - this is not, however, retroactive. I discovered that wingdings and webdings are not supported in Firefox, so they were appearing as strange characters - I've replaced some with images, but they don't scale as well as fonts so I have to include them at their natural size, which is less satisfactory. Talking of scaling fonts, I created new percentage based style sheets (wwn05/6/7) so you can change the Text Size. I rolled it out to all news pages and some other pages from Jan'09; as a New Year's Resolution I got all new/ updated pages W3C (css) and WDG (html) compliant as far as I could without spoiling the look, and I periodically check pages to make sure this is maintained. I managed to get drop-caps working in Firefox! Being self-taught, I only pick up this sort of thing as I go along. Any other tips gratefully received!

Amazon link

You may have noticed a link to Amazon.co.uk on most pages. This is a means (started by an earlier webmaster) of earning a few pence to offset the occasional costs of running this site. So far no money has come in, but under new terms I am required by Amazon to include the following on the site: “Peter Davies is a participant in the Amazon Europe S.à r.l. Associates Programme, an affiliate advertising programme designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.co.uk” .

Google Analytics

I'm trying out a means of tracking which are the most popular pages, known as “Google Analytics”. Under the Terms I am required to include the following:
“This website uses Google Analytics, a web analytics service provided by Google, Inc. (“Google”). Google Analytics uses “cookies”, which are text files placed on your computer, to help the website analyze how users use the site. The information generated by the cookie about your use of the website (including your IP address) will be transmitted to and stored by Google on servers in the United States . Google will use this information for the purpose of evaluating your use of the website, compiling reports on website activity for website operators and providing other services relating to website activity and internet usage. Google may also transfer this information to third parties where required to do so by law, or where such third parties process the information on Google's behalf. Google will not associate your IP address with any other data held by Google. You may refuse the use of cookies by selecting the appropriate settings on your browser, however please note that if you do this you may not be able to use the full functionality of this website. By using this website, you consent to the processing of data about you by Google in the manner and for the purposes set out above.”

Computer too slow? The village library normally has at least four broadband terminals
for public use, 1-2 hours/day free to library members, though somewhat slower than domestic broadband.