Northern Rhodesians Worldwide

Site Updates and Events in 2003

• Finally, just in time for its centenary, we have a map of Broken Hill on-line. Please see the maps page for details. Our thanks to member Bob Eglington for this contribution.
• Added a link to the links page to the Luanshya Connection.
• Cleared the backlog of pending Names Directory entries. If your entry has not been activated, look for it and the reason in the list of pending entries.
• I have also cleared my backlog of GNR-related e-mail, so if you were waiting for me to get back to you on something, please check your e-mail.
• A merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year to all from your slaves at the GNR.

• Added several new links to the links page that will be of interest to some members.

• Replaced the old, partial map of Kalalushi with a new scan of the full map. Please see the maps page for details.

• Added information on visas, airport departure tax, travel insurance and malaria to the "Livingstone Lark" page and made updated sections very obvious.
• All pending Names Directory applications are now listed on the main Names Directory page. This is a way for pending members to see what, if anything, is happening with their application to join the GNR. This should be especially helpful for those potential members who have (presumably inadvertently) entered a bad e-mail address.

• Added three new maps to the maps section.
• Added small versions of all of the maps so that you can see the whole map in a single glance, although you will still need to download the full-size maps to see all of the detail.
• Added a note to the maps page regarding linking to our map collection. We would appreciate it if the owners of other Northern Rhodesian sites respected our wishes in this matter. Thanks.

• Redesigned the detail pages in the Names Directory so that they are easier to read and conform to the new template.
• Added the list of people that each person is looking for to their detail page in the Names Directory. Remember to log in to remove the names of people you were looking for once you have found them.
• Added some default text which is displayed only if you have not entered anything in the "Narrative" field of your entry. The "Narrative" field is a free-text area where you can add any additional information you wish. The wording is designed to encourage those who have been economical with information about themselves and their time in Northern Rhodesia or Zambia to be more forthcoming.

• The forms to join the GNR and edit your existing Names Directory entry are back on-line.
• Several fixes all over the site to fix broken links.
• Added some new information to the "Livingstone Lark" page.

• Completely redesigned the look of the site. This is not the much-ballyhoo'd "new GNR" that has been talked about for eons now. This was the result of a quick redesign of the home page that got way out of hand. The "new GNR" is still on the way -- it has been designed, but the technical bits (the "back end") are still being worked on.
• In order to get the site back on-line after being off-line for 48 hours, I have not finished converting some parts of the site to the new look. Therefore the site has a bit of a split personality at the moment, with a few sections still using the old look. These will be converted next week... without taking down the entire site!
• Three new features on every page allow you to monitor the GNR at a glance: 1) The total number of members is displayed in the top, right-hand corner of every page. 2) New members and existing members who have updated their entries in the last 24 hours are noted at the bottom of every page. 3) You can easily see when the site was last updated by looking for the "updated" date under the total number of members in the column on the right. Clicking on the date will take you to the site updates page where you can see the details of all site updates.
• The links on the links page have been categorised to make them easier to browse. Additionally, if you have included the address of your own Web site in your Names Directory entry, then you will find it included under Members' Sites.
• The Names Directory has been redesigned without frames and to be easier to use. No longer do those with slow connections have to wait for the whole membership list to download. However, some of the browse features will not be in place for a couple of weeks.
• Keeping with the Names Directory, the Web-based member-contact system has been changed. Members now have to log in to send one another messages, and therefore the restriction on message length has been removed. This will also stop even the most moronic Nigerians from sending you the first 250 characters of their spams. The script has also been updated so that hopefully the few people who had problems with the old system will be able to send messages.
• The redesign has had a small negative impact on the message board. Because the whole page is now contained within a table, the whole page has to load before anything is displayed. The page still loads as quickly (or slowly depending on the time of the month) as before, but on the old site it started displaying messages right away so you could read the newest messages while the rest of the page loaded. The good news is that the new site will not use this message-board format and so this is a temporary situation.
• To keep those with slow connections entertained, there is some explanatory text behind the page that you will only see if the page is loading slowly. Unfortunately this text shows up if you print the page -- I will work on fixing this.
• As part of the move of the whole site from one technology (server-side includes) to another (PHP), all file names outside of the old Names Directory have changed -- with the exception of most of the files in the current Names Directory which were already using PHP. If a file name used to end in ".shtml" it now most likely ends in ".php". A small detail, but a useful one if you get one of those dreaded "file not found" errors.
• A stand-alone page has been created to welcome those expats who used to live in the Belgian Congo.
• A stand-alone page has been created to keep everyone up-to-date on the "Livingstone Lark". Heather has gone to a lot of trouble to ensure that there are as many details there as possible, and she will be updating that page as and when information becomes available. Please have a look, and if you are at all considering going let Heather know as soon as possible. (This page has actually been up since April 6th, but I didn't get around to pointing it out until now.)
• A stand-alone section has been created for maps of Northern Rhodesia. There are some really good maps in there that Arthur has posted on the message board recently.
• The site updates page has been archived by year. You can see the history of the site since September 3rd, 1999.
• We have set up a new contact form so that it is easier to contact the site management. You don't need to log in to use this form and neither is there a restriction on message length.

• The 1000th member joins the GNR.

• Added several new links to the links page which will be of interest to many people. There are five links to the sites of expats of the Belgian Congo with whom Dave Cooper finally made contact recently, as well as a link to the site for a new book titled "They Served Africa with Wings: 60 Years of Aviation in Central Africa".

• Some minor site updates to tidy a few things up. The links page has been updated to remove or fix dead links. The form for submitting new links has also been fixed -- it has been broken for some time due to a change I made a while ago, but I had not noticed my oversight. If you have submitted suggestions for the links page and have wondered why I never added them, please submit them again as I probably never received your original submission.
• Similarly the same change rendered the form on the events page inoperable. This has also been fixed. If you have submitted an event in the past and you never heard back from me and the event was not posted, please resubmit.
• Some minor changes were made to the format of the messages sent through the Names Directory that allow you to read your message without paging through mountains of verbosity before getting to what you really want to read.
• Sticking with verbosity, the verbiage on the "Looking For..." page was moved to the bottom of the page. Additionally, links are provided to the entries of the members looking for people as well as links to their contact forms.
• Fixed (again) the broken links on the home page to the "Flags of the World" site that has information about the Northern Rhodesian and Zambian flags.

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