 Poster: A snowHead
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does anyone know where I might find royalty-free skiing, snowboarding, ski resort and ski holiday pictures?
I need pictures of skiing, snowboarding, family skiers, luxury ski holidays, ski resorts, apres ski mayhem and... well you get the picture... pretty much anything that looks cool and is happening on the snow or in resort...
... we're just finishing a massive global ski resort guide for our new ski holidays website and have realised that buying pictures will cost hundreds of squids...
... we're not tight... just skint!
any thoughts?
drop me a line by removing the space in this address
skiholidays @hotmail.co.uk
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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You can buy credits on online stock libraries such as istockphoto.com and shutterstock.com. Much cheaper than the usual image libraries and most of their images (except editorial content) is royalty free so you pay a one-off fee only and can use the images wherever you want.
Where I work we pay a monthly fee which includes 25 image downloads per day, which is much cheaper than buying credits.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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| skiholidays wrote: |
... we're just finishing a massive global ski resort guide for our new ski holidays website and have realised that buying pictures will cost hundreds of squids...
... we're not tight... just skint! |
I'd love to go on holiday but can't afford it, I'm skint too. I take nice photos though. Free holiday for free photos? 
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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skiholidays, resorts will give you CDs or downloads in return for byline eg. Picture Fred Smith, Resort X. Just contact tourist office press contact at various resorts and you'll get gazillions of them free and of high quality. That byline is important though so don't leave it out.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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| Bode Swiller wrote: |
| skiholidays, resorts will give you CDs or downloads in return for byline eg. Picture Fred Smith, Resort X. Just contact tourist office press contact at various resorts and you'll get gazillions of them free and of high quality. That byline is important though so don't leave it out. |
This.
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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skiholidays, What's your website? I may be able to help for resorts in Andorra.
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You can have access to any of my ski photos in return for a ski holiday in February for 3 to one of your french or swiss hotels, including flights from Edinburgh, transfers and lift pass 
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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made me laugh - partic no-Windsors pics
I've managed to source a DVD of images which the resorts provide free, so long as you're promoting the resort... which our ski resort guide def is!
if we get off the ground, I'll comission new pics next winter... freebies will have to do for now... until we can earn the budget to go shoot new ones
thanks for all responses and ideas - I'll put a link up in a few weeks when all is live... could really use opinions and feedback!
ta
ps we've now got agreements with the big uk ski tour ops to sell their ski holidays as best internet prices so... would appreciate your opinions on what skiers really want when booking your ski holiday (we're making a kind of price comparison site for ski holidays - all hols from all big boys, so you can see em all in same place) all v exciting but we've never been travel agents before, just sno-lovers
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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skiholidays, you can use any of mine in return for a credit and a suitably productive link somewhere on your site...
Lots of Les Gets and Les Menuires but also plenty of generic families having fun in the snow type pics.
PM me if it's of interest.
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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As others have said, for suitable links and credits, I've got hundreds of photos of the main resorts in Andorra.
| skiholidays wrote: |
| we've never been travel agents before |
Good luck then!!
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You know it makes sense.
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what a fantastic idea, I feel the web has been lacking this kind of information, let us know the URL when it is up and running
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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That's a bit naughty hiding a link in the text of a post - especially using your keywords as the link text - did you really need help with photos or is this whole thread just an opportunity to spam?
| skiholidays wrote: |
| I'll put a link up in a few weeks when all is live |
You already have but have been sly about it!
davidof, well spotted!!!
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Poster: A snowHead
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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Are you intending not to come back? 
(your website isn't for me. when you scroll over the different headings a big black rectangle fills most of my browser)
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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Well spotted. Must be the license fee freeze, those BBC hacks are always up to mischief, here is his bio
http://uk.linkedin.com/in/richardsinclair
He worked for Watchdog! Matt Awbright needs to look into this one.
He would do better to concentrate on the day job.
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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| Richard Sinclair's LinkedIn Profile wrote: |
| self shooting experience |
Learn to aim then! 
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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charming!
I was at the beeb for 12 years - ran the holiday programme for a while and enjoyed making some fun ski films (Haute Route was a favourite) plus made a series called The Challenge and spent a month filming race to mag north pole plus everest summit attempt)
always been mad about snow and mountains
2 years ago I left and started world's first mobile ski resort guide www. SNO.mobi (I'll leave the link broken since there seems to be some link spam paranoia going on) - had a great fun tour around 30+ ski resorts last autumn with better half and my little lad www. sno.travel/blog and now we're finishing www. sno.travel properly (hence looking for good resort images for the ski resort guide) but its really far from finished (you don't think its an intentional design idea for a big black rectangle to cover all the content up?)
I just got a message saying something like "stealth link spam" - made me laugh - when does it become so stealthy that you have to stop yourself and say, erm actually that was a genuine conversation?
all that nonsense aside, thanks for all suggestions and help - I've been skiing and snowboarding for 27 years but completely new to working in this world
as you can see from how the website is looking so far, its pretty far from being a bbc project - so thanks for all help/advice, really appreciate it!
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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just had a quick read back through the posts and had to laugh at fact that I seem to be only one who doesn't have links in their signature - from "hand made blinds" to "my sking pics" and my many Andorra websites - Chris, you weren't kidding when you said a "light taunting"
seriously tho, if its bad form to link to what you're posting about, I'd like to know - as I said, I'm new to this and need friends and advice, don't want to wind anyone up
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skiholidays, You'll find that forum regulars tend to be very good at smelling a rat and snowHeads regulars have as keen a sense of smell as any.
In your first post, you made a distinct extra effort to change the colour of your link to disguise it - perhaps you just have over-keen aesthetic sensibilities, but let's face it, it looks dodgy!
Then when your domain turns out to be registered to The BBC, Wood Lane, you're clearly going to be up for a rougher ride than most.
| you wrote: |
| as I said, I'm new to this and need friends and advice, don't want to wind anyone up |
There are friends to find aplenty here and an astonishing array of advice available (some of it even useful) and if you truly don't want to wind anyone up, it would be best to avoid attempts at subterfuge, however slight, such as your link in the OP.
Your 'share it with the group' post two above is a step in the right direction but don't spoil it by then trying to turn the moral indignation back on the forum.
With a moment's consideration, you could have realised that it is acceptable form here (for the time being) that people declare their interests in their signatures: this gives authority to advice they may give on subjects in which they are invested, as well has helping explain any bias apparent in their opinions.
The 'pimping' of other snow-sites per sé isn't specifically banned on snowHeads although like most forums, someone that turns up and just pimps away from post 1 is likely to be seen as a leech upon, rather than a contributor to, the community and made to feel less than entirely welcome.
| Quote: |
| sno travel ski holidays are a fully ATOL bonded member of the Travel Trust Association |
It's my opinion that the site you linked to is a SEO'd place-keeper for a commercial operation that you are in the process of launching and your 'dodgy' link was SEO motivated link farming - this is not allowed.
Further, the pimping of commercial operations through posts in the forum is not permitted.
While your asking for advice re. pictures is perfectly fine within the rules, again, as a first post and for what is in the end a commercial purpose, well... you should try to be a bit more careful 
btw Welcome to snowHeads 
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understood - since you are in charge, its your opinion that stands
I thought I was writing cleverly by showing what I was asking for (at the time you could't find that page with Google as the site is still being built) but equally I can see it can be viewed the way you just described.
I'll take it as a lesson learned - perhaps you get a lot of people trying to add links without joining in the community and later conversation?
I'll go work out how to declare my interests in the signature part - just to be clear, since I can see its a sensitive subject, I'm supposed to add links in the signature to any ski website I'm involved in and I shouldn't change the text colour? (since you can't read tone or intent, let me say clearly that's not being facetious, I really do want to do what is proper form in your forum) 
in interested of trying not to be missunderstoon, my domain isn't registered to the BBC, its registered to me - I just happened to be working at that address when I registered www. sno.mobi 3 years ago (when I first had the idea of a mobile-web ski resort guide)
I will update my LinkedIn cv info etc
for a non-biased referance, I think Chris (ski famille above) knows me from twitter or other ski online places - loads of snow ppl followed and helped on our alpine tour in the old vintage airstream last winter (some of its written up in the blog)
thanks for taking the time to write and explain/guide
Steve, I can see links are important to you, so drop me a line with title, description and url and I'll stick yours up on our links page
cheers
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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V how's that? V
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| skiholidays wrote: |
any thoughts?
drop me a line by removing the space in this address
skiholidays @hotmail.co.uk |
Yeah
1) dump the @hotmail address, and get one setup along the lines of enquiries@skiholidays.co.uk - no one will ever take you seriously as a business with a hotmail address...
2) Check the facts on your website - http://www.sno.travel/ski-resort/les-arcs/
Les Arcs ski area has 0% beginner ski runs or nursery slopes That's right it's experts only...
If you snowboard Les Arcs you'll want to know that, of the 62 ski lifts in total, 26 are the dreaded surface lifts or "drag lifts" over 40% of the lift being drags - that's great for boarders
http://www.sno.travel/ski-resort/summer-ski-resorts/ Les Houches - a 'summer ski resort'
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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thanks - website is still being built so not all stats are plugged in & working, plus top ten pages only have example data in (any resorts, rather than our choices)
improvements coming soon but slowly - we're just 3 and there's 17 pages per resort x500 resorts
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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skiholidays, despite what you say, the link thing was premeditated and sneaky but... in life there's nothing necessarily wrong with that. Government wouldn't function without sneakyness, businesses would struggle and parents don't get kids to do stuff without being sneaky sometimes.
I'd seriously question why you need
| Quote: |
17 pages per resort x500 resorts
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I know there are 2,000+ "resorts" in the world but many of them are a T-bar and a wooden hut. I reckon writing about 420 of 'em is a waste of effort unless you're hoping for some SEO boost out of it (and that's questionable when Google continually change their algos and you're pushing a very new and uncommon .travel domain). I'd struggle to write 17 pages about some whole countries let alone individual resorts. This forum is a great example of how limited the actual resort choice is... ask any question about where to go and you'll see. Better to be very in depth about the resorts people actually go to and put less effort into those they don't... because they won't.
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You know it makes sense.
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ski-finder, thanks! - yes spoke to you a few times during our ski-resort/vintage-airstream tour - your amazing piste map resource inspired me to try to do something better with ours in fact!
In the end we settled for trying to optimise them a bit better for the mobile user (a huge image with loads of detail isn't v useful on most phones) so we chopped them up into the major ski areas - not rocket science but it makes them way more readable on a cheap phone with a small screen.
Were you thinking of putting me in touch with Patrick at Snow24? I'm using his enormous image DB, but if there's other resources you know of please let me know.
Thanks for the friendly voice! - just had nightmare morning in Ikea-build hell (granny and grandpa had loads delivered & guess who's building it) - number two son is grumbling his way into drinking formula and number one son is toilet training, with varying degrees of success - bad time to be up every night trying to finish the website... but its really exciting to see things take shape
Bode Swiller, agreed, trying to write 17 pages about each resort would be mad and impossible for me too - even the mighty j2ski only has 8 or 10!
Basically, we're making a free resource for all the amazing local ski people in-resort, so many of those pages are promoting those guys and girls for free on SNO.travel , just like we do on mobile web (SNO.mobi)
Why? well my opinion has always been that the best thing about the mountains and skiing/boarding is the people - so we're trying to make it easy (and free) for the cool people who love to visit the mountains, to hook up with (and spend their money with) the cool people who live and work in the mountains
Here's a few examples - tediously I will leave the links broken so you'll have to paste them into your browser if interested in looking
- http://www .sno.travel/resort.aspx?resortid=chamonix is the Chamonix homepage
- http://www .sno.travel/category.aspx?resortid=Chamonix&categoryno=2 is the chamonix bars and apres ski page
- http://www .sno.travel/category.aspx?resortid=Chamonix&categoryno=11 is the ski schools page
I'm afraid most of the links don't work on my site because we're leaving it out of the search results until its finished - very much a work in progess!
thanks for input - it's really gratefully recieved!
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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skiholidays, I had a very quick browse of your website. It may become a great resource but at present I think it does you a disservice because of the lack of information. Maybe on each (and I mean each) page put some words in a prominent position explaining that it is very much a work-in-progress. You could explain when you hope to have the site ready for real use. You might also add words encouraging people to visit again.
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Poster: A snowHead
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Adrian, thanks - I appreciate you taking the time and I def agree, so we're not broadcasting it yet
I've been really careful to keep it out of the public domain, no one (except you guys I'm talking to here on this forum) will see these pages 'til they're finished - none of the things people search for (chamonix holidays or ski resort guides etc) will bring up my site on a google search - these pages have no page rank (ie not even zero page rank, they're just not even ranked at all) because we've not really letting google discover it properly while its being built (its only live online so I can work with the other guys easily, as we live in different towns)
unless you search for "sno.travel" you won't see our work on progress - I don't think people will type "sno.travel" into google as we haven't promoted the site yet (no one's heard of it) - I just showed the guys here because lots of them seem to be v clued up in ski and web
my better half just had an interesting question - is there a way to do some kind of voting or similar on snowheads? it would be really cool to get everyone's votes on the top ten lists - like a concensus on things like the "top ten snowboard resorts" etc - instead of just putting our own opinion up there
maybe not technically feasible but would be a great way to get the genuine best or at least genuine favourites?
thanks again Adrian - I'll ask you again when its working, if you don't mind (hope to have the resort info pages linked together next week)
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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skiholidays, you're best off PM'ing admin for the survey thing.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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| admin wrote: |
| .....The 'pimping' of other snow-sites per sé .... |
Unless Latin has changed since I was in the 5th form, no acute accent - 'per se' is fine - and easier to type. Just trying to be helpful.
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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Bode Swiller, will do - you reckon is do-able? - it would be great as most "best of" and "top ten " lists seem to have more to do with what that website is selling... nothing wrong with that, it's their website after all, but would be great to try to build these lists so they're about ski/boarders informing other ski/boarders about where they've been and loved
in fact, the sno thing first got started when a few snow-mad ppl were having a few drinks and talking about why there's ski site which promotes the real mountain mad ppl - those who decided to quit the day job and go make a living in the mtns - ppl like Derek who made Chamonix Bass or Megeve Mike or Andy and Heather at Alpine Ethos in Meribel are amazing ppl, but lots of ski holiday makers never hear about them 'cos those guys don't have the online clout of the big websites...
... rambling 'cos its late on sunday night and we had old friends over, so wine flo-ed etc...
anyway... will investigate how to enable voting on best ski resorts... tomorrow
night
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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Hi Again!
So, introductions over, where were we ... photos - use any of the photos off any of my three resort sites (except ones creditted to other people) and just credit them to whichever site they come from. If you need high res versions of any of them just let me know and I can e-mail them.
As for links, I'll PM you now with link text etc. and I'll reciprocate from my links pages. We all love a few links here and there!!!
With regard to your site, a couple of things ...
I too really don't like the behemoth of a black box that drops down - I guess it will be filled with various menu options but I'd suggest making it a lot shallower. It just seems to take up the whole screen.
On the resort page where you have the vertical menu I'd use blocks for links rather than just using the text as a link - it's just a bit more user friendly, plus I'd set the hover colour to something other than white seeing as your background is white, and keep the top level menu option highlighted as you move over in to the sub menu. It will just help users to see where they are navigating.
Steve
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skiholidays, If you're interested in the top ten resorts, I just did a quick forum search for 'top ten resorts' and it returns several threads which may be useful to you.
Oh, and welcome to s
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skiholidays, at the moment, your site just looks like another TUI site, which would get me to navigate away in seconds. Is it me.....?
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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Oh, and it's good to know that Champery is now a summer ski resort. I was there a couple of weeks ago. Didn't spot the snow, though.....
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harrisontherabbit, nope, its not you...
... you're pretty spot on - we tried to make sure all the search bits (on the right) include "at least" everything that Iglu and Crystal and IfYouSki etc have, then added our own too... but Crystal/F.Choice/ThomsonSki all seem to have the most search options, so our search looks a lot like theirs (although again I have to say we're not finished)...
I know what you mean about not wanting a site to look too slick/corporate - on the other hand, I've made a few amateur looking websites in my time, so I won't be too upset if this one looks on a par with the firm which has 40% of the ski market (on the assumption they must be doing a lot of things right). That said, its probably a fine line to tread, between looking professional and looking too corporate/smooth. Points noted!
(re summer ski resorts... again, let me say "the website is still being built" and only you guys/girls on this thread know about it, things like the top ten lists pages are built, but only with example resorts in them... we'll dial in the actual resorts in the back-end when we're happy with our research on which resorts deserve to be in these top ten lists)
Schuss in Boots, will do - thanks... and thanks
snowsteve, thanks Steve - not sure how to PM on snowheads but will work it out or email me
Re the black box, when finished it should be approx symetrical with the top black box behind the logo (ie much thinner and probably exactly the same thickness as the black title area which it will hover over, ie where it says "Chamonix, France" - so it should be much neater and not annoying as currently.
Hope to have all links on the resort-info pages working by tomorrow, so will let you know
thanks to everyone here and for the private emails of hello and encouragement and connecting on LinkedIn - really appreciate advice and offers of help/local-info/pics
now, back to coffee and code...
if you don't mind, I might drop the odd update for your opinions - sometimes can't see wood for trees, after hours alone with just me and coding mate talking on skype plugging away at page building...
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FAQ
Although he has been known to fiddle with time 