Some personal comments by the webmaster

Since this site was started, the priorities have been content and accessibility. In pursuit of this, I test the site in a number of different browsers, aim always to use valid code, and try to follow the guidelines for web site accessibility as far as time (to check detail) allows. The text will resize, there are links to skip to content for the use of screenreaders, and we use abbreviation and acronym tags to gloss abbreviations and acronyms.

Current thinking on web site design does not favour frames. For several years, the Tolkien Society web site used frames in order to keep the work of updating the navigation system within reasonable limits. Today's browsers, with better standards compliance, make it easier to use a non-framed site. The use of CSS based layout, instead of tables, allows all the navigation links to be kept together in a way that permits easy site wide updating of the main menu links. (I only have to search and replace for a navigation bar, which is all together, not an entire table that may have different bits of content on some pages.)

Links do require little more work to update, but, on the plus side, a more rational navigational structure is sometimes possible.

Now that I have broadband, it is more plausible to update navigation links across the entire site. It no longer takes about two hours to download a complete copy and three to upload it again. (This is particularly difficult when the Internet service provider automatically logs me off after one hour.)

[I think that anyone not on broadband, specially those people who live in areas where broadband is unavailable, will have problems in getting service packs for Microsoft operating systems, now that MS will no longer distribute them on the cover discs of computer magazines.] Nevertheless, this website continues to be designed to be reasonably fast to use with an ordinary modem connection.

Backwards compatibility

I regret to say that if you are using Netscape 4, the pages will not look so attractive as they will in many of the other browsers with which I have tested the site (for example Internet Explorer versions 5, 5.5, and 6, Opera 6, Netscape versions and 6 and 7, Mozilla). It would be necessary to use table placed layouts, which would probably force me to stick with frames, and would provide less-universal accessibility in many cases. Netscape 4 should render the content in a plain and readable manner, although, in some cases, it may be necessary to refresh the page to achieve this. If there is a particular page that you cannot access in your favourite browser, and you have checked, by refreshing the page, and by viewing other web sites, that the fault is not your end, then please tell me. If you can describe the problem reasonably accurately, that would help me to find the cause.

I will do the best I can in such a circumstance, but if you have a problem on a type of computer that I haven't got, trial and error may be required. The Tolkien Society is not an organisation with a large web site development team. It is run by volunteers in their spare time, and everyone is busy with their own tasks.

Volunteer run

The Tolkien Society is run entirely by volunteers in their spare time. Sometimes this means that responses take longer than you would expect from a commercial organisation.

I am a freelance electronics designer and web site designer, and work on this web site in my spare time. Sometimes it seems to take over all spare time, at other times, if I'm lucky enough to have a lot of paying work, there may be almost no spare time available for a while.

A while ago I asked for any members of the society who might wish to volunteer to help me with particular aspects of this web site, and several people are now helping with the website in various capacities.

We may now have managed to make the whole site meet the requirements of universal accessibility. At the time of writing we are waiting for the RNIB to make a final check on the site to verify that they can find nothing amiss.

(Much later) They did not come back to us for the final check, but I am fairly sure that the site is more accessible than would otherwise have been the case as a result of their comments previously. I hope that the site is useable for anyone who wishes to visit.

Viruses and spam

Periodically I receive emails warning me that I, or someone else with a Tolkien Society email address, has a virus. To date, this has not been the case.

Both unsolicited commercial email ("SPAM"), and viruses, routinely use faked 'from' addresses.

Do not assume that an email is from the address listed in the 'From' line. 'From' addresses are so easily faked they are practically worthless as a means of positive ID. This is not to say that people with Tolkien Society email addresses cannot suffer from computer viruses, but all our volunteers are careful about computer security, and it is much more likely in a given case that the virus does not come from where it appears to originate.

Viruses read email addresses from address books, received and sent messages, archives, and so on. For you to receive an email claiming to come from victim@mydomain.com, it is only necessary that an infected computer has a message from that address, or one sent to that address as well as to the infected computer, or it is in the address book, or possibly in other places that the virus can scan for.

If you are technical enough, you can discover something about the origin of the mail by examining the header, and using tools to trace the server it was sent from.

Many automated virus scanning programs bounce infected mail back to the apparent originator, with an alert that the mail wasn't delivered because it was infected. Many or all of these automated systems assume that the 'from' address is correct, and send to the wrong target. This adds considerably to the ratio of junk to actual wanted email. I receive hundreds of "bounced" emails, with messages saying that they contain a virus, or that the destination address does not exist, etc.

Some time ago, spam claiming to come from a personal domain of mine was sent in such volumes that in one morning I received 500 megabytes of of "failed delivery" reports from other ISPs, for spam emails. All mail to there is still automatically deleted by the ISP without me seeing it. I believe this is an unusual example, but it serves to illustrate the unreliability of the 'from' address in an email.

(Later) Apparently this is not quite so unusual as I suspected - though it might be unusual for a non-commercial site. According to this story linked there is a well known form of sabotage using spam claiming to originate from the site under attack.

Some anti spam measures blacklist domains used as fake return addresses. The owner of the domain then cannot send email to certain places, as well as receiving more "failed delivery" reports than it is feasible to download.

Missing messages

If you send an enquiry and nobody answers, there is just a chance that it has been deleted by mistake along with several hundred spam and virus emails. Because the volume of unwanted mail is so large, it is likely that such mistakes will happen sometime. If you have waited two weeks with no reply, it is worth sending another email, and if you do, please make sure that the subject says something clearly relevant, such as "Enquiry from a visitor to the Tolkien Society website". Then it will stand out and not be accidentally deleted.

We have no evidence that this has happened yet, but as the spam and virus problem gets worse it becomes more likely.

HTML e-mail and safe HEX

For security reasons, I use an e-mail client that does not routinely display the html content of an email. It displays the text, so that it is quite impossible for any script to execute, virus to install itself etc. This also protects me from another threat: Some e-mails contain an image (often invisible) coded so that the request for that image confirms that the e-mail address that received the message exists and has at least briefly viewed the message. The result of this is likely to be even more spam.

Some e-mail messages have no text content, or text that only says "Get an html capable emailer!". If there is no text content, I will normally delete the email unread. Exceptionally, if the title of the email is such that it is unlikely to be spam or a virus, I will examine the source code, and display the html content if there is nothing threatening in the code.

It has been reported that, for some time, new or updated AOL installations do not send any text content with the email. I have not been able to verify this independently, but if you are in the position of using such an email program, then if you make the title obviously an enquiry and not spam, I will be able to identify it as a message to read.

A good alternative is to send an enquiry via the contact form.

Code upgrades

Early March 2006:

After much thought and learning better css layout skills I have made a start on upgrading the site to xhtml 1.0, with the home page layout honed slightly at the same time as it was upgraded to xhtml 1.0 strict. I have tried to write code that came close to a strict dtd previously, but I hope that validating most pages to a strict dtd will improve code quality on average.

Meanwhile I am rebuilding the Oxonmoot section, and partially upgrading the code at the same time.