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Browser Support

This site has been designed to be viewable in all major browsers, and should work as intended in any modern browser. If your browser doesn't support cascading style sheets (css) - such as Internet Explorer 4 and Netscape 4 - then you may recieve a corrupt page which may be difficult to use, or you may recieve a text-only page. If the page is corrupt, then you may switch to a text-only mode which retains full functionality.

Site Technologies and Aims

For anyone interested, this site is based on several technologies, namely XHTML, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), XML, PHP and a Microsoft SQL Database. XHTML is the top-level language which your browser will see and interpret - this effectively makes up the pages you will see. These pages are further formatted into a more presentable format by CSS, which should hopefully be both attractive and make everything easy to find. These are the only two technologies which your browser will ever be aware of, and both validate to the strictest standards on the web.

On the server, there is much more going on to make the site as fast and functional as is reasonably possible. All pages are based on a simple template so that consistency is ensured, and so that every page of the site is kept up-to-date. The menu system is created automatically for each page, based on a single XML file which defines the layout of the entire site. The pages, using PHP, interpret this XML file and create the entire menu system for every page on the site completely automatically.

Keeping a site like this up-to-date is always a problem, and this has now been developed with that at the core of the design. Each individual page that is created concentrates purely on the content, and the appearance is handled transparently to those who update the site. Critically, this means that anyone can update pages, without neeing any knowledge of any of the technologies used on the site.

Data Security

As the site will store data about tenants and businesses, security is another factor which has featured highly in the design. The site is run on a server hosted by Evolutionweb, who we have partnered with in the past with the development of the Ibstock Community website. The database which holds all information is protected from the outside world - only pages on this website can access the database, and only in the ways prescribed on the pages. Access to the data is highly restricted - only those administrators with a requirement to use the database will be able to do so, and will have no more access to data with this system than they had using paper records. Of course, paper copies of the most important information will be kept alongside this system to protect in case of computer failures. Full read or modification access to the database will be protected by a password which will be in addition to individual login for the site, and all passwords are stored and transmitted as an unreversable 32 character encrypted code (this uses a modified version of the MD5 hash algorithm). Even if someone were able to intercept this encrypted key, there is no way to find the actual password from this.