About this website

Open Source
All the programming code that runs this website and the server it lives on, are open source.

For those who don't know, open source software is software whose "source" (the programming code that makes it run) is openly available for anyone to see, use and change as they like, with the only requirement that if they modify it, the modified version must also be available as open source. The opposite of open source is closed source, or proprietary software, the biggest example being that made by Microsoft.

Open Source is often written and maintained by dedicated and experienced developers who get no money for their efforts (usually), yet produce some excellent "best of class" software. The best example is Apache, which is the most popular webserver in the world.  You may have also heard of Linux, which is also open source, and so is Open Office, which gives you pretty much the same functionality as Microsoft Office, but it's open source and costs nothing.

So I wanted our site to be run by open source software, and figured there were things out there that already do most of what we would like to do. That is, allow us to say what we're doing while also allowing for a greater community by letting others to comment & contribute.

Drupal
Having evaluated several Content Management Systems and Online Community Systems, I chose Drupal, which seemed to have a good active community around it, a good number of add-in modules, and some reasonable documentation.

Drupal doesn't come "out of the box" with everything you would need, instead it is distributed as a main system (the "core") and then you select extra modules. All of this is open source and free of cost. The expense is the time it takes to understand how to use the system, how to select and configure the modules and make it all work together. The web development side of my business, Indytech, now specialises in Drupal-driven websites, so it was a natural thing to develop this site in the same way.

Heritage Council Funding
After our site was up and running, the Heritage Council granted us funds to further develop it, to allow participants to contribute their own experience, building up a "living skills bank". All that work was done using Open Source code, and upon request I can provide a set of "open source" instructions. describing the techniques and methods I used. Please note that if you're planning to do this, you'll first need to have Drupal experience, but I don't assume any programming expertise.

Hosting
My business Indytech hosts this website, it also provides web design, programming, networking and IT support.  We give a discount to non-profits and charitable organisations.