gb / (fr)

history and updates 2000
les histoires et nouvelles du site 2000

This page contains news of notable updates and changes to the site as they occurred in 2000.
Cette page contient des nouvelles et des alterations majeurs sur ce site comme ils se produisent pendant 2000.

31 December 2000 Happy New Year to all visitors! Now throw up. I've been unable to pay quite so much attention to new things on this site of late, due to horrendously long working hours at a new driving job which leaves me too shattered at the end of each day, but there's various new features still to come when I get the time. Keep sending things in!

22 November 2000 New debate in Vote 4 It! Should Renault remake the R4? Surely you can't avoid voting on that one. In the previous poll you decided the R4 was more symbolic of communism than anything else ending in ism. Find all the details in the articles section. The original Ad Form has been returned in the classifieds section. If you still have problems with either of the forms on this site let me know via email. I've also been having problems myself in accessing this site in the past few days, the response is very slow and pages / graphics / frames don't always load properly. I've no idea why, though it would seem the web servers aren't up to scratch. Again please get in touch if you notice anything wrong as I may not be aware of it.

16 November 2000 Forms.......the saga continues.......having found an alternative form mailing service which sounded really great and included all the features I needed, they have consistently failed to respond to all my requests in the last couple of months to register and get the forms working. This is demonstrative of something that really narks me off about the Internet. There are countless companies / organisations / individuals who I have contacted for one thing or another in the past, in my usual polite manner, who then just fail to ever give a response - are they all dead? Anyway, whilst waiting, my original form mailing service, provided by my web host Angelfire, seems to be magically working again - well thanks very much - 5 months after I first told them about the problem. So the guestbook form should now be operational once more, but don't count on it. If it works properly I will reinstate the original Ad Form as well in the classifieds section. And yes, I splashed out more money I can't afford to save that extra popup advert from intruding on you. Can you tell I'm in a bad mood? Who's reading this anyway, who really cares about the secret ins and outs of this site? Sod off, go on! Okay I don't mean it come back. What else.......the desktop theme should be ready soon, there's loads more pictures on the peoples pics and mystery cars pages and the 2000th visitor to the site will be arriving soon - tea and biscuits will be provided.

23 October 2000 6 months from the site launch and everything's going well (but for tedious problems such as the company that provides my redirect address changing its advertising policy, and trying to enforce another blasted pop-up advert on my site unless I cough up some cash). Thanks to all the contributors, and keep sending your material in. The site is growing all the time. New rants in the articles section. I hope to have the guestbook and classifieds sections up and running again soon.

6 October 2000 First babies@play picture now up. More photos in peoples pics. I've been doing some brainstorming and have several new ideas planned. Whether I'll get out of bed and actually do them is another matter.

1 October 2000 It's that time of the month. Oh yes, the autumn star signs are here. What more do you need in life?

28 September 2000 Having only just slagged them off in the previous paragraph, my webspace provider Angelfire, with whom I previously had to wait over 2 months for them to increase my webspace from 5mb to 10mb, has suddenly offered 50mb to everyone, available at the click of a button. Unsurprisingly I've taken them up on this offer, and it gives me scope to put plenty more on the site. All the sound effects are now in place, and there is much more new stuff to come over the next few weeks. Thanks to those few extra sites that have recently listed me: no thanks to the countless others that can't be bothered.

27 September 2000 Thanks to Ray Watson for choosing this as the first site to send a huge article to, entitled 'The R4L "Le Taxi" Story', which you can now find on the Star Story page. Not so many thanks to my webspace provider Angelfire, who have failed miserably to sort out a problem with their Form Mailer facility that I rely on. As you will no doubt be aware by now from reading my countless apologies on their behalf, the classified advertising and guestbook sections of this site use forms to return the results to me via email. If you take a look at my guestbook, you can see there were regular entries from the launch of this site in April into May, and, but for the odd brief spurt afterwards, it subsequently went dead. This is not due to nobody signing it, as I know from observing technical statistics for the site which prove that attempts have been made to submit the forms. The classified ads also received a surge of interest in a short period before going suspiciously quiet. Despite making no significant changes to the coding of these pages, and no information of necessary changes being posted by Angelfire, the results have stopped being forwarded on to me. I have submitted forms myself, sometimes from other computers, and none have been returned. Unfortunately, having contacted Angelfire technical support 3 times, they have (1) wrongly interpreted the problem and redirected my support request elsewhere, resulting in an unhelpful reply; (2) ignored my query, and (3) sent an automated reply suggesting I review the instructions for their script library, which I have done, and it contains no new information or changes since I first set up the scripts. This is clearly not adequate for a company claiming to handle 1.5 million websites, and means that 2 whole sections of this site are currently redundant. I am now pursuing alternative ways to receive data from forms more reliably and hope to return these services soon.

27 August 2000 The problem mentioned before with my 'favicon' not showing in the favorites menu of Internet Explorer when using my main redirect address, is one that I have found cannot be suitably resolved at this time. Even when this feature does work, IE5 overwrites it with the default icon before long anyway. There is another solution for those who are really keen - you can find out more, and download the favicon from the Four Files page, which now resides in the gallery section. New rant and 2CV article added to the articles section, and the site tips have been updated, and moved from the bottom of this page to their own separate page.

23 August 2000 Once again, apologies are in order to anyone who has tried to place a classified advert, and also this time for people who have signed the guestbook. I have noticed that the forms are not being submitted properly, even though you will still receive a message of confirmation. On this occasion, these problems are beyond my control, although I am pursuing them. I have tried testing the system, and have not had the results returned to my email. Until this is sorted out, if you wish to sign the guestbook, please click the email link below the Guestbook Entry Form, and provide all the information requested on the form. I can still accept classified advertisements by email, if you provide all the details on the Ad Form, but I must request that you specify the words 'I have read and accept the terms and conditions of advertising' in the text. If you suspect that an advert or guestbook entry you have sent has been lost, please email me again with the details. Other news.......the screen saver has moved - you can now find the Four Files page in the gallery section.

12 August 2000 This history page has now been incorporated into the home section of the site, and so has adopted the purple colour scheme. 'So what's gonna happen to the yellow?' I hear you ask. Aha, you'll just have to wait and find out. I know the tension must be killing you, but I have plans for the 'missing colour'! The pointless comments have also been demoted, with the current one appearing at the top of this page instead of the home page. This is to make way for some blatant advertising, which may just bring in a small amount of cash if you click on it and buy some goods. The 'babies@play' page is now open, but there's no pictures there yet - send your own in! There are many more new sections and changes planned, the excitement just never ends here! Update November 2003: The pointless comments have moved again - they can now be found in the rants section (within the articles section). I don't know what happened to the blatant advertising, must be long gone, obviously never worked, grrr...

12 July 2000 New and improved links page. Added extra info on the content of all sites listed. Not that you'd want to leave my site of course.

7 July 2000 At last! Congratulations to Angelfire for granting me some extra disk space. A well done to Yahoo! for being the only major search engine that can be bothered to list me so far. Not so many thanks to my ISP X-Stream, who for 3 days this week denied me access to any Internet sites with no explanation. Screen saver now available in the Four Files section. Also added some more pictures.

5 July 2000 New star signs. New Vote 4 It! New ads. Same bitter grumpy webmaster!

1 July 2000 The best R4 ever? See the new Star Car (SC3). Attention! Attention! We have our first classified advert. Visitors are asked to refrain from panicking. New rant added.

28 June 2000 A few small changes around the site, mainly to the classifieds and index pages. Apologies to anybody who has tried to place an advert in the classifieds section. You may have received a message saying that your form had been sent, but there was a bug, and consequently no adverts were reaching me. This has now been fixed. I'd rather still be at Glastonbury. Long live Rolf Harris!

16 June 2000 Spotted a green R4 in Poynton, Cheshire, England. It may not sound a big deal but you hardly see any over here. I've only spotted 6 in the Manchester area in the last 3 or 4 years. First '4-play babe' picture now in the playroom. Only a week until Glastonbury.......wey hey!

10 June 2000 Still waiting for my extra webspace I'm afraid, but as a temporary measure I've deleted one of the least important sound effects to free up some space. Have added a few more photos to the People's Pics and a new Star Car: apologies if the pictures you have sent still haven't appeared, or if only one of those sent is currently displayed, they will all be added eventually. My sister has just unleashed a surprise on me, by sending me pictures of the most spectacular, groovy looking R4 you've ever seen! The photos were taken last year, but she's kept it quiet until now. A worthy Star Car, but you'll have to wait for that one, to give the current Star Car a chance to be seen. A couple more new features: the Pointless Comment of the Week has been added to the home page to enable me to mouth off a bit more unnecessarily. I've also created a 'favicon' (an icon which shows in your address bar and on the favourites menu of IE5) but it may not show up with my redirect address; am working on this.

27 May 2000 I've just acquired my second R4 and it's fantastic! It's had a full unleaded conversion and massive restoration to the underside, so it should last for years. It's a sad farewell to Queen Angelica, my first R4, and hello to Nicolexia! More details on the new car along with pics will follow when I've secured more webspace. I've received several wonderful pictures of other people's R4's, it'll be a hard choice making one of them the next Star Car. As I was driving home yesterday, a spider dangled down from the sun visor in front of me, which was strange as there used to be one exactly the same in the same place in the old car. And I know at least 2 other people who have a drivers side dangly spider, they must build them into luxury models. I might devote an entire new site to this topic. That and 'people who panic when their fridge door is left open for more than eight seconds', which is my current gripe.

Early May 2000 Revamped the guestbook slightly in order to save space and loading time. Also changed the Driver Of The Month page to 'Star Car', which seems more appropriate, as it was just as much car of the month, or picture of the month, in fact it might not even change every month, just when I feel like it, so the name's more catchy. Besides which the page is covered in flashing stars. I should soon be getting a (new) R4.

Easter Sunday 23 Apr 2000 (St George's Day) Site launched! Representatives from Renault and from the motor industry worldwide, gathered for the launch and sipped champagne to toast the success of Renault 4-Play.......(Actually I was just sat at home on my own with a cup of tea).

21 Apr 2000 Began uploading most of the files, though I'll need to sort out extra webspace, so a few bits may be missing when the site is opened. Typically, being Easter Bank Holiday weekend, every old git is online and blocking up the bandwidth, so I can't access my ISP's servers, and my whole plan to launch the site over the weekend could be up the spout. And why are all FTP programs crap?

15 Apr 2000 Went for a drive and recorded the sound effects. Also took a few good snaps by the Lowry Centre, Salford. Probably one of my car's last outings. Just received some fabulous pictures, one of which will be the first Driver Of The Month. All main structure of site now complete. Just a few bits to finish off and some testing, should be ready very soon. Had a bit more luck with the t-shirt printing, but I'm still not convinced.

12 Apr 2000 I've just eaten a whole pineapple, and all the acid has taken almost half my tongue off. (Just thought you'd like to know). Actually, I've noticed that Kiwi Fruit do the same when they're sharp. I might start a sister website called 'Fruit that remove half your mouth'.

27 Mar 2000 Spent the whole weekend doing tedious tasks such as having to change all my site-root relative links to document relative, and discovering that home PC t-shirt printing simply doesn't work, it's all just some big secret corporate scam to promote the cotton industry or something. Is anyone bothering to read this?

15 Mar 2000 Have moved the site to Angelfire, acquired the redirect url http://play.at/renault4play and email address renault4play@play.at .......cool. Update 8/9/02 - not cool! The company that supplies the email redirect are a bunch of bastards and have withdrawn it without notice. Use the address 4play@renault4.plus.com instead. Another update 22/3/03 - even less cool! The company has gone bust and the redirect URL won't work either from the end of March 2003 - use the new URL http://www.renault4.plus.com instead.

6 Mar 2000 Having created a substantial part of the site offline, including a number of cgi forms, I now find my current webspace provider doesn't support them. Aaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!

27 Feb 2000 Finally succeeded in placing a test page online, but the site root relative links don't work. One more problem to sumo wrestle with for a few hours / days / weeks / who knows?

Early Feb 2000 Site nearing completion. The more time I spend on it, the more ridiculous ideas I have, and the more lairy comments I keep adding. By the time this site goes online, I'll have been assassinated by the secret service for voicing too many dangerous and radical opinions which could subversively influence society. Or maybe not. Also created this page. Am currently attempting to place a test page online, but typically nothing goes to plan, some unexpected error occurs and I spend ages trying to figure it out when I could be doing something useful, like sleeping.

Jan 2000 The beginnings of this site start to materialize. The main aim is to provide something a bit more alternative. I've already found 20 or more sites relating to the Renault 4. Some of them are very good, some of them are pages belonging to a bigger site, many are dedicated to the more technical aspects of the car. As I don't know an awful lot about R4's (I just drive it and love it), I assume there must be plenty of similar-minded people out there. Hopefully, I can create something original which can appeal to a wider audience. It's also my first venture into web design, and a chance to learn about something new, whilst at the same time allowing my big gob, which is suffering from suppression, a chance to voice its views and thrust them upon an unsuspecting world. Apologies in advance.

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