June 2002 - World Cup wonders and another record number of hits

The World Cup dominated events this month with the Queens Hotel even going so far as to provide waitress service at the England v Brazil game. Worryingly after the Argentina game there was actually a bit of trouble in Claughton Firs with a fight breaking out up the middle of the road later that evening and a police van being called in to break it up. Luckily this appeared to be the only "event" that I am aware of.
On the website front I have spent quite a bit of time working on the site this month. Details have been added to the village traders section of the site for The Drawing Room the lastest shop the open up in the village on Christchurch Road. I also took the opportunity to update a number of the other trader pictures and details at the same time. The other development that I began this month was with respect to the Gallery section of the site. Two new pages have been added, the first one being a 360 degree "pan" of the centre of the village. The second page see's my first attempt at introducing a bit of flash technology to the site with a 'flash' village gallery, this is pretty basic at the moment and only contains twelve pictures but I will be adding to it over the month and introducing a bit of interaction.

After the record breaking hits in May of 461 the site appears to have maintained this growth with 490 visitors this month...the big question being ...can this continue next month ?

During the month an urgent request for action was issued by the Oxton Society with respect to an application to build a new house within the conservation area in Fairclough Lane. The Society are opposing the application on the grounds that it "would be in violation of the Wirral's own development plan and the guidelines for the Conservation Area" and have urged that locals also voice their oppinion. Details of the plans and more information can be found in the Oxton Society section of the site under the Society emails section.

Events in July ... well the first event that merits a mention has to be the Thornton Hough Scarecrow festival which is set to run from 1st July to 7th. Two years ago I accidently came across this festival and published a small set of pages covering the event. the event was not run last year due to the foot and mouth crisis however I am hoping to make a visit this year and will be adding pictures of the event to the site soon afterwards.
More deatils of events will be added to the community noticeboard during the month.

Hit Count

Total This Year ...2349
Total in June ...490
Average hits this year..391.5

This months Picture Teaser ...do you know where this is in Oxton ?

Last months teaser answer : The sign is above Huttons at the bottom of Rose Mount

Catch up on some of the trips that I have taken over the years in and around Oxton.

For a friendly relaxing night out in the centre of the village


Wanted Noticeboard feedback .....When I first set up the Oxton Village website a number of visitors took the time to add messages to the Village Guestbook and it was nice to see that some people even came back and signed it again. I then followed this up with a contact board which even managed to reunite a couple of people. Unfortunately the guestbook and contact board were targeted over a couple of months by a couple of people who left rather offensive messages on them. The maintenance of these therefore began to take up rather a lot of time. I therefore decided to look for alternatives and came across the ezboard service.
Under this I have set up three 'boards' - A guestbook, A contact Board and an Interactive Forum. I have made a number of attempts to get topics and discussions started on these over the past year however, in my opinion then don't appear to have quite taken off... Am I wasting my time or is there a problem ?
I would appreciate it if people out there could contact me and let me know their feelings on the noticeboards...are they worthwhile ? or are people having problems with them? please email me on webhost@oxtonvillage.com

Why not leave a message on the village noticeboard.

This Time Last year...I was deparately looking for a ticket to see Bob Dylan who was appearing in the Albert Docks at the"Summer Pops" event.... my quest failed. This years event is again running in July and has managed to attract an amazing selection of Artists .. although Bob Dylan isn't playing I have managed to secure a ticket to see Van Morrisson. The official website for the event is at www.summerpops.com I was also talking last year of releasing a multimedia CD rom about Oxton. I actually spent quite a lot of time developing this and completed a number of sections for it, was never completed. Who knows if I get time I may return to this project in the future ....watch out for next years diary entry ;-)

June 2000 .. The site had been running since March and had attracted 780 hits at an average of 260 per month. During the month I was presented with a number of pictures of the village taken from the top of Christchurch Spire which had hit the news at the end of 1999 when a crack appeared in the spire. I added the Views from the village spire section to the site which included a number of the photgraphs 'stitched together'. I was also at that time warning residents to be on the look out for two enormous pigeons that I had noticed in my back garden. The other news was that the site officially became a dot.com when I purchased the Oxtonvillage.com domain name.