The Trumpet Technical FAQ
In Brief
The Trumpet is hosted by 1and1.co.uk, written in ASP.NET using C# 2.0 and the backend database is SQL Server 2000.
In Detail
- It is hosted by 1and1.co.uk
- The Trumpet is written in ASP.NET using C# 2.0.
- The software used to produce this website is:
- The Gimp - a free image manipulation program/ It's fairly easy to use and a vast improvement on MS Paint.
- Core FTP LE - a free to download and use FTP (file transfer protocol) program. Simply put, this is used to transfer the files that comprise the Trumpet from the developer's PC to to host's server, where they become accessible to the rest of the internet.
- Microsoft Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition - the software used to create this website, it created the pages you read and all of the behind the scenes stuff that makes this site work.
- MS SQL Server 2008 - a database which stores all the page contents, the engine of the website.
- The following, non-standard components (i.e. don't come with Microsoft Visual Web Developer) used in this site are:
- FCKEditor - This HTML text editor brings to the web much of the power of desktop editors like MS Word. It's lightweight and doesn't require any kind of installation on the client computer..
- Dot Net Freak Formshield - an CAPTCHA used on the Trumpet's mail forms. Basically, this is an image containing a numerical or alphabetic code that can normally only be read and interpreted by a human, and therefore stops automated or harmful software from using the mail page to send unwanted emails, also known as spam.
- Eclipse Web Solutions Date Picker - this is a dropdown calendar used to select dates. ASP.NET, at the time of writing, doesn't include such a simple and useful component.
- Websites that provided support, inspiration and useful information in the construction of this website:
- www.famfamfam.com - a free resource of icons and graphics, which proofed invaluable when buidling the Trumpet's back end.
- www.asp.net - Microsoft's site for the support and distribution of ASP.NET and it's associated technologies.
- http://www.w3schools.com - an invaluable guide to learning about web building tutorials. Of particular help to the site developer was the section on Cascading Style Sheets.