A word from your webmaster

Welcome to the website of the Daimler and Lanchester Owners' Club. As a webmaster I volunteer for this task in the hope that the site can supplement our excellent club magazine as a means of communication to and amongst club members. Apart from that, the site serves as a major channel to promote the club to non-member enthusiasts for our marques.

Please send me your contributions, remarks, and even criticism, and I'll see what I can do. Bear in mind that I am not a native English speaker, so I would appreciate any pointers to places where the use of the language needs to be improved.

I will happily devote time and effort to help any club member that has difficulties with one of the club-related Internet-facilities. Educating people about computers and Internet is my profession, and if I wouldn't enjoy that type of work I would have chosen a different profession decades ago already. I am used to questions from computer-savvy and -unsavvy people alike; don't hesitate!

But: íf you send me a question, please choose one of two approaches: either describe the symptoms that you experience in some detail (do it in your own words, but be accurate, especially with respect to the sequence of your steps), or, íf you decide to go shorthand, make sure that you use the terminology properly. A verbose message is much more forgiving about its terminology than a concise message is. Let's avoid back-and-forth conversations like (Q:) "Why can't I log in to the club's website" (A:) "Because the club's website does not have a login-facility at all". This is the correct answer to the question (see below), but it doesn't solve anybody's problem. Please bear with me!

Hendrik-Jan Thomassen   

Website and forum; what's the difference

Several people have contacted me with questions related to the forum. A common part in all those questions was that website and forum were mixed up. Here are a few explications:

• A website is a collection of web pages. These pages can have a huge variety in appearance and function: static display of text & illustrations (e.g. the page you're looking at now), web-shop, forum, chat-room, blog, ... When you enter a website you usually enter via its index-page (commonly referred to as "the home page" of the site).
• A forum is a collection of pages where people can discuss with each other, in writing, a variety of topics. Since website always is the "outer" container for a collection of web pages, a forum is always part of a website. But a website does not necessarily have to contain a forum part.
• When people are used to enter the forum-part of a website via some kind of direct link (e.g. a bookmark/favourite), and thus bypass the home page, they may easily confuse the forum with the website as a whole. This has happened to more than one DLOC member, and is the underlying cause for most questions that have reached me.
• Now let's zoom in on the services to the DLOC members, where two different websites are involved:
  • www.dloc.org.uk: the official Daimler and Lanchester Owners' Club website, maintained by Hendrik-Jan Thomassen (me). The page you are currently looking at is part of it. If you click on the above link, you see the "home page" of this site popping up in a separate window. This site does not contain a forum part. Its predecessor, abandoned in December 2007, did have a forum part, but that has never been very popular.
  • The www.dlcentre.com website, maintained by Tim Alston. Several years ago, before the DLOC even had a website of its own, Tim set up his site as a service to the DLOC members. Tim's site does have a forum, but if you click on the above link you see the "home page" (not the forum!) of his site popping up in the separate window. Note the totally different "look and feel" presentation style.
    Tim managed to gather a lively community of Daimler and Lanchester enthusiasts on the forum of his website. If you click here, you'll see the entrance page of his forum. Note that that is a different page than the home page of his website. The major part of Tim's DLCentre website is the forum part. The non-forum part of his website is more or less rudimentary, although there is a nice photo gallery.
• In December 2007, the board of the DLOC took a series of decisions:
  • The old DLOC website, its forum part included, needed a revival. A new webmaster was sought to do the job. You all have seen the calls for this vacancy in The Driving Member magazine. I (HJT) volunteered.
  • Because of the well deserved popularity of Tim Alston's forum, it was decided not to maintain the old situation with two competing forums, but to seek Tim's cooperation and position his forum as the "one and only" forum for Daimler, Lanchester and BSA car enthusiasts. Therefore: if you click on the "Daimler & Lanchester forum" menu choice in the navigation margin on the left of this page, you are transferred to Tim's forum. It is for club members and all other enthusiasts alike.   To participate you need to be registered first (see below). Then you have to log in. 
  • Apart from that, a new DLOC website, without a forum was built, to host all other pages that the club wants to present to its members and/or to the public at large. The page you're currently looking at is one of these.  Contrary to the old website, the new one does not (yet) make a distinction between DLOC members and others. Everything on the site can be read by everybody. There is no logging in. 
• Now you all want to take part in the forum, right?
  • If you already used the DLCentre (Tim's) forum: nothing changes.
  • If you used the forum on the old, abandoned, DLOC website: that's gone, and won't return. Consider the DLCentre forum instead. Registering for an account there is a "serve yourself" matter, and it's free. Click on the "Registration" choice on the entrance page of the forum and go ahead.

Your (content-) contributions to this site are welcomed. If you use the above e-mail address, it will forward into my "general" e-mail address. Be sure to use an extensive and descriptive Subject-line with your mail, preferably containing the words DLOC or Daimler. To cope with the 3000+ spam mails that I receive each day, my spamfilter has to operate in a very voracious mode, unfortunately.

I am not a MS Windows user, so please select your file formats a bit carefully. For textual contributions I prefer either the standard ODG-format, or the ASCII ("Save as: text only") format. Please do not send .doc format files, unless you absolutely have no other possibility.

I can handle almost any picture format for the site, but no audio or video yet. JPEG is the preferred format for photos. Don't send thumbnail-photos only; I prefer to give the readers the possibility to click for an enlarged photo to view the details. Photos over 1.2 megapixels large are hardly useful, because that is the (full!) size of an average computer display screen. But I will happily do the resizing for you. However, my mailbox has a cut-off point when one single message is over 8Mb large. The total storage size of my mailbox is unlimited.

If you scan documents or "paper" photos, a resolution of 300dpi will suffice. Convert the file to JPEG format before sending. If you need more advice or instructions, please ask!