This web site is currently under development. The Bench's original website was developed and maintained by Peter Corrigan, a long-standing member. In late 2002 Peter finally felt that it had become too large a job and handed over to me.
Presently the site is hosted by NTLworld in webspace offered as part of our personal Broadband internet access package. I am currently considering whether an alternative hosting service could offer us faster access and possibly additional functionality for our members and interested parties.
The site is written in HTML4 Strict (for more information look at the W3C website) and later in the development cycle I will be checking that all of the pages validate against the HTML specification using the facility offered by the w3c. This means that it can be read by any User Agent which supports HTML4, including 'standard' web browsers, speaking browsers for blind web users, PDA and mobile telephone devices and those surfing the Internet on Web TV devices. The formatting is set using an external style sheet conforming to the CSS2 specification. A second style sheet for printing will also be developed before the project is completed so that our web pages print without purple backgrounds!
I plan to have completed the initial development phase by March 2003, although with more than 30 years of productions to document I expect to be adding information for a very long time!
If you have comments on the website, or if you have any memories, pictures or other information about Bench productions that I could publish here please send me an email to web@benchtheatre.org.uk. NOTE : Please include the word 'Bench' in the subject line of your email or else it might be swallowed by my spam filter!
Post Script : I have been writing web pages since 1996, though I hope I've come a long way since then! If you're interested in seeing what else I've done you can look at my employer's web site : Elan Digital Systems.