Website history
This is another phase in the life of this website - the third incarnation so far!
The beginnings
The Kent School Association (KSA) website was created as part of the organisation for the first KSA Kenties reunion in 2002 - and it even appeared in the original web addess (www.kentschool2002.co.uk).
The first webmaster was Daryl Bryant (that's him on the left) who not only successfully launched the website but also expertly took the role as host for the evening at the first Butlins event in Minehead. It was a fantastic event and established the KSA as a focal point for all ex-Kent School pupils - and many staff too.
The website also became more established, with an early version of the guestbook and chatroom area. The web address also lost its "2002" extension and eyes started to move to the reunion plans for the following year.
Moving on
After the first reunion the baton was passed on to Colin Miller (the current webmaster) to carry on Daz's work. Colin set about redesigning the site and also transferring it to our current ISP. He also added another Chatroom facility that was recommended to him - which offered extra facilities (like sound ... we do like that *whip*!).
The website then received several facelifts (including the ones shown below) as it grew and developed. Slowly the website evolved with a new guestbook and messageboard facility written by us that we were able to fully integrated within the website. It also hosted the planning - and eventual reporting - of the following reunion in Skegness in 2003.
Eventually the galleries of pictures grew as Kenties met up around the country and sent their pictures in. Also the guestbook started to see rogue entries as "spam guests" - the guestbook equivalent of spam mail - started to appear on the site too. To address this the guestbook code was updated to filter out any odd looking "guests" - sometimes up to 50 a day!
It became clear that the site was growing more complex and difficult to manage and so Colin set about extending the code used to run the guestbook and messageboard to support the whole website.
Another new look
So here we are today with a much revised website - almost all run using code written especially for the KSA by Colin. It offers us the ability to update it very quickly from wherever we are and support more advanced webbie kinds of stuff.
In the end the website is for you guys out there - we hope that it serves you all well!
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