Difference between pages "Licences Advice" and "Website History"

Revision as of 18:32, 21 September 2013

Here's a potted history of the URY website, courtesy of the Wayback Machine.

c.1999-Oct 2003

The earliest version of the website available on the Web Archive was definitely a product of its time, with the bright orange branding of that era prominent throughout and a very 90s GIF-based sidebar on the left.

It even had a guestbook, with some rather interesting contents.

At one point in 2000, Gavin Atkinson updated the site.

This design was created by Leo Warner, and doesn't really work too well in 1080p.

Webcasting

At the start of Web Archive captures of the URY website, URY were still broadcasting only on 999kHz and did not yet simulcast on the Internet; however, by 2003, URY had leapt forward into the Internet Age by hosting a worldwide live stream... using RealPlayer. Oh well...

Oct 2003-Summer? 2006

A radically new website design was launched in time for Autumn term 2003, featuring for the first time what seemed to be sensible web design (for it was a new millennium and the days of gaudy sidebars and orange on grey were far behind the URY computing team, in all their wisdom).

The guestbook and RealPlayer streams were still there, though.

This website does work quite well in 1080p, considering.

2006-2010

A minor update of the previous website, with even more orange... and no guestbook in sight! RealPlayer by now had been joined by MP3 and Ogg Vorbis streams as URY's streaming technology marched on.

What the hell is that font on the advertising banner?

This design was jiggled around a bit over its four years of service, but remained mostly the same.

2010-2011

In what was probably the most short-lived (and expensive!) of website designs, URY got a professional graphics designer in to completely redesign the website in conjunction with URY's comprehensive rebranding.

The result was a lovely set of graphics (lovely being subjective on whether or not you like Impact as a font), but the code for the website wasn't as lovely. According to legend, the site was programmed in under a week to meet harsh deadlines and was therefore effectively hacked together. Despite all this, it worked for a year and as of writing the code is still there in heavily modified form.

Sources indicate that a DaveX was responsible for the coding.

2011-2012

The current website was largely the result of a rehashing of the design from last year by the combined efforts of Darren Webb and Rob Stonehouse on design and Matt Windsor on programming (which mainly involved tidying up the previous round of code and implementing the design changes in HTML5 and CSS).

This website won a YUM award in 2011.

There's still no guestbook.

2012-2013

In October 2012, the website was completely replaced with a shinier, newer, completely re-written site based on Django (a Python web framework). Despite the shiny new design, we immediately regretted this decision. The site was put live before it was ready - features were missing and never were fully implemented on this generation, and large amounts of it relied on a completely new database schema, so all of the Members' Internal website tools broke with the replacement. It suffered in service for less than a year before it was retired on August 2013.

2013-Present

For a picture, load up ury.org.uk!

Sticking with the Python, Matt Windsor again went on an endeavour for a better website. With an entirely new codebase in Pyramid (another Python web framework) and SQLAlchemy, and a few shinifications to the actual design itself, this site went into production in August 2013, at the same time as our upgrade to Apache 2.4 and the replacement of Members' Internal with MyURY. Over the remainder of the Summer Holidays, MyURY was expanded to ensure it had capabilities to actually maintain this website, and so shiny Banner and Podcast systems were available and the site once again looked pretty.

There's still no guest book, but there is a sign up form on the Get Involved page.

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
-This page aims to put the various licences that URY follows into simple key points. It includes hard rules as well as tips and notes to make being legal easier.
+Here's a potted '''history''' of the URY '''website''', courtesy of the Wayback Machine.
+== c.1999-Oct 2003 ==
-== Ofcom Licence ==
+[[File:ws1.png]]
-This is the first one most people think of when "radio" and "licence" come to mind, but believe it or not, now we have a licence (It's a Community LPAM one, if you're interested), it's pretty straight forward. Once a year, we pay a licence fee, every 5 years we renew the agreement, and the only fixed legal requirements are that:
-* We broadcast across campus on 1350AM within reasonable technical standards (i.e. we don't interfere with maritime broadcasts, as we once did a few decades ago.... whoops)
+The earliest version of the website available on the Web Archive was definitely a product of its time, with the bright orange branding of that era prominent throughout and a very 90s GIF-based sidebar on the left.
-* We don't mention that on air that we can be potentially be heard elsewhere depending on various complicated science things
-* We broadcast the station frequency (1350AM) and callsign (VERSITY or URY) once an hour
-** Yes, saying "Online at ury.org.uk and across campus on 1350AM, this is URY news" is a legal requirement!
-* Our output is target for students and staff at the University of York
-* Our transmitter is only on for 30 weeks a year, but is '''always on''' during this time (unless we suffer a prolonger power outage or an attack by terrorists or the Queen's enemies)
-You were expecting more? That's all the legal bits. You thought swearing was against Ofcom rules? It's not. Everything else you hear about is in fact based on Ofcom ''guidelines''. Thick, boring documents giving you examples of what is good and bad and cases where broadcasters have done it right/wrong in the past. Our presenter contract is a conservative way of meeting all this while not boring presenters with detail. So if you want to know more about what content a show can have, it's useful to look at the [http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/broadcasting/guidance/ Ofcom Guidance pages] for more information.
+It even had a guestbook, with some rather ''interesting'' contents.
+At one point in 2000, [[Gavin Atkinson]] updated the site.
-== PRS/PPL Licencing ==
+This design was created by [[Leo Warner]], and doesn't really work too well in 1080p.
-This is where it gets... fun. The big problem with radio is copyright - if we just played music on air and online we're being very very naughty. We have to pay the artists, publishers, distributors and so on their share every time you click "Play" in the studio. For this, we pay licences to two separate companies - PRS and PPL, each of which handle part of those payments.
+=== Webcasting ===
-=== PRS Webcaster Licence ===
+At the start of Web Archive captures of the URY website, URY were still broadcasting only on 999kHz and did not yet simulcast on the Internet; however, by 2003, URY had leapt forward into the Internet Age by hosting a worldwide live stream... using ''RealPlayer''.  Oh well...
-This one's simple - we're small and non-profit so other than a licence fee every year we don't have to do anything.
-=== PPL Webcaster Standard Licence ===
+== Oct 2003-Summer? 2006 ==
-I've lost large parts of my life to these guys. Once a quarter, we have to send them a report of '''every''' track we've played, including the record label and distributor, as well as some complicated statistics involving listener-hours and performances by territory. This would be great if it weren't the fact that we don't have all this information for most of our songs yet, and that we allow specialist music shows to play their own songs (we'll get on to that...). In addition to this, there's lots of other annoying little requirements:
-* During any 3 hour period:
+[[File:ws2.png]]
-** We can play no more than 3 tracks from any album (and no more than 2 consecutively).
-** We can play no more than 4 tracks from any particular artist or compilation (and no more than 3 consecutively).
-*** The [[Campus Jukebox]] does some magic to make sure it follows this, but for presenters, it's up to you to be aware of this!
-* A Track may only be played once in any 1-hour period.
-* We have to show what song we are playing on the website (and over AM if it ever becomes reasonable for us to financially) as we are playing them, and after we've played then '''but never before'''.
-** For presenters, this just means using [[BAPS]] or manually [[Tracklisting]] as you go. Computing manage the rest.
-** In addition, you cannot mention "We have Gaga coming up in 10 minutes". You can use vague things like "in the show". This is so people don't know what time to record our web stream if they still pirate music like that.
-* We can store up to 20,000 Dubbed Tracks in our central filestore at any time.
-** Computing manage this for you, too.
-* Each show can only be advertised up to 4 times in a 2 week period.
-** This clause is vague. We should clarify this, because I'm pretty sure we don't follow this sometimes.
-* We can't knowingly make it sound like we're affiliated with any artist, copyright holder of product.
-** Don't do that. This also includes playing tracks in a way that could "denigrate" artistic integrity.
-* We have to take reasonable steps to prevent our listeners from pirating music play
-** There's not much we can do, although talking or playing jingles of intros helps with this.
-** Computing have to add DRM somehow if requested. Evil stuff.
-* We can't play music that's pirated or we don't own.
-** Yes, that includes that song you just downloaded from mp3skull or loaded up on YouTube.
-* We can't edit or remix songs.
-* We can't let members or (anyone) take copies of any of the data in our library.
-* We can't use tracks as an intro to or during advertising, features or as a trademark or brand.
-** This includes using them as beds for show adverts or consistently in features.
-==== Additional Technical Restrictions =====
+A radically new website design was launched in time for Autumn term 2003, featuring for the first time what seemed to be sensible web design (for it was a new millennium and the days of gaudy sidebars and orange on grey were far behind the URY computing team, in all their wisdom).
-* We can't provide a customised stream on a per-user basis.
-* We can't add skip/pause/back functionality or the ability to let listeners record our service.
+The guestbook and RealPlayer streams were still there, though.
-* We can only Dub entire Tracks, not partial ones.
-* Tracks must be of a reasonable technical standard that the quality is reasonably preserved.
+This website ''does'' work quite well in 1080p, considering.
-* Ensure the Central Database is as secured as possible, including providing reports on this to PPL if requested.
-* Our web stream must only be accessible to the countries listed in the [http://www.ppluk.com/Documents/Member%20Services/Qualifying%20countries.pdf PPL Qualifying Territories]] document.
+== 2006-2010 ==
-* The Central Database cannot be removed from URY's premises (the Station and Stores) for any reason. Whether this includes backups is unclear.
-* We cannot delete any archive Tracklisting data. PPL may ask for this data at any time.
+[[File:ws3.png]]
+A minor update of the previous website, with even more orange... and no guestbook in sight!  RealPlayer by now had been joined by MP3 and Ogg Vorbis streams as URY's streaming technology marched on.
+What the ''hell'' is that font on the advertising banner?
+This design was jiggled around a bit over its four years of service, but remained mostly the same.
+== 2010-2011 ==
+[[File:URYsite09.png]]
+In what was probably the most short-lived (and expensive!) of website designs, URY got [http://www.freelancegraphicdesigner.co.uk/ury-web-design.html a professional graphics designer] in to completely redesign the website in conjunction with URY's comprehensive rebranding.
+The result was a lovely set of graphics (lovely being subjective on whether or not you like Impact as a font), but the code for the website wasn't as lovely.  According to legend, the site was programmed in under a week to meet harsh deadlines and was therefore effectively hacked together.  Despite all this, it worked for a year and as of writing the code is still there in heavily modified form.
+Sources indicate that a DaveX was responsible for the coding.
+== 2011-2012 ==
+[[File:ws2011.png]]
+The current website was largely the result of a rehashing of the design from last year by the combined efforts of [[Darren Webb]] and [[Rob Stonehouse]] on design and [[Matt Windsor]] on programming (which mainly involved tidying up the previous round of code and implementing the design changes in HTML5 and CSS).
+This website won a YUM award in 2011.
+There's still no guestbook.
+== 2012-2013 ==
+[[File:ws2012.png]]
+In October 2012, the website was completely replaced with a shinier, newer, completely re-written site based on Django (a Python web framework). Despite the shiny new design, we immediately regretted this decision. The site was put live before it was ready - features were missing and never were fully implemented on this generation, and large amounts of it relied on a completely new database schema, so all of the Members' Internal website tools broke with the replacement. It suffered in service for less than a year before it was retired on August 2013.
+== 2013-Present ==
+''For a picture, load up [http://ury.org.uk ury.org.uk]!''
+Sticking with the Python, Matt Windsor again went on an endeavour for a better website. With an entirely new codebase in Pyramid (another Python web framework) and SQLAlchemy, and a few shinifications to the actual design itself, this site went into production in August 2013, at the same time as our upgrade to Apache 2.4 and the replacement of Members' Internal with MyURY. Over the remainder of the Summer Holidays, MyURY was expanded to ensure it had capabilities to actually maintain this website, and so shiny Banner and Podcast systems were available and the site once again looked pretty.
+There's still no guest book, but there is a sign up form on the Get Involved page.