Other software you're using on your website?

[dan_public]

Hi. I'm planning to use Weather Display and Ken's Saratoga templates to create my weather website.   Just like many of you. But my web host (MDDHosting) has a wide variety of free software available to build very sophisticated websites.  I have no problem learning and using this stuff, but I'm curious... 

What OTHER software do you folks find useful to build, maintain, and run your weather website?  What's critical and what's just nice-to-have?

Thanks,

Dan.

[aardvark]

of course you have the best out there.
I use  Weatherdisplay, Weatherdisplay Live, the Mesomap Live,  and Interwarn.

The reason for  interwarn, the information is a little more verbose than the most excellent NOAA weather warning and I can use their realtime map.  The only tough thing is that the map flashes on the screen , it must be doing a screen capture that I think I have figured out a way to get it to stop annoying me.  Thanks for getting my mind working.

I also created my own web page using the ancient FrontPage that Microsoft killed off.   I have WD upload to that and it works for me.

[Budgie]

WD
Webcamcapture
WDL
WXSim - Builds your own forecasts
Digital Atmosphere - Creates synoptic charts and other charts & maps
Nexstorm - I have a Boltek PCi lightning detector & this software runs that. There are also a couple of associated programs that upload to StrikeStar EU and produce email alerts when local storms are detected.
NSDisplay - Works with Nexstorm for uploading the lightning data
WASP2 - Triangulated lightning map for your local area provided by StrikeStar (you must be a StrikeStar member)
AIS Dispatcher - I also have an AIS receiver and uploads the data to my site + the likes of MarineTraffic
AirNav RadarBox - Another receiver only this one is for aircraft and this is the software that runs it and uploads screenshots.

I think that's about it. 

[smokie]

I use
WD
WDL
AIS Ship tracking (comar 200N) - uploads data various sites
Kinectic Airplane tracker - uploads data various sites
Blackcat GM10 Geiger counter
IP webcams - webcams of the beach
Digital Atmosphere - trial at present, dont think its realiable, does not update maps most of the time
Current Cost -  shows how much electric you are using
Some php scripts like sunspots I wrote

Expect I have forgotten some to 

The ships and planes is good, but in either case you dont need to have your own equipment , geiger counter hopefully that wont cause an alarm.   
I always try to go for network connection kit rather than USB stuff.

Would like to add WXsim, Boltek, solar sensors....

[prodata]

I also created my own web page using the ancient FrontPage that Microsoft killed off.

FP isn't dead. It just morphed into MS Expression Web. (An old version of FP (97 IIRC) got a bad reputation and though the problems were, in the main, long since fixed, I think that FP still struggled in the marketplace because of its one bad version. Hence the rename.)

Of course and as with most software recent versions of EW have evolved and grown and look rather different to an old version of FP, but if you look you'll see that EW still uses FP Extensions to perform HTTP-mediated uploads to websites.

[dan_public]

Gentlemen,

Thanks for the great feedback!  It's great to see the wide variety of software and hardware, and what you are using it for.   

I'm also interested in your opinions about other client-side or server-side, non-weather software that many web hosts offer. These software provide functions like eCommerce, photo galleries, social networking, and blogs.  Some of the more popular software seems to be WordPress, Joomla, and Magento.  I've never used any of this kind of software and was wondering what you folks might be using.

Have you used any other software like this for your weather website or other websites you've created?   What do you think of it?

Thanks,

Dan.

[Budgie]

Wordpress and Joomla are good if you're not into creating your own website. I've used Joomla once, for someone else, and found the control panel more complicated to use that Dreamweaver! 
I use Wordpress for the contact form on my site but that's about it. There are some nice Wordpress website templates that may be worth a look but then you'll have to try and customise them for your own use.

I have a blog for the weather site and that's done through Google's Blogger.com. Easy to set up, free and no server storage problems. 

Galleries can be created quite easily and there are also some nice free PHP galleries available if you search around. 

[dan_public]

Wordpress and Joomla are good if you're not into creating your own website. I've used Joomla once, for someone else, and found the control panel more complicated to use that Dreamweaver! 
I use Wordpress for the contact form on my site but that's about it. There are some nice Wordpress website templates that may be worth a look but then you'll have to try and customise them for your own use.

I have a blog for the weather site and that's done through Google's Blogger.com. Easy to set up, free and no server storage problems. 

Galleries can be created quite easily and there are also some nice free PHP galleries available if you search around.

Martin,

You know that you're starting to achieve wisdom when you realize that you don't know the right questions to ask!    While I'm learning some of the answers, my questions have to get better.   

I looked at your weather website.  (Very nice, BTW.)  I've been writing code for 40+ years, but I still have a lot to learn about the structure and running of websites.   It appears that...

- The initial website was created by uploading Ken's Saratoga scripts.   I.e., there's not a wrapper for the site.  Ken's base script IS the wrapper.   

- Then, you added links to web pages or calls to php scripts called from menubar on the left.    For example the Word Press blog is pulled up when a user clicks the "Site Blog", which calls the "wxblog.php" script.   Which is a Blogger.com page.  And when a user clicks on "Contact Us" link, it calls the "contact.php" script.  Which is a WordPress page.

Did I get it right so far? 

For the other links, are these standard scripts from Ken's and other sites?  Did you write any custom pages or scripts?   

Thanks for the info.

Regards,

Dan.

[Budgie]

Hi Dan,

Yep, you got it about right.
The blog comes up using iFrame coding, so basically it prints the normal blog web page inside my websites template page (if that makes sense).

The contact form with written by Mike Challis, a member on here, and can be found here: http://www.fastsecurecontactform.com/download-php-script

The menu uses the "flyout menu" that comes with the template so there's nothing special about it.
The pages contain scripts that people have kindly allowed others to use or scripts that I've found and modified to work with my site. I can modify php written by others but writing complete scripts is beyond my current technical expertise, shall we say. 

I like the PHP templates as they are easy to use, one header, one footer & one menu bar. Where as I started off with HTML sites where I was writing the header, footer & menu for every page and if you added a new page to the menu then you have update all the others, a lot more work!

[dan_public]

Martin,

Great feedback.  This helps a lot.  I agree about the header, footer, and menu templates.   Having code in only one spot makes life MUCH easier.   

Regarding technical expertise, I can modify PHP scripts too.  But I've never created one from scratch.  (If it was a SQL Server script, it would be a bit different. )

I bookmarked Mark's site.   He does nice work.   I'll probably try the plugin version since my webhost has WordPress one-click install and supports the software.

Again, thanks for the feedback.  This clears up a lot.

Regards,

Dan.

[DaculaWeather]

I use:
WD
VWS
WXMesg
StartWatch
VirtualVP
GRLevel3
Fling
VNC

I'm doing a website now in WordPress and I don't know that I would want to do my weather site in it. I'm getting ready to try Contao CMS to build my next version. All a big experiment.

[dan_public]

I use:
WD
VWS
WXMesg
StartWatch
VirtualVP
GRLevel3
Fling
VNC

I'm doing a website now in WordPress and I don't know that I would want to do my weather site in it. I'm getting ready to try Contao CMS to build my next version. All a big experiment.

Steve,


Great info!   I'm interested in how Contao CMS works out for you.    And I'm definitely going to use VirtualVP.  GR3 looks like an excellent package, so that's on my to-buy list too.   However...

Currently I'm wrestling with what weather software to use.  Cumulus and WD are at the top of my list.   I'm curious... Why WD and VWS?   Also, why two software packages?  What do you use them for?

Thanks and regards,

Dan.

[DaculaWeather]

They both have their advantages and disadvantages.... careful how I say that! 

WD is great. And it's particularly good at summarizing data. MANY more tags than any other software, many more options, it just does more than anything else. But for the beginning user, there is a very steep learning curve. Mine also uploads to my SQL database, and sends current conditions and forecast to my Twitter account. I still haven't figured out everything it does.   . WD also has better script support so if you do your website, you'll have more options (many designed to plug right in to Ken's templates) for to display and summarize your data.

VWS on the other hand "feels" lighter. It is generally less confusing for the first time user to get setup and working. I use it for almost all my current condition updates (AJAX updates) probably because many years ago that's what I started with and much of that carried over to my current design. I also use it to do my CWOP data, Wunderground/Hamweather/Weatherforyou uploads, and I use the NOAA climate reports (again, a carry over).

Again, your mileage may vary...

[dan_public]

They both have their advantages and disadvantages.... careful how I say that! 

WD is great. And it's particularly good at summarizing data. MANY more tags than any other software, many more options, it just does more than anything else. But for the beginning user, there is a very steep learning curve. Mine also uploads to my SQL database, and sends current conditions and forecast to my Twitter account. I still haven't figured out everything it does.   . WD also has better script support so if you do your website, you'll have more options (many designed to plug right in to Ken's templates) for to display and summarize your data.

VWS on the other hand "feels" lighter. It is generally less confusing for the first time user to get setup and working. I use it for almost all my current condition updates (AJAX updates) probably because many years ago that's what I started with and much of that carried over to my current design. I also use it to do my CWOP data, Wunderground/Hamweather/Weatherforyou uploads, and I use the NOAA climate reports (again, a carry over).

Again, your mileage may vary...

Steve,

Thanks for the feedback.    I'm still a newb at Weather software, but I agree with your comments.   I've got my Davis VP2 set up with the ISS temporarily located (searching for a better location for the anemometer), Weather Link logger installed, and WD and Cumulus installed, and using the Cumulus console right now.

So far, I found the Cumulus software to be much easier to install and use than WD.   Also, some Cumulus-based websites have very nice, platform-agnostic gauges: http://weather.wilmslowastro.com/gauges5/gauges.htm .  I haven't seen anything like these on WD-based sites except for Flash-based gauges.  (Since Flash will never work on iPhones/iPads, I won't use it.)   And the Cumulus software seems to have a more modern feel to it.   That said...

All is not perfect with Cumulus.   It seems to lack some features, like support for add-on sensors like additional temp sensors.  I don't know, but I suspect that WD's tag support is far better and Cumulus.

I think that I'll use VirtualVP to feed Cumulus for console use and WD for website use.   But I'm just starting, so we shall see what we shall see.   

Regards,

Dan.

[dan_public]

I got Virtual VP installed quickly and easily.   Changing to TCPIP in Cumulus took about 30 seconds.   Works fine.    OTOH, WD and VWS are problems.   

WD is installed and I changed the settings to use TCPIP, after starting and stopping WD a couple times, it finally responded and shows what appears to be correct.  That said, at my main monitor's 2560X1440 resolution, the console display is not usable.   The charts' vertical axis text is appears to be about 3-4 points - not readable.   

VWS is installed, but won't connected to VVP.   Looks like a non-starter.   The UI looks nice, if it would work.   I'll play with it, but it's not looking too positive.

Regards,

Dan.