Folding Bikes - Sneak Preview of new Raleigh Twenty site...

I've been playing with Apple's new 'iWeb' site-building application and have finally got something a bit more decent about my Twenty (and others) onto the web. It's not finished yet but I'm giving you guys a sneak preview.

I hope to complete it with an FAQ for first-time restorers, a potted history of the bike, plus links to good suppliers (UK, US and Europe) of Twenty-compatible bits and other folder sites of note - the usual suspects (chop, vince, sheldon, cheg et al).

But for now you can have a look at the front page, gallery, links to other twenties and a riding blog. I really wanted to collate a lot of the info about the bike in one place - especially links to other owner's bikes; it's all there on the web but a pain to find...

Site is in same place of old one here (http://www.littlepixel.info/twenty)
It's a bit fat at the moment. iWeb seems to like .png files...


http://www.littlepixel.info/twenty/sitethumb.jpg


Comments/suggestions/problems/errors/broken-links/typos... Don't be shy — let me know!

Looking good. I cannot read the font on the lower white portion of your home page. I can read all of your other pages. I am using IE with a 17" lcd.

nice start. i can see good things in the future... it'll be cool to have a site to go to that has a bunch of other useful twenty sites that are easily linkable. i've just finished my own twenty project (of course these things are never "finished" are they?), '71 phillips fixed gear, and i couldn't have done it without all the help i found on various sites.

Hi Little Pixel,

It's a good job so far, and I'm sure it will be great, just like all the Twenties we have saved... :)

I may even get round to putting mine on the web, if I ever start my own webpage, but I'm sure it won't be anywhere near as good.

Just one thought, could you add a gallery that could be used to post other people's Twenties. A bit like a "Reader's Rides" so the speak?

Looks good.

I guess you'd be recommending an upgrade to iLife '06 just to get iWeb then..?

Great Job - Looking good !!!
I just hope that someday I will be able to show my Twenty too (The upgrade takes me more than expected ...)

Looking good. I cannot read the font on the lower white portion of your home page. I can read all of your other pages. I am using IE with a 17" lcd.

Thanks for the info. IE is the last of the 'old-skool' browsers and is hard to make css driven sites totally compatible for. I guess with the rise of Firefox, Opera, Safari (Mac) and other next-gen browsers Apple decided to say 'what the hell' and not cow-tow to 'awkward' browsers like Netscape and IE that do weird things of their own rather than conforming to wc3, xml and html standards.

So sorry if the text isn't rendering properly. I'm not really a code monkey so may not be able to easily fix that though I will have a look and endeavour to sort it out. I'd recommend switching to Firefox though if you can - it's so much faster, compatible and forward looking.



nice start. i can see good things in the future... it'll be cool to have a site to go to that has a bunch of other useful twenty sites that are easily linkable. i've just finished my own twenty project (of course these things are never "finished" are they?), '71 phillips fixed gear, and i couldn't have done it without all the help i found on various sites.

Thanks for the positive comments!
All the images in the 'other twenties' section are linked but I do intend to add more links to useful sites - whether that is suppliers, owners or even sales on ebay. Ideally I'd put in a page where owners can submit their own but I don't have the back-end skills. I could - however - ask for submissions a la 'The Fixed Gear Gallery' and post photos and descriptions that are sent to me. So mail me with yours and I'll set up a 'Reader's Rides' page.



Hi Little Pixel,

It's a good job so far, and I'm sure it will be great, just like all the Twenties we have saved... :)

I may even get round to putting mine on the web, if I ever start my own webpage, but I'm sure it won't be anywhere near as good.

Just one thought, could you add a gallery that could be used to post other people's Twenties. A bit like a "Reader's Rides" so the speak?


Thanks Easyracer. I hesitated to add Goldie because you say it isn't finished yet. Give me a shout when you have things sorted re cranks and a pic and I shall add it to a new 'reader's rides' page as suggested. And do your own webpage too! it's not that hard - I'm a bit of a graphic design show-off is all ;)


Looks good.
I guess you'd be recommending an upgrade to iLife '06 just to get iWeb then..?
I should really be doing it the hard way in dreamweaver and stylemaster but it's seductively easy to do things with iWeb. It's a little limiting in some ways but very creative and quick to use in others. It has a tendency to make text into a graphic unecessarily (I could never use it for work) but what's on the web now was put together in just two evenings which is pretty amazing - being able to crop and colour-adjust images within the app has to be the killer feature.


Great Job - Looking good !!!
I just hope that someday I will be able to show my Twenty too (The upgrade takes me more than expected ...)
Thanks! Be sure to let us all see when you do get there...

Hint taken! Link given! (under Info Links)

Thanks chop.. Wasn't a hint..honest!
[Btw the link you've just created from your site goes to Sheldon's and not my site! ;)]

Thanks chop.. Wasn't a hint..honest!
[Btw the link you've just created from your site goes to Sheldon's and not my site! ;)]

Ok! Hint taken, un-link given, advise taken, revision undertaken! :p

Very nice! Thanks for all the credit. I look forward to contributing to your FAQ. I'm trying to keep track of the process a bit better on the second bike, like amount of filing on the dropouts, seatpost shim size, etc.

Glad you approve Cheg!
It would be good to get together a definitive or near list of the most important dimensions for the FAQ so people don't have to go through the process of trail and error on parts as I did so any info you can offer for the FAQ is definitely appreciated..

huw

LittlePixel

You are missing something on your site. You know what? In front of every imperial unit you are missing the corresponding metric system! :D

It would be good to get together a definitive or near list of the most important dimensions for the FAQ so people don't have to go through the process of trail and error on parts as I did so any info you can offer for the FAQ is definitely appreciated..

huw
Talking of trial and error with parts, but did anyone else have a problem with the width of their front forks?
Mine were set for a Sturmey Archer Dynohub, which was only ~76mm wide, until I re-spaced them to fit a standard (100mm) front hub. I only ask, as I've not seen anybody else say they have had similar issues?
Maybe I've ruined a very rare example ?? :D ;)

Looking good!

In case no one's mentioned it, the font in the 'intro' and 'nav' section on the home page is pretty compressed and somewhat hard to read...

Looking Great! The Twenty Site to end All sites. The only place i will surf from now on! Superlatives are failing me, bikelust is overwhelming!

No seriously i really digg it and am ever so proud that my bike is on it!

That Web designing prog sounds ace, don't know it, is it Apple only? If it is PC and chance you could send me A Copy?

One thing though, the .png (Lots of UBerhacker, Open Source L33Tspeak points for using them BTW) seem not to work with my registered Opera 7.11 though they do work with my -yuck- Exploiter! the Evil Empire strikes again.

Keep on Authoring and riding!

Looking Great! The Twenty Site to end All sites. The only place i will surf from now on! Superlatives are failing me, bikelust is overwhelming!

blushes...
haha glad you approve. I know it has flaws re the images and stuff and I do have the skills (if not always the time) to rectify some of them - optimised gifs, better CSS and whathaveyou...

I thought people would like a bit more context to my pictures of the bike. And me goofing about with it. Kinda needs humanising don't it so that it isn't purely bike pr0n.. ;)


No seriously i really digg it and am ever so proud that my bike is on it!
I kinda hoped people wouldn't mind if I just did it and featured it. I figured if I actually asked for permission of everyone on there it'd take too long and the spontaneus moment for getting the bulk of it together would be gone. There's note for people if they don't like it so I feel I've not commited a faux-pas


That Web designing prog sounds ace, don't know it, is it Apple only? If it is PC and chance you could send me A Copy?
It was only released last week in another of Steve Jobs' church-like keynote speeches at MacWorld SF.
I got an erm.. 'evaluation' copy via BitT*rent to see if my day-job is under threat ;)
Sadly yes - it is Mac only. Who knows - maybe with all the new intel chips and the success of iTunes on PC they might think about PC versions of their iLife Suite but I wouldn't hold your breath.

It's very cool in terms of quick laying out - on the fly resizing of images, cropping etc. But then there's the issue of the data heavy .pngs and IE/opera incompatability. I think it runs ok in Firefox on a PC but IE is getting increasingly hard to work with unless one is a hardcore HTMLer. Which I'm not.



One thing though, the .png (Lots of UBerhacker, Open Source L33Tspeak points for using them BTW) seem not to work with my registered Opera 7.11 though they do work with my -yuck- Exploiter! the Evil Empire strikes again.

Get Firefox! ;)

funny - 'Leet' seems to be the topic of the moment today haha!
We call them pings at work. They are great in some ways but so big it really makes a site crawl. When I reverse engineer the site it'll be .gifs all the way and about 3 times as fast I'm sure.


Keep on Authoring and riding!
I fully intend to!
Huw

I thought people would like a bit more context to my pictures of the bike. And me goofing about with it. Kinda needs humanising don't it so that it isn't purely bike pr0n.. ;)

Yeah, that sounds like a real good idea. Maybe some suggestions: Brief stories of socializing due to riding a funny looking bike. Or stories on certain key moments that you had tons of fun on the Twenty or had some kind of revelation. Or something along those lines.

I kinda hoped people wouldn't mind if I just did it and featured it. I figured if I actually asked for permission of everyone on there it'd take too long and the spontaneus moment for getting the bulk of it together would be gone. There's note for people if they don't like it so I feel I've not commited a faux-pas

Can scarcely imagine anyone would mind.

It's very cool in terms of quick laying out - on the fly resizing of images, cropping etc. But then there's the issue of the data heavy .pngs and IE/opera incompatability. I think it runs ok in Firefox on a PC but IE is getting increasingly hard to work with unless one is a hardcore HTMLer. Which I'm not.

Achhh ScheiSSe, that is exactly the type of prog and capabilities i am looking for, hope they do make a port or something. Pity about the Bloated pngs and comp probs.

Get Firefox! ;)

Oh i got it and love it good prog and open source all the way. But i always used Opera because i love the speed and the sessions functionality (quickest way to BF and other 'key' pages'), untill i learned last week that there is and add on for FF that will allow for Sessions too. Say do you know if FF has the option of exporting links for back up or exhange purposes? Anyway, i fully intend to switch once i have some to invest in tweaking FF to my liking. Especially as my Opera is also and 'evalution copy' and i do my darnest to have as much freeware and open source on my machine as possible. So far about 85% is and all my progs actually work better than the copyrighted crap they replaced.

funny - 'Leet' seems to be the topic of the moment today haha!

It does, let's hope we won't have an invasion of l33tspeaking pimply posers on BF, i'd join quakeforums if i wanted that!

We call them pings at work. They are great in some ways but so big it really makes a site crawl. When I reverse engineer the site it'll be .gifs all the way and about 3 times as fast I'm sure.

Huh, too bad that i always understood they weren't all that much bigger than giff, guess i was misinformed. Say do you use Linux on any machines?

Thx.

Talking of trial and error with parts, but did anyone else have a problem with the width of their front forks?
Mine were set for a Sturmey Archer Dynohub, which was only ~76mm wide, until I re-spaced them to fit a standard (100mm) front hub. I only ask, as I've not seen anybody else say they have had similar issues?
Maybe I've ruined a very rare example ?? :D ;)


On the one I'm converting now the fork measured out at 88mm. That was with non-dyno wheel.

About the site, i just read how you described my contributions to the folder forums, that made my day man! Thanks! I got a smile from here to Tokyo.

Two little things though, i did not discover Twenties through BF initially but through Sheldons site. But BF did tons to inspire and motivate me. Probably a little more even than Sheldon's site since there were more details, feedback and confidence building good experiences with the Twenty.

Lasty, i don't like small fonts too much (not that i am saying you should use huge ones like on my site) in exploiter particularly i find the page hard to read, i definately think 2 to 6 points bigger would make it much nicer to read.