Server and Development Platform

The PNHB website and our mail system have been moved to A2 Hosting. Norma White developed the website and James Burrett develloped the mail system. James Burrett now maintains both systems. Our domain name nhbpeterborough.com is registered with GoDaddy. We have a security certificate - our secure web address is https://nhbpeterborough.com.

The website is crafted in GRAV, a fast, simple and flexible flat file-based web platform. (GRAV is short for Gravity) It has been developed by a team from "Rocket Theme", which has a long and solid experience in interface design and theming.

As in all content management systems, such as Joomla and Wordpress, the content of the website, i.e. text and images, is stored in a database. Thus the content is entirely separate from any code or formatting. Whereas the database in wordpress and Joomla is a relational database, the data in GRAV is simply stored as text and image files in the computer file system - this greatly simplifies data handling and backup.

A huge advantage of GRAV is its focus on the content driving the structure of the website. By default, the menu system is simply built from the file structure of the data. Further, images and other media can be stored in the data structure inside the pages on which they are to be displayed.

Most importantly, GRAV has an administration interface called "admin" which allows non technical users to change the content of the website. The display and methods are easy and intuitive.

The latest version of GRAV conains the Quark theme to control the responsive display, that is the display adjusts to fit well on any size of device or in any size of window - essential since many readers now look at the website on phones and tablets.

The PNHB website contains an extension to Quark - the PNHB theme is custom designed and built to support our archives and other special features. The customisations are described in the technical section.