Frank Bellamy's gracious Daughter-in-Law. Tessa Bellamy has politely reminded me Frank's birthday is 21 May. Having moved so much data across to Blogger and having had so many technical difficulties, I think I went completely daft and said it was on the 17 May!
Sorry for any confusion!
Frank Bellamy was born on Monday 21 May 1917. He would have been 103 this Thursday 21 May 2020
The old site looked like this in 2007 when I first published my checklist of Bellamy's work:
Soon after the launch, the second email (if I remember correctly) I received was along the lines of "An FB site with no pictures. What a joke!". Well, despite the "encouragement", I didn't give up immediately but realised I would have to update people about additions and corrections to the checklist and thus was born the blog (with the address of frankbellamy.blogspot.com). As blogging grew I realised that my concerns about copyright seemed odd as everyone everywhere in the blogging world was publishing whole series of images and all I wanted to do was some images. Back then when searching Google there was little on the images results page for Bellamy, but now...well!
As time went on I preferred working on the blog (and having some HTML knowledge helped me line images up properly and figure out why white space appeared in strange places). Then Wordpress grew and content management systems seemed so much easier to use. I was bored with the old website and despite having the forethought to use CSS to create the theme, so I could easily switch the look, the CSS language changed (as did HTML). I hated updating the site as it looked so old - much like the image above!
I retired in 2019 and wondered what to do. I seriously looked at getting the site hosted elsewhere and using Wordpress. But the annual bill for FB.co.uk was increasing and I did not want to beg for money. The majority of hits on the site were 'robots' crawling for search engines and other reasons.
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| Radio Times (24 November 1973 - 30 November 1973) I cut my copy from our family RT! |
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| The programme listing |
Then came the lockdown. Corona Virus spread and we were in lockdown.
Now was decision time. A moment of inspiration came to me when talking to my wonderful wife! "I could just put the checklist on the blog page", I innocently said. THEN I realised what I'd said. "Page" was the operative word. See that tab at the top of this page (if on a PC or Mac not mobile!) for FB Art - Sales and Auctions" - that's a 'page' not a 'post' - like a "sticky" page, it's there always.
So allow me to announce the new website https://www.frankbellamy.co.uk here.
Ditch any links you have to Blogspot - they will work but due to a technical issue you'll be told:
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| Warning over insecure site |
This has annoyed a lot of bloggers who have no insecure content and also are, like myself hosted by Blogger / Google! If you do see this, let me assure you, it's safe on my site! If I find references in my blog and pages to that address I'm changing them to the new address. But it's easier for me to tell you to use https://www.frankbellamy.co.uk
Got the message - use this address and you see the blog by default and then can use the Checklist index if you want to!
Here's what the mobile view looks like - the first "Home" shows the tab - for the "Sales and Auctions". The 2nd "Home" shows the Checklist pages. You'll find links from there to places on the blog I've published images already (and some new ones I haven't shouted about). Looks odd but now I've done the bulk of the work, I can concentrate on the appearance etc. I have about 90% of what was on the old website on here now. You won't notice anything but for my satisfaction I'll finish that off and then carry on!
Always happy to receive feedback (in fact need it to carry on!) at the usual address (look under my picture on this page)
By the way, the reason for showing the images above is that I see the Radio Times have dug out some of the Bellamy related materials including some of the photo shoot at Bellamy's home.
LONG LIVE https://www.frankbellamy.co.uk
