Get yer anoraks on - it's the Tech Stuff

	How it was done: We've had quite a few (clearly bored!) people write to us recently asking all sorts of rather dull technical questions about the site. So join with us as we zip up our virtual anoraks and adjust our broken spectacles (held together with band-aid) and thrill to the technical stuff: Computer The website is almost exclusively coded, designed and maintained by Mike on a couple of PCs. We're not really bothered about what system we use, but it just worked out that a PC/W2k provided the best cost/performance for our needs (truth is, we still miss our beloved ol'Amiga A1200, and we've never quite found the same level of gaming satisfaction as the original Sensible Soccer and Frontier Elite...) Graphics: All early photographs were taken using an Olympus OM4 SLR and a truly excellent Olympus XA compact camera (sadly now discontinued) but, since 1999, we've been exclusively using a collection of compact Sony cameras including the Sony Cybershot F55E, Sony Cybershot F55DX and Sony F77 digital cameras. Check out the Photo FAQ for more info. The interactive panoramas on the site were created using the MGI PhotoVista software (version one of often given away on computer magazine disks) and they're really simple up set up. Recommended! We've had a lot of mails from people wanting to learn more about photography, so we've put together a photography guide which we hope you'll find useful. All cartoons and much of the illustrations are hand drawn and scanned in and messed about with later, although we've managed to knock out a few directly on to the computer, using a Wacom Art Tablet. Graphics manipulation/production is done with Photoshop 7 (there's a surprise, eh?!), Corel Xara and Power Goo. Find out more here

	Coding: Virtually every piece of code on this site was written in the superb Homesite+, with Dreamweaver MX being used for the occasional quick edit. Stylesheets are created with the excellent TopStyle and code methodically checked using the extremely handy HTML Validator. History Urban75 started off in July 1995 as a football campaign website and then grew to become the small personal web project for Mike Slocombe, hosted on the free Demon homepages server. The site soon increased in popularity, reaching over 300,000 hits before getting promptly booted off Demon for 'abusing their service' (i.e. getting too popular!) in April 97. We were then grateful to have Head New Media take over the hosting for a few months where we recorded our millionth hit, before finally moving on to our own domain name and server space (kindly donated by Direct Connection) in August 97. This site is now one of the biggest and busiest, non-profit, independent sites in the UK, now notching up to a quarter of a million page impressions per day. Thanks for your support. The deal: urban75 is wholly non-profit making. None of us get paid for all this work. We do not accept nasty commercial banners, dodgy advertising or hideous sponsorship. However, we have blagged some sponsorship in the shape of server space from the fabulous Netscalibur and 1 & 1 . We are grateful for their kind assistance. Go on. Give 'em a click!

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