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The Old Website | Time to say goodbye

On February 1st, 2022 the new E.T.S.V. Scintilla website was launched. A process that has been worked on for more than the last two years. Last week an article was published about our new website, which can be found here. Now it is time to look back to the now old website, which was launched in 2008.

The reason to create a new website

Before 2008, the website ran on the webserver called Roxen. Roxen is a free web server and is XML/XSLT-based with a small number of server-side scripting possibilities. Not a lot of active members understood how Roxen worked. Besides this, there were numeral reasons why E.T.S.V. Scintilla’s members and the board wanted a new website. The integration with the activity calendar using the old software was rough, they wanted more possibilities to bring their partners under attention and active members wanted more access to change information about themselves and their committee on the website.

The process of building a new website

In 2008 a group of active members, who eventually all did a board year, worked on creating and launching an all-new website. The following active members worked together to get started on building the new website:

  • Jethro Beekman VP, Development
  • Hubert Flisijn VP, Development
  • Laurens Fortgens VP, Graphics
  • Tom Vocke VP, Graphics
  • Esther Dalhuisen VP, Database
  • Olaf van Zandwijk VP, Database
  • Henri de Jong VP, Sitemap
  • Sjoerd op ‘t Land VP, Sitemap

They decided to make the new website in the PHP framework ‘Symfony’ because they had experience with this framework. The biggest obstacle was the amount of time in which the site had to be launched. Everybody wanted a new website, but not a lot of people wanted to put a lot of effort into making this site. As a consequence, various boards had to encourage the team to build the website.

Functions of the new website

There was a desire to implement a lot of fun SOT projects; the digital SWIPED, the coke vending machine and the beautiful database into the new website. Besides this, a brand-new function was being able to subscribe to an activity. SOT and Webteam did not have the desire to be required to execute every small change on the website that was requested by the board and the committees, so a board member always had to be a member of the SOT. This board member then had the access to change these small matters and keep the focus of SOT and Webteam on more important work, such as the hardware and software.

Graphical interface of the new website

With the new website, the board wanted to implement the new corporate identity of E.T.S.V. Scintilla. This new corporate identity included a change in association colour from blue and red to only red with a white coat of arms. This red colour is now a pride of our association, however, on this website, a seemingly different shade of red was used: the well-known red colour was pinker than the colour used on the website. After people sent proof that a different colour was used on the website, it was discovered that the red actually looks different on computer screens compared to its real-life equivalent, so no mistake was made at all.

Saying goodbye

After serving the association since 2008, this website has come to retire this year. New for its time, but aged too much for current times. Gladly and gratefully, we look back and go in with a new website that eventually has the same fate as this one. Special thanks go out to Tom Vocke VP, Laurens Fortgens VP and Hubert Flisijn VP for giving a lot of information about the website they built themselves.