The Scheme’s new website was soft launched at 11pm on the 24th March and brings with it a whole new range of features for analysing archaeological objects found by the public of England and Wales. The new website now holds a substantial number of artefact details which can allow for critical analysis on a large scale.
Over the last year, I have been building this site by myself on opensource technology – php for the programming language (and the awesome Zend Framework to tie it all together) and various packages that I have found on the internet. The site builds on the work that Tyler Bell’s team at Oxford ArchDigital executed for us back in 2003 until they were liquidated in 2006. After they ceased to exist, I took on all responsibility for our IT and looked into how to replace our system with something more on the edge. With no budget available, I decided to build the site! Funding for the site came n the way of a grant from the British Museum Research Board (£10,000) and this paid for 2 new servers. The rest of the site has cost the Scheme my salary and a two year flickr licence, and the lowest level of the getsatisfaction widget.
Over the next week or so, I’ll be posting up some pieces about what this site can do and what’s coming.
[...] a year in development, the new Portable Antiquities Scheme website and database is now live. The Scheme’s database holds over 500,000 records and about 250,000 photos. These [...]
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