| 24-Sep-2005 | More additions to John Rumm's Power
Tools FAQ John Schmitt's Drill-bits and Drilling FAQ incorporated in the main uk.d-i-y FAQ Thanks are due to all that contributed comments and suggestions to both these FAQs. Also made an editing pass over most (but not all!) pages to make the layouts a bit more consistent. |
| 22-Apr-2005 | Washing Machine FAQ by Ian Tilley (Shrek) added under Electrical Appliances. |
| 20-Apr-2005 | All email address have been coded to reduce the possibility of harvesting by spam-bots. |
| 16-Apr-2005 | Power Tools FAQ contribution from John Rumm of Internode Ltd added. |
| 08-Nov-2004 | Added Pipe Bending section to Plumbing pages. |
| 19-Oct-2004 | Several defunct links deleted and others updated. |
| 24-Sep-2004 | Obsolete section on 'Balancing Central Heating Systems' (on Heating And Plumbing Page 1) replaced by the 'Balancing Central Heating Radiators FAQ' |
| 05-Feb-2003 | Screwfix catalogue/website details updated. |
| 03-Feb-2003 | Lost link 'Sharpening Carbide Tips' restored as 'Dealing With Dull Carbide' |
| 17-Dec-2002 | CMT / Woodcut deleted from DIY Catalogues. They seem to have gone out of business. |
| 30-Nov-2002 | Added links to Ed Sirett's Sealed Heating System FAQ and Gas Fitting FAQ. |
| 18-Sep-2002 | The FAQ web site hosting is now sponsored by Clare Associates giving us a throughput up to 2.5GB/month, which should eliminate bandwidth problems for some time to come. |
| 9-Sep-2002 | Removed the 'Download the FAQ' facility to save on traffic bandwidth. |
| 5-Sep-2002 | The FAQ web site traffic is increasing rapidly. It exceeded the 500MB/month sponsor's limit by 96MB in August, with 750MB being predicted for September. Some site re-organisation to reduce individual file sizes is urgently needed, otherwise the site may have to be closed for the later part of the month when 500MB is reached. |
| 16-Jul-2002 | The FAQ web site hosting is now sponsored by Cyberprog New Media. ABC Group were unable to continue sponsorship. |
| 3-Mar-2002 | www.diyfaq.org.uk DIY FAQ web site hosting sponsored by ABC Group. |
| 5-Nov-2001 | FAQ moved down to diyfaq folder to make room for London Meet photos alongside. |
| 11-Oct-2001 | • New revision published, linked from www.diyfaq.org.uk. • Many broken links fixed, but still a few more to track down. • Spelling/typos fixed - and new ones probably introduced! • Otherwise pretty much as laid out by CliveE • (There are more additions in the pipeline) |
| 6-July-2001 | • Phil Addison takes over from Andrew Gabriel as FAQ Maintainer. All pages updated to show Phil as maintainer |
| 9-Jan-2001 | • Andrew Gabriel took over from CliveE as FAQ Maintainer. All pages updated to show Andrew as maintainer |
| 29-Dec-2000 |
• Andrew Gabriel's Self-Uninstalling Gas Water Heater added to the Humour page |
| 30-Nov-2000 | • The FAQ on Combination Boilers was added |
| 14-Nov-2000 |
• Update "named anchors" by removing spaces, to correct bugs in site navigation |
| 1-Nov-2000 |
• Search facilities added to Contents and Websites pages |
| 28-Oct-2000 |
• All pages now show "UK.D-I-Y FAQ Maintainer" contact
address rather than Compiler and/or HTML author. Last Updated dates not
changed. |
| 07-Oct-2000 | • New "Tool Sharpening" page. |
| 20-Sept-2000 | • New Netiquette Guidelines and Acronyms page. |
| 20-Sept-2000 | • Major rewrite of Introduction page. |
| 8-Sept-2000 | • Details on the Manuals page have been verified by Ian Clowes |
| 18-Nov-1999 | • New "Humour" page. |
| Oct 1999 | • CliveE took over from Matthew Marks as FAQ Maintainer |
| 17-Aug-1999 | • New Web-based FAQ announced, produced by CliveE |
These web pages are largely derived from the work of Matthew
Marks, who
originated the
As the content grew, the FAQs were divided into five broad categories to keep related topics together, to make them more manageable and to keep downloads small. In 1997 CliveE compiled a section of References (DIY manuals, catalogues and websites) which became a FAQ in their own right and were added to Matthew's regular postings. John Schmitt soon realised that the FAQs would be even more useful if they resided on the web in a permanent location and if there was some interaction between them to aid navigation. In 1997 he took a snapshot of the FAQs, converted them to HTML web pages and hosted them on his local server. This worked for a while but pressure of work and the rapid evolution of material at that time meant that the web-based FAQs lagged the newsgroup postings. John was also at that time developing his own excellent FAQs (see links on Contents page).
In 1999 Clive took another snapshot of Matthew's regularly posted FAQs, converted them to HTML and placed them on the eidosnet website under ~ukdiy. This host originally had the advantage that uploads could be made from other ISPs (e.g. using one's employer's network connection ;-)) but that mechanism was withdrawn very soon after. Clive reorganised the content somewhat to keep page sizes small in an attempt to keep download times short. Links were added to aid navigation within the pages and between pages so that anyone arriving in the middle of the site would be able to navigate the whole site. For a while the web pages and the regular newsgroup postings ran side by side but keeping the content in synchronism was a major effort so it was eventually decided to move almost entirely to the web. One newsgroup posting remained: for the benefit of newcomers, Matthew still automatically sent out the FAQ Introduction page to the newsgroup every ten days.
Up until 1999 Matthew was the "FAQ Maintainer", having the last word on what was and was not included. In October 1999 he handed over that responsibility to CliveE. The history from that date is detailed in the table above.