British Six Day Races Total 84

The number of multi-day track races in Britain just keeps growing. The latest races that had general newspaper reports are ones at Newcastle in 1883 and Bingley Hall, Birmingham in 1895.

Having found so many , are there still more to be found?

Well the latest reports about the 1883 Six at Middlesborough state that William Parkes [Park] had recently won at Sunderland and North Shields - but so far only the reports of North Shields have been traced. And it does seem unusual that no races have been found for anywhere in England during the whole of 1882. So it seems likely that the total will grow by a few more before I move on to the next project.

More Sixes for Aberdeen

More searches of press reports have re-discovered some of the multi-day track racing held during  the 1880's in Aberdeen. Last time the searches had produced four new races - and today there has been another two found.

That makes a total of 18 for Aberdeen and 28 for Scotland - see http://www.sixday.org.uk/html/the_beginnings.html

Aberdeen's Cycling Past

Four more "six-day" races have been found in the press archives this week - and all of them were held in Aberdeen!

I had already found 12 races in the city before so finding four more was quite a surprise. The latest discoveries mean that 26 multi-day track cycle races have been found in Scotland - with the suggestion than there are yet more to be found in Edinburgh.

And the latest results mean that a total of 80 races from the Victorian era have been traced - many more than were known or expected just a year ago.

Sheffield's Place in Cycling History

Over at SixDay.org.uk a new page has been created covering the "Lady Bicyclists" who raced indoors over Christmas at Sheffield in 1889.

Not only was it new to see "Ladies" competing on the track - but it was some six years before the first women's six day race - held in London. Now this 1889 race was only over five days - so is not officially a "Six" - but it was followed immediately by a 100 mile race over two days. In this second event the same ladies competed against men; and men that had not been racing over the previous five days. So not a Six - but just as hard and even longer!

Racing came back to Sheffield in 1895 - with a full Six Day; but from then to this day there have been no more indoor cycle races for the steel city to enjoy.

Link - http://www.sixday.org.uk/html/1889_sheffield.html

Crazy About Belgium

My enquiry about why the web site "Crazy About Belgium" was off line - has now had a reply.

And it's been discontinued for the time being because the authors have so much work to do on their other projects. So nice to hear that there is plenty of work around for them - a good problem to have these days.

Retro Refresh

The past few days have been spent updating the layout and content of the web pages at InternationalCycleSport.com.

The main objective being to improve the layout of the ICS magazine section and add a new batch of the back-issue covers. This latest update means that there are now only a small number of gaps remaining for the entire period from 1968 to 1984 - the life of the magazine.

Because so many pages have now been changed - plus there are a few yet be completed - this may have introduced some new bugs. Let us know if you spot any!

Also the font has been changed to one that should read easier on all platforms - desktop, laptop, tablet or smart phone - and under all modern browsers. Well that's the plan....

Updates at ICS

With the cycling road season starting in Europe - despite the bad weather - and this week's track racing at London' new Olympic Velodrome I really had to find some time to do some work on some of my rambling blogs / websites.

First up is IntenationalCycleSport.com - where the six British victories on the road really had to be acknowledged. While updating the news I found that my links to "Crazy About Belgium" had all stopped working - so that needed more changes and sending out a couple of e-mails to check if it was a temporary or permanent closure.

Also today a copy of Coureur / Sporting Cyclist for 1966 turned up from Sandy Gilchrist - so that is another mag in the Tour-Racing pending pile ....

But today's searches for anything new about the London Six Day Races drew a blank again - so nothing today for SixDay.org.uk site.

Digging through the code

Having had a chance to check out the code it has become clear that Lanius includes stuff from earlier projects. Some certainly comes from Limbo CMS - a product that has also disappeared. Limbo was last updated in March 2006 and almost all the webpages have been archived.

Also it seems like Drake CMS was just Lanius with a different layout template. According to one forum entry Drake CMS was re-branded as Lanius around 2006?

Anyway all of that is rather academic if what we have now does not do the job. We just need it to keep working in a real world situation. So probably best to limit the work on Lanius and spend any time saved finding a better solution for 2012 onwards.

Fixing the broken links

Now that Lanius has gone it is important to go through the modules fixing or removing the invalid links. Without any obvious alternative CMS most links are being simply removed or de-activated to avoid misleading any casual surfer.

The graphics are also being changed as and when necessary - with our kookaburra substituting for the former bird-based design!

Since our programming skills are a little rusty - or lost entirely - this could take awhile.

Lanius CMS was a light-weight Content Managment System (CMS) with one of the broadest host compatibilities and performances around. It was - and possibly still is - perfect for those that only want to run small, ligtweight websites, although capable of handling larger sites.

HOWEVER it is no longer supported and its home web site has closed down. Also our first attempt at using it only worked for awhile - before crashing or more likely being hacked. This is now our second attempt - and IF it keeps working / hacker free it should be able to provide Tour-Racing, International Cycle Sport and SixDay.org.uk with that missing feedback functionality ....

If you are experiencing troubles using Lanius CMS - then you are pretty much on your own. We had to start again from a clean install once something failed! However you can still download the full set of install files from one of the software archives.

BUT as yet we have not found an alternative CMS with such a wide range of functions but only a small technical requirement - for example no SQL datbase. Does anyone know of an equivalent CMS that operates with minimal extras?