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Featured Weather Website - Spring, 2014 - www.weerstation-wilsele.be

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saratogaWX:
Congratulations to Wim van der kuil of Wilsele (Leuven), Belgium for being selected as WXForum.net Featured Weather Website for Spring, 2014.

Wim started in 2008 with his first homepage, and developed a "real" PHP/CSS site in 2011 and that is continuously updated.  Wim may be better known for the excellent Leuven Template Set and the outstanding documentation for the Leuven Template.
His template set supports 7 different weather software, is multilingual and HTML5/UTF-8.  He has successfully adapted many add-on scripts (with permission from the original authors) to make a full-featured template for a personal weather website.  The prime example is in the Weerstation Wisele site winning the award.
As of this writing, there were 108 stations in the USA, Canada and Europe using his template set.

Wim uses a Davis VP2+ station to collect his weather data "because the previous less expensive station had many reception problems".
His VP2+ also has (in addition to the UV and Solar sensors) 2 soil-moisture and 1 extra temperature sensor.

For his web development, Wim uses BBEdit as program editor, and needs no other tools.  The site is strictly HTML/CSS/PHP/JavaScript.

Asked why he wanted a personal weather website, Wim said "The weather is very variable where I live, so it is an important issue around here.
It is especially important with a swimming pool and 4 grand-children living nearby".

Wim responded to "Did any other web sites, weather or otherwise, particularly inspire you and/or your design?" with "obvious, the Carterlake / Saratoga templates". (ed note: thanks!)

For the future, Wim says he has "More plans than time. It is the "testing and idea ground" for my Leuven-Template". So I think we can see many more innovations from Wim in the future.

Wim shares his data with CWOP, but "just for the fun since for weather stations outside North America, there is no quality check".  He also shares with Weather Underground "since the beginning of the site, for 2 reasons: To share the data so that others can use it. And to have a kind of backup for my data."

He first got interested in weather as a child.  "As every person living in this area remembers often coming home from school being soaking wet. That teaches you not to trust anybody who will tell you that it will not rain."

Wim's most rewarding experience in having a weather web site is "helping others getting their sites on-line".

His advice to someone wanting to get started in weather watching as a hobby:
"Start with it. The money gives you countless hours of fun and a lot of forums to share your thoughts about weather / websites / and so on."

Wim's advice to someone wanting to either start a new weather web site or improve the one they already have is:
"Take small steps, first try to create your own HTML-only homepage.
Start with learning HTML/CSS first and eventually PHP."

Wim is 65 years old, a retired IT project-manager with a wife and 10 children+grandchildren. His hobbies of programming and weather observation
have nudged out other hobbies as time goes on.

Congratulations Wim, for your selection as WXForum.net Featured Weather Website for Spring, 2014, and a hearty congratulations to the other nominees as well!
All of your sites are an inspiration to us all.    =D>  =D>  =D>

PaulMy:
Congratulations Wim  =D>
 
and to K3JAE's Weather, Mellos, Carsen Valley and CNY Weather for your fine sites as well.  You and your sites help motivate many of us in developing our own weather websites.
 
And thanks Ken for again doing an excellent job on the WXForum.net Featured Weather Website undertaking.
Paul

CNYWeather:
Congratulations Wim  =D>

Great site & very nice templates you make!!

cospringswx:
Congrats.

ed2kayak:
NIce Job!

 =D>

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