Author Topic: Starting a website  (Read 1214 times)

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Offline meteorologistjbp

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Starting a website
« on: December 11, 2018, 12:08:49 AM »
Hi all,

I've read many of your posts regarding different templates...and I'd love to give one of them a shot...but I don't have a personal weather station hooked up to the internet.  Do these templates require such a thing?  It seems like there is a ton of material that wouldn't depend on live observations from a PWS.  Also, I receive GEMPAK data and am wondering if any of you have done any scripting that would incorporate images generated by GEMPAK?  GEMPAK can create a gif and store it on the computer that's running it...I guess I'm just not sure how to get that into FTP/Filezilla and then onto a web page.  I understand that I'm asking a lot...I guess I'm just hoping to learn and experiment...so any combination of assistance/pointing me in the right direction would be greatly appreciated.  Thank you in advance to anyone who can offer some help, and I'm glad to be here!

Justin

Offline ConligWX

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Re: Starting a website
« Reply #1 on: December 11, 2018, 05:05:28 AM »
Hi Justin

I am pretty sure that the vast majority (if not all) of these "templates" are linked to specific Weather Station Hardware.

You could of course setup your own website, create your own pages and hook into other Weather sites that you to obtain the data via an api or Widgets, However most of the users on this forum are owners of weather stations who then either push their data to Wunderground, Met Office, Weathercloud etc and/or hook the data into their personal websites using these templates.
Regards Simon
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Offline Otis

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Re: Starting a website
« Reply #2 on: December 11, 2018, 08:09:37 AM »
Hi Justin,

I use the Saratoga template for my site and have for several years now; I do have a personal weather station operating that feeds data to it.

There was a time when I was using Virtual Weather Station (VWS) software with the template (have since switched to Weather Display).  When using VWS I had many instances where VWS was not updating for various reasons.  What I did when that happened was create a separate Home Page by editing the existing Home Page and deleting areas where “live” weather data from the station would occur.  In essence just showing data obtained from outside sources e.g. NOAA, NWS, WU, etc.

So, from my experience I would say yes you can use a template (at least the Saratoga template) without having an actual station supplying data.  I will say though that it was an effort to stay on top of it and make the changes when VWS failed.  VWS failing was the main reason I switched to Weather Display.

Also, just a note – the link you have to your [future] web site needs to be edited.
It currently is https://www.wxforum.net/www.northshoreweatherservice.com, you need to edit out the portion in the beginning that relates to this forum.
It should be https://www.northshoreweatherservice.com

Anyway, my $0.02

CW3699

Offline Jasiu

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Re: Starting a website
« Reply #3 on: December 11, 2018, 08:31:08 AM »
I don't know what your coding skills are, but the Saratoga template uses nearby METAR data for some of the current conditions that cannot be obtained from the weather station (sky condition, visibility). It would be possible to use that same METAR data for the rest of the conditions rather than the weather station data. Obviously, you'd only get updates on that information when the METAR data is updated.
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Offline meteorologistjbp

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Re: Starting a website
« Reply #4 on: December 11, 2018, 02:42:20 PM »
My coding skills are alright....I’m probably not as good as you guys/girls.  I’m not sure what I want to do as far as using a template or not.  I have GRLevel3 and I’m publishing to my FTP...but I’m not getting the images to load into the script. So that is kind of discouraging lol.   I’m even debating on looking into bootstrap.  I guess at minimum I’d like to get satellite and radar pages going...i see that there are scripts for those.  I just might need some help with that.  I’m just really starting to learn this stuff and I figured maybe I could get a jumpstart by using a template or some scripts to get the ball rolling.  So any advice for a newbie that wants to get started ASAP is pretty much what I’m looking for.   Especially in regards to getting some of these scripts to work...into see how one works...I should be good.

 

anything