As mentioned in a previous post, Microsoft Word is now, by default, saving files with a .docx extention. The problem is that anyone with older versions of Word - and that’s a lot of people - can’t read these files without downloading a patch.

If this is causing you a problem you can easily change the default setting in Word so that it saves all documents in the original .doc format. See this link for how to do it.

How do we keep running the web site when we’re on holiday? There are some areas, such as e-mail, the blog and the forum, that I can access over the Internet but for anything else this could be a real problem.

The trouble is that, even with access to someone else’s computer, it won’t have all of the files and programs that we use. OK, so we could load everything on to a laptop and lug that around, but there’s an easier, free, solution that allows us to actually use the computer at home from any other computer, even if we’re abroad - as long as it’s switched on and connected to the Internet.
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On more than one occasion I have been asked about how best to produce a web site for somebody’s club. Here’s one solution.

The aim of this article is to show you how to make a web site for your organisation for free using Google Sites. It will demand minimal expertise, not much more than basic word processing, and more than one person can have access to add content to the site.The information could all be obtained through Google, but this will give you a step-by-step guide to building a site without having to trawl through lots of help pages.

Download the full article in pdf format to print out (2.4 Mb). It’s 18 pages long, but the majority is made up of screen shots so that you can see what to do.

I have produced an example web site to go with the article. This also contains some further advice, such as how to optimise photographs and how to convert documents to pdf format.
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