ToffeeWeb — Frequently Asked Questions

• Why "ToffeeWeb"?
• How long has TW been running?
• What tools do you use?
• Which browser is best for TW?
• You're not standards-compliant, though
• And screen resolution?
• Why are you so flippin' negative?
• Why isn't the Forum at ToffeeWeb.com?
• What schism?
• Must you carry adverts?
• Why don't you publish the full fixture list?

Why "ToffeeWeb"?
OK, we'll answer this question for the non-Evertonians and, presumably, non-football fans among you. Everton Football Club's nickname is "The Toffees" so while that doesn't make for the coolest of monickers for a website, it means something to us Blues (the team plays in blue, to answer your next question). Why "The Toffees"?

How long has the site been running?
ToffeeWeb started out as a nameless information resource in 1994 when Marko Poutiainen, an Finnish Evertonian, decided to put his knowledge of the early Web to use and start a site about the Blues. He recruited Michael Kenrick whom he "met" online to assist him in translating his content into English and the relationship flourished to the point where Michael eventually took up full editorial and publishing control.

In 2001, ToffeeWeb.org (as it had come to be known) merged with Evertonia.com, another large site that had been running in parallel with TW since 1996 and had garnered a similar-sized readership. The new site moved to ToffeeWeb.com and the rest, as they say, is history.

What tools do you use to build, design and maintain the site?
The site is designed as a series of comps in Adobe Photoshop before being exported as web graphics and referenced by ASP, XHTML and CSS code in Adobe/Macromedia Dreamweaver. On-going page maintenance is done in either Dreamweaver or MS Frontpage, in the case of the less Web-development-savvy on the team.

Our news, mailbag and article submissions are driven by a small custom-built content management system.

For which browsers is the site designed?
ToffeeWeb should work best in newer, standards-compliant browsers like Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer 7 and Safari (on the Mac). Why? Because the site now uses CSS/XHTML for layout instead of the out-dated practice of using tables. Older browsers (IE6 in particular) are not fully standards-compliant and this causes some of our pages to either "break" or not display as intended. To be honest, Firefox is a much better browser than anything Microsoft has developed so you're better off with it for all your web surfing needs.

OK, but your site isn't standards-compliant, is it?
No, it's not... but is much better than it used to be. Honestly, ToffeeWeb isn't going to be standards-compliant for a very long time, chiefly because three of the four people running the site are not web designers/developers and the HTML they do know is based on some very old practices. That will change over time but coding valid CSS and XHTML is a lot more involved than slapping together the tag soup of old, ya know!

And which screen resolution is best for viewing TW?
Anything 1024x786 or above is fine. If your monitor is set to 800x600 or smaller, you'll notice that horizontal scroll-bars appear at the bottom of your browser because the site is larger than your screen. Almost all newer CRT and LCD monitors are all able to display 1024x768 or higher; if you're on an older system, you can right-click on your MS Windows desktop, select "Properties" and then choose the "Settings" tab to see what screen resolutions are available to you.

Why are you always so flippin' negative?
We're not always negative and anyway we prefer "realistic" because we call it how we see it. We are old-school Evertonians who believe in adhering to our club's famous old motto as closely as is practical. If that means whingeing that the team's style of play is dull or we're not scoring enough goals even if we're winning, then so be it.

For us, until Everton are winning the Championship year in, year out — stop laughing at the back! — there is always room for improvement. Everton FC is built on the traditions of excellence established by the likes of Dean, Lawton, Sagar, Catterick, Young, Labone, Harvey, Ball, Kendall, etc, and we expect the current custodians of the club to do their utmost to uphold them in every respect.

Why is the ToffeeWeb Forum not hosted at toffeeweb.com?
Running the site and the forum simultaneously is just plain too much work for our small team — added to which there were frequent glitches when it was running on our host server — so we jumped at Garry's suggestion that he host and run the Forum on our behalf.

It's still the ToffeeWeb Forum, we just out-sourced it!

Previous to its brief existence on Kenny Fogarty's server our forum was established as "The People's Forum" not long after David Moyes uttered the associated, timeless phrase. By around the same time, the content of the board had become a little inflammatory and derogatory towards the Everton hierarchy and we were coming under pressure from the club's communications department to clamp down on some libellous postings.

Seeing as the forum had dropped "ToffeeWeb" its name and was now administered by non-TW staff, we decided to loosen our association with it in order to protect our ties with Everton FC, on whom we rely for the provision of official photographs and images and with whom we have always enjoyed an amicable and mutually beneficial relationship.

Although the People's Forum eventually dropped "ToffeeWeb" from its URL most people outside the board —especially those who like to perpetuate the bemusing schism that has developed among the Everton online community — still refer to the People's Forum as ToffeeWeb because of the historical connection.

What is this "schism" of which you speak?
In the summer of 2004, when a boardroom split threatened to tear Everton apart, opinion among the Everton online community devolved into two camps: those entirely loyal to Chairman Bill Kenwright (e.g. Bluekipper and WSAG) and those who dared to question his actions and motives with regard to the club (ToffeeWeb.com and The People's Forum). So now, those in the pro-BK camp tend view the rest of us with an ire and mistrust normally reserved for Liverpool fans.

Must you carry all those adverts?
In short, yes. This site is run by just two three four people who juggle their responsibilities to ToffeeWeb with regular 9 to 5 (ish!) jobs... and we don't get paid for it! The small amount of advertising revenue we glean from those ads helps cover our running costs. Be thankful that they're so unintrusive — it could be a lot worse, believe us!

Why don't you publish the full fixture list?
A few seasons ago, the Football Association took the bizarre step of copyrighting the Premier League fixture lists. Even though once published, it's information in the public domain, they decided to require all websites and newspapers to purchase a license to print the fixture list for a club or clubs. We could obtain a license (although it would double our operating costs) but don't feel like justifying what we believe to be a pretty silly regulation. And, yes, we could fight them on this but we're pretty sure that our hosts would comply with the request by a major sports organisation to shut down an unofficial website for copyright infringement!