Folks, Butterflies of India website (http://ifoundbutterflies.org) has caught up to March 2010! That was the first time when the server that hosted BOI website crashed. Since then, we had not really completely recovered from the crash because we had lost the template, and all the articles and species pages at that time. Mihir Chhatre had to recreate the template and most of the basic structure, and we were still tweaking those things in early June 2010. Then a few viruses hit the website in late June, eventually forcing a complete shutdown of website development.
In the third week of January 2011, Ullasa Kodandaramaiah and I started looking into all the problems that had dogged the website for many months. In the past three weeks, we think we have sorted out most, if not all the issues that had affected the website. We have improved security and stability of the website (backend stuff), and made some other changes on the website that has strengthened functionality and user-friendliness (frontend stuff). Ullasa is continuing to work on this front. Overall, I think the website is in a better shape than ever before, and that things should run smoothly from now on. In the past three weeks, I have recreated all the species pages that were online before March 2010. The species page count stands at 135 species pages right now. This number includes a few new species pages that we did not have last year, such as that for the Common Lascar (Pantoporia hordonia). Now that things are more or less in order, the real development beyond the “March 2010 version” will start. We hope to reach at least 300 species pages by the end of this year. These should include many fantastic early stages that Balakrishnan Valappil, Saji Kandoth, Hemant Ogale, Milind Bhakare and others have photographed and shared with us on this group recently. The 2011 target of 300 species pages may actually be an easy one. We already have dozens of pictures of NE Indian butterflies submitted by Amol Patwardhan, Arjun Basu Roy, Balakrishnan and Kishen Das. The Media Management Team will hopefully snap into action soon and format these images. We would also like Gaurav Agavekar, Abhijna Desai, Rudra Prasad Das, Yuawaraj Gurjar, Vedawati Padwal, Blaise Periera, Satyendra Kumar Tiwari and others who have contributed many pictures to the website in the past to continue to do so, perhaps with a vastly renewed enthusiasm. Looking forward to good time! Krushnamegh. ------------------------------------------------- Krushnamegh Kunte, PhD Post-doctoral Research Fellow FAS Center for Systems Biology, Harvard University 52 Oxford St., Northwest Lab Room 458.40-3 Cambridge, MA 02138, USA. Ph: (617) 496-0078, Cell: (512) 577-1370, Fax: (617) 495-2196 Email: [email protected] Other emails: [email protected], [email protected] Personal website: http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~kunte/index.htm Indian Foundation for Butterflies: http://ifoundbutterflies.org/ Google profile: http://www.google.com/profiles/krushnamegh -- Enjoy
