Keeping track of every Jaguar E-Type, with your help.
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My database server, which is shared between me and goddess knows who else, has been having a lot of issues lately. Unfortunately, site finances are just shy of being able to justify moving to a dedicated server for the data sites…anyway, if you try the site and you get an error message, try again in a bit.

Mainly thanks to the intrepid efforts of PaulS, there are now more than 1,000 Saloons on SaloonData.com.

So, mid-year, how are we doing on our end-of-year guesses?

• XKE Data
  9,276 cars, 48,207 photos. Looks like it might be a bit tough to get to 10,000 cars, but 50,000 photos should be no problem.
• XK Data
  3,573 cars, 8,841 photos. I’m cautiously hopeful there might be 4,000 XKs, and 10,000 photos should be the case.
• Saloon Data
  1,003 cars, 3,010 photos. I’d be a bit surprised if this exceeds 1,100 cars and 3,300 photos.
• XJS Data
  890 cars, 2,631 photos. I think 1,000 cars is probably about right, with 3,000 photos. Many thanks to jagman for his intrepid efforts on this site.
• Healey Data
  106 cars, 774 photos. This site is an experiment (in a way) as to what happens if you just start the site from scratch without a “champion.” I seeded it with about 80 cars, and Paul has added a few. It goes to show just how much effort Paul puts in on the site. We might get to 200 cars and 1,000 photos by year’s end.

Total: 14,848 cars, 63,463 photos.

I’ve received a fabulous batch of XJS info from Geoffrey Green. I hope to add it by month’s end…it’s really great stuff.

Sorry about the lack of updates here, but work has been keeping me busy, plus the never-ending battle against spammers…sigh.

I changed the way spam entries are attempted to be captured to make it less of a pain to add an entry about cars. I swear, I’m gonna can the forums again…we’ll see.

A site visitor kindly pointed out that the nav bar on the left had some issues in IE…they should be fixed now. Please feel free to email me if you see something that doesn’t look right. This must have been the case for weeks. Not good!

For some reason, the last three months or so this site has periods of slow database performance which we weren’t suffering from before. The only real solution is to go from shared hosting to hanging our own box on the network, I’m weighing the costs. So bear with us if you find the site a bit slow!

I’ve tested this in Firefox, IE7 and IE6. It seems to be working. I have not tested it on a Mac, as mine died, but it should work in Firefox and Safari on the Mac. I have no idea about Opera…can’t make any promises there. Please let me know if it isn’t working, after being sure your cache is refreshed.

There’s another new site, “Healey Data“ to record the “big” Austin Healey models–the 100, 100 Six and 3000. I’ve run Big Healeys at austinhealey.com for ten years or more, though it’s essentially been fallow since 1999! I figured the easiest way for me to make for a more up-to-date version was to adapt this model to the Healey site, since I don’t have time to maintain both. I’ll probably keep the original around as a “museum piece” as it is fun as an example of a “cutting edge” 1995/1996 web site.

There are still a few things needed on the new site (please let me know of any bugs you find!), but give it a shot if you’re interested in Healeys.

One of the things I’m working on adapting to all of the data sites is the concept of a “catalog” as found on the original Healey site. This would be a location for technical info, a model overview, some historic comparisons–the color guides currently found in the resources section would live there, too. I’d also like to do “10 minute buyer’s guides” that would live in this new section.

These 10 minute guides would not be comprehensive like the one our friend Pete Crespin has written for the E-Type. Rather, they would be quick and dirty photo guides that would tell you whether a car you’re looking at is worth investigating further or is something to run from as fast as you can–or pay very little for. Sort of a cheat sheet to quickly assess the quality of a car–how many of us take as long as we should when looking at a car as a buyer? But there are usually half a dozen places to peek at that will really tell you a lot about a car. That’s what I want to cover.

In any case, this all takes time, and I would love help on these pieces if you’re of a mind.

The tabs at top right will probably be replaced with a drop down box as the sites will soon be too numerous for the tabs to accommodate (I’m working on a Sunbeam Talbot [!] version of these sites by request). JavaScript browsers will get a fancy-pants version while non-JavaScript browsers will get a plain drop down box.

The front page of the web sites now feature slide shows. I realize that a fair number of folks have been simply reloading the front page to make their own impromptu slide show–now it’s done for you.

IE 7, Firefox and Safari users get a semi-transparent background on the caption bar; IE 6 users get a solid background.

Update: I don’t really have bandwidth issues at this point, but if I do, I may limit the slideshows to, say, 100 images per session. I may do that anyway just in case someone boots up the site and then goes on vacation.

Update update: I set the limit at 200 slides, which is over half an hour of viewing pleasure. It resets if you visit any other page on the site…so it’s really just to prevent the vacation scenario.

You’ll note that the left nav bar now sports a “sponsors” addition. This site is a big-time money losing proposition, which is perfectly in keeping with my experiences with Jaguars in general, and not something I fret too much about. Still, money does buy happiness parts (or pays hosting, more to the point).

The Cafe Press store helped pay the hosting a bit, but pretty much everyone who needed a T-shirt has one, and calendar sales this past season were pretty flat–surprisingly so, I felt. (On the other hand, because Cafe Press charges me retail for calendars, to make a few dollars for the site they end up costing you $20 apiece, which is pretty steep tribute–so perhaps the slow sales are understandable.) The store is still there, and I encourage you to see if there’s something you can’t live without. I’ll probably still add new items occasionally; heck, I need T-shirts now and again. Plus the store was the subject of some ribbing from another site, which amused me to no end.

When I put together the “on eBay” page it was done as a service for me site users to enjoy. To use their widget, however, I needed to join their affiliate program, and they kick back a bit of their auction fees if people bid and win items if they arrive at eBay via a link from this site. If you’re an eBay shopper, please consider using this site as a launching point for your forays into the wilds of online auctions–it doesn’t cost you anything and I’ll never be able to hang out with Bill Gates and Warren Buffet if you don’t.

Motorbooks was another link offered by the affiliate program that seemed a good fit here, and they have several books I’ve never seen, so I’m giving them a shot. I suspect I’ll still have to keep my day job. Thanks to anyone who does visit and purchase goodies from our sponsors.

Web advertising programs are exciting to think about but the math is daunting. You will not see the ubiquitous Google ads here for that very reason…they’re considerably more intrusive, their terms of service bug me, and the return is quite meager in this particular backwater of the internet.