Frequently Asked Questions
- What are the main differences between Spanglefish 2 and 3?
Spanglefish 3 is a completely new system. This is unlike the transition from Spanglefish 1 to 2. Both of those systems were on the same server, running from the same database. This made it easy and painless to switch sites from V1 to V2, but also restricted how much change we could make.
Because of this Spanglefish 2 was never fully mobile-friendly and we were unable to make some changes we'd have liked to.
The new Spanglefish 3 system allows us to use the most modern web development techniques.
- Sites use the new CSS grid facility to be fully responsive (mobile-friendly).
- This also allows us to give more flexibility in layout. Sites are not restricted to a particular width.
- Previous versions of Spanglefish had dedicated pages such as News or FAQ. Version 3 allows various blocks on a page. This means you could have two news pages, three different forms or multiple maps on different pages.
- The new system is set up include tags which social networks such as Facebook or Twitter will use to correctly display data from your site when someone posts a link to your page.
- You can easily create slideshows for the header of your site, which wasn't possible without lots of complicated scripting on version 2. And you can have different ones on different pages.
- Administration has been separated more from design so that you can be confident in allowing someone to edit the site without worrying that they might ruin the look of the site.
- Are sites on Spanglefish 3 compliant with the Public Sector Bodies Accessibility Regulations 2018
We believe the system this site is built on fully complies with the Public Sector Bodies Accessibility Regulations 2018. Compliance however also requires that site owners ensure that any content they add to the system or changes to colour schemes etc also comply.
Every site can have an Accessibility Statement. You'll see ours in the menu at the foot of the page.
- Can this system host videos?
We don't allow the upload and hosting of videos on the Spanglefish 3 system, but you can embed videos hosted on other services like Youtube or Vimeo as in the sample block further down this page.
- Can sites have private pages?
Yes, like Spanglefish 2 you can set pages as Protected which are only visible to logged in editors.
- How much does a Spanglefish 3 site cost?
Spanglefish charges £103 per annum inc VAT for a website on this system including domain registration and an email address, or £78 per annum inc VAT if you have registered your domain elsewhere.
- What about SSL certificates?
All sites on Spanglefish 3 will have an SSL certificate included in the price and will run on HTTPS only.
- What is Spanglefish's history with Parish and Community Council websites.
Version 1 of Spanglefish was set up in 2005, and the first ever website on it was for Douglas Community Council in Scotland.
Version 2 of Spanglefish was created in 2012.
Spanglefish has hosted tens of thousands of websites in this time, including around 500 parish and community council sites.
We have now built Version 3 to cope with changes in security, accessibility and mobile internet use over the intervening years, and hope to migrate many of our council customers over.
- Can I have a free Spanglefish 3 site?
Sorry, we don't plan to supply free sites on Spanglefish 3. We could do this in years past as it was possible to make some money from Google Adwords on free sites to cover our costs, but that model doesn't work now - advertising on small websites doesn't make any money nowadays.