FAQ

The Frequently Asked Questions:

Site Ethos:

Mike first used the internet over 30 years ago, he became a daily email user 20 years ago, he has been building web sites since '93. So he has been around long enough to remember when the Internet was a place full of useful stuff. Stuff which was there just because somebody thought it was a good idea, and appreciated the ability to make information available. Back then, if we put something useful up, it was because everybody else did, and we could find and use everybody elses' useful information.

This site is still like that. It doesn't make us rich. We don't want to be rich (Well, actually, we do. But it ain't going to happen off this site :) Nowadays, with the rise of advertising on the web, it makes a bit of income, which is nice, and enables us to spend a bit of time looking after it, developing new features, and paying for its hosting.

But it is still just that 'useful place'. We are not trying to sell you anything. We don't charge for inclusion in the listing. We don't charge for accessing information. We just want to make it available.

These listings, how do they work:

Its all human-moderated. Anybody can suggest a link for inclusion. We check them out, and add them to the listings by rebuilding the pages every week or two.

We include entries of interest to the UK (and Eire), though we are happy to add European stuff where it is useful, and links to 'Tours of Outer Mongolia'; hard-to-get Custom parts you will ship to the UK, etc. The only criteria is that it would be useful to the UK market.

Having said that, many links will interest people in other parts. For example, we have links to a lot of stuff about Classic British Bikes. So, for example, if you are a dealer in Classic Triumph Parts in Singapore, we'll be happy to include your site.

Please tell me if you find dead or inappropriate links - things change on the web and we can't check every link every day !

Terms of Engagement:

Our sister site motorcycle.org.uk maintains non-profit web space for groups promoting the interests of fellow motorcyclists.

Who owns this:

The domain name and web space motorcycle.co.uk is managed by:
Mike Forrester at motorcycle.co.uk
mike@motorcycle.co.uk

Mike also holds registration for the sister site motorcycle.org.uk.

We are based in Scotland, on the outskirts of Edinburgh.

   Yes, its all ©motorcycle.co.uk
motorcycle.co.uk has no official connection with motorcycle.com - we just wish we lived in California and got to drive all the cool bikes they do ;)

Who is Out There Consulting Ltd ?

If you are dealing with motorcycle.co.uk or the Classic Car List in some business capacity, your relationship will be with Out There Consulting Ltd. This is a UK-registered Limited Company. It is also VAT registered.

Why was this site one big page - but is not now ?

We worried about this for many years. We always took the view that one big page was better. Suppose you: want to: look at the new Yahokukis, find a dealer, check out insurance. That would need 3 separate page loads if they were on separate pages. If you get it all on one page, its a bigger load for the one page - but then its a lot quicker to jump around between sections. So, overall, you get quicker access to what you want.

But, when the one big page page got over 400K in size, something had to be done. So, a multiple page version was created. Now, with it all being database-driven, and large amounts of information, and a bunch of other small logistic reasons - not least because I run this in my spare time ! - the one-big-page finally had to go.

If you preferred the one big page, mail us and tell us why. If there's some reason we haven't thought of and enough people object, we will reconsider.

 

Do I know you ?

I'm not about to put my address and stuff here, but you may know me from early web days as mif, perhaps from the ogri/Ixion lists. Pre web, I worked in Aber, then Dundee. Now I do commercial training: web design, JavaScript, XML, ...

You may see me about in Scotland getting slightly muddy on an ex-army Armstrong; roaming Europe on a Turquoise Boxer, flying around Edinburgh on one of my Boxers, a ratty K75, Honda Helix, or whatever else is running and I want to play on that day.....

Or if I you can see me through the - Hey, its old, it gets to smoke a bit - haze from the exhaust, a classic Merc S-Class coupe. Or the SWB SIII, the converted-ambulance Camper, or that Toyota Shed which serves as reliable daily driver.

 

Technical Notes

motorcycle.co.uk and motorcycle.org.uk used to live on Linux/Apache, and very reliable it was too. It used php for database access.

Few years ago, we moved to a Microsoft platform, and link moderation is now driven by JavaScript ASPs. I know it doesn't look like its database driven, since you access various_pages.html. It is a 'compiled' site. That is, I only run the ASP system when I moderate submissions and recompile pages from the new data - typically every few days - which generates the static files you see.

Being rather keen on XML, I can provide XML data feeds of the listings, in rss or whatever you want. I'm ready to go, I'm just waiting for the rest of the world to catch up and ask for it :) More here.

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We have a Policy on HTML Standards and Accessibility.

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The site has moved around a bit over the years, but we are currently hosted at a company in North-East Scotland, Zincweb. Decent folk, we are happy to recommend them as a hosting company.

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And finally, refresh this page, and the wee grey bike in the corner may change. ...Yeah, yeah, Mike, very clever, a wee bit of Javascript Math.random, ....