One of the fascinating things about writing a website is that the whole project remains flexible. You can always change everything, from the smallest aspect of phrasing to the entire overall structure. If you write a book, there comes a moment when it becomes set in stone – you have to pack up the final draft and send it off to the publisher – but a website always remains 'live'. It can, and should, adapt to new circumstances; the smart ideas of yesterday that look not-so-smart today can be replaced; and the site can learn just as its author learns.

There are downsides, of course, the main one being that it's technically not quite as easy as it might seem. You can indeed simply rename a page and change its location in the structure (and all subordinate pages obediently change location too) – but there's the problem of links. The minute you change the address of a page, then all hyperlinks involving that address break and stop working. So you have to re-establish each individually, which involves an average of 15 different clicks of the mouse – a tedious, repetitive, but necessary labour.

Anyway, the English B website is starting a radical re-vamp, a phase of significant evolution. This involves several changes of emphasis:

Accomodating the NEW Subject Guide … When I started the site, the new Subject Guide was still not published (indeed was not even clearly defined), and so the basis of the whole site structure was the current Subject Guide. This context is now changing: the current Guide has only three exam sessions left (Nov. '11, May '12, and Nov. '12), and teaching the new Guide starts in September 2011, for first examination in May 2013. So, clearly, materials specific to the current Guide will have to be phased out – and the new Guide will gradually become the fundamental rationale for the design of the site. I plan the changeover to be complete by September 2012.

Expanding Student Access … The original concept of the site was that it was to be above all a site for teachers – sophisticated, challenging ideas for intelligent professionals. That remains the prime aim, but as the collective effort of InThinking has developed, we have become aware of the value of making sections of the site directly available to students – so the 'Student Access' option was constructed. This means that any signed-up teacher can choose pages from those available on the Student Access List, and provide these to students, online.
      The major expansion here will be to provide Online Exercises to practise common, key grammar issues – for example, how to use the Articles (have a look at About articles 1 ). The idea is that teachers can diagnose that a student has one of these problems, and then refer him or her, via Student Access, to the relevant pages, there to study a detailed explanation, and then work through the exercises. Doing the exercises online means that the students can check their answers, and receive explanations about the grammar choice in each question.

Teaching Materials … This complete list of all teaching materials (handouts, projections, etc) was only devised a few months ago. It is currently organised simply according to file type, but I would like the search mechanism to be much more detailed and effective in terms of content and teaching purpose. This will involve changes to the software, which may take some time … but that is the clear goal. Jordi the Webmaster is working on this as I write.

Prune, edit, simplify … A year and a half into the project, some of the earlier pages are now beginning to look a bit … primitive? In addition, some pages are rather over-written and need to be made more accessibly concise. This particularly applies to various 'access' pages – pages which are simply there to create a section of the hierarchy, and point people in the right directions.

That said, the essence of the site remains the same – to discuss how to teach English B in as challenging, effective and stimulating a way as possible; and to supply interesting teaching techniques combined with lively attractive materials. The 'things to do' clipboard beside me here has a master list of about 50 specific ideas for pages, plus other vaguer notions.The problem is that every page I do suggests two or three more. Sisyphus had it easy ...