There have been a few rumblings about Third Space Books – who owns it and what you can buy on it have certainly gained quite high readings on the blog-richter scale. However, being someone who designs websites for a quasi-living, I have been quite intrigued about why the site looks the way it does.

For those not-in-the-know, Third Space Books (TSB) is the online bookseller for SSG, the company that took over SPCK and then made a number of mistakes (but not necessarily in that order). In case you are too lazy to click on the link that I have kindly provided for you, the site looks a little like this:

The first thing that struck me about the site was its colour scheme. It’s fairly hard to ignore – and not something that I would instantly see as being very “Orthodox”. In fact, a quick search on Google Images for “Orthodox” reveals a somewhat overwhelming array of browns:

This made me a little suspicious as to who had actually designed this websites. A web designers role is to make the website seem fairly natural in its surroundings. I choose this layout for my website because I feel it reflects who I am. Similarly, the website I designed here, is in keeping with the personality of the group it represents. The fact that TSB seems to buck that trend suggested to me that it wasn’t designed by someone whose living it is to design these things.

My suspicions were further confirmed when I looked at the bottom of the webpage:

Joomla Templates by Joomlashack

Joomla is known as a Content Management System – a little like WordPress (like what this website runs off), it is a way for website owners to change the material on their site without knowing any code, and without hiring anybody to do it for them. Moreover, Joomla is free. Joomlashack is a website that sells pre-designed templates for those who want a site to look good, but don’t want to pay the price for having it professionally designed. It didn’t take long for me to find a template that looked quite similar to TSB’s. Here they are compared:

Obviously, there are subtle differences, but the overall feel is the same – particularly in the title. Look in the code for TSB shows that it is the same template as well.

As for the book selling part, and why there are some fairly controversial books in stock, all is explained when you look at this site from Amazon. In total, I would estimate that the TSB site cost around $100 to set up. I personally do not like the fact that this store did not bother to try and be unique, and instead apparently attempted to get ‘online’ as quickly and cheaply as possible.

Had a web designer designed this site, it possibly would have cost them about $1000 – $1500. It’s a shame SSG didn’t have that kind of money.

I’ve been learning about St. Stephen the Great Charitable Trust. In particular, I have been watching a video about their plans to “Rescue Britain’s Christian Heritage“. Clearly, us Brits are not able to cope with the sheer amount of Christian Heritage that we have acquired, and so it is necessary for an American society to do it for us. Thank goodness.

Being a bit of a geek, the first thing I found out about SSG was who ran, updated, and owned the website on which I found the video. For those not in-the-know, every website has information about it published on the WHOIS database. This is the WHOIS record for ststephentrust.org.uk:

The Registrant’s address isn’t really a surprise. It’s the office of our friend Mark Brewer – a hard working man with a surprisingly high pitched voice. The bit that surprised me was the name of the Registrant, and who they were Trading as.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but a martyr is usually someone who is dead. Forty martyrs would therefore be forty dead people. The Forty Holy Martyrs of Sebaste were forty Christian people condemned to freeze to death next to a icy pond on a bitterly cold night – only for the survivors to be burned the next morning. It seems unlikely that these forty people had a meeting during the night and decided to register the domain name ststephentrust.org.uk for two reasons:

1. The martyrs died in the year 320AD. Tim Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web in 1989. I know it’s important to plan ahead, but I think 1,669 years is a little extreme.
2. The martyrs had very little to do with St. Stephen the Great – who lived 1200 years after the martyrs died.

This leaves only one possible explanation. Mark Brewer was able to summon up the martyrs, persuade them that there was great benefit in registering the domain name, and then return them to wherever they had come from without ever announcing his incredible deed – he is, after all, a very private man.

That is the only explanation I can think of – it would be wrong, possibly even libellous, for him to have claimed the martyrs supported the website without their permission.

On another, quite similar, note, I found this article from The Rev’d Dr. Christian Troll rather amusing.