Background
The Master Mummers website is the third folk drama website that I have created.
The first was a personal website - http://freespace.virgin.net/peter.millington1/ - hosted by my home ISP (later moved to http://petemillington.webspace.virginmedia.com/). It has since moved yet again to http://petemillington.uk/. It now holds a bibliography of my research publications, including full texts of many of the articles.
The second was the Folk Play Research website (https://folkplay.info/), which originally was a spin-off from my PhD research and my personal website. This became the website of the Traditional Drama Research Group (TDRG), and significant additions were contributed by other members of the Group. This website continues to hold extensive information resources.
In technical terms, the original Folk Play Research website was made up of static web pages, although most were generated from databases held on my home computer. This situation placed too much reliance on me personally and constrained participation by other contributors, and this approach would not have been sustainable in the long term. This website is now managed independently by the TDRG and has since been totally revamped.
The Master Mummers Approach
My latest website - the Master Mummers website - is intended to complement and supplement the Folk Play Research website. There should be no duplication of resources, except perhaps to revive a permanently defunct service, or where significant functional improvements can be made. The Master Mummers website uses broadly the same approach as the Folk Play Research website, with any research articles being peer-reviewed.
The technical aspects are what make this website different from the others, in that it uses database technology to provide interactive searching and to display most information and maps dynamically. Furthermore, new resources are being built so that the information can be updated and managed wherever possible by several editors. The hope is that this approach will be more sustainable. Please contact me for further details, if you would like to participate as an editor.
Peter Millington
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