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The Alternative Public Website
Version 5
Version 5.0.1 can be downloaded from here. (Updated 11/10/2025).
New version 5
Version 5 of the “Alternative Public Website” introduces alternative menu placements, revised colour themes and the use of css grids where appropriate. It supports users own logos1) and supports a banner background image. There has also been a number of changes to the background processing of charts and other features. You can alter the Dashboard page Information Text by editing the file index-info.html file.
Installing
The site is provided as a zip file which needs to be extracted - I recommend that you do this to somewhere outside the CumulusMX structure so that you do not loose the default public website supplied with CumulusMX. By default, it extracts to a folder apw.
If you have a web server installed on your home system, you could upload it there for development. You will also need to copy the CumulusMX data files to the web server as well.
Configuration
Like previous versions of the Alternative Public Website, it needs to be configured to access your data and your NOAA reports. This is done in one place - the page-control.js file.
If you use the default configuration for uploading data from CumulusMX to your website, the default settings should provide access correctly to your data. If you upload your data, or reports elsewhere, then you will need to edit this file to point to the required locations.
You should view the configure page for full details.
Extra Data Features
There are a number of data items provided by CumulusMX that can be displayed on the Dashboard. However, these need to be included in the websitedataT.json file on your CumulusMX installation. The file is located in the CumulusMX/web folder. The location of these extra snippets is unimportant. You can click on the tabs in each of these panels to download the contents.
Lightning Strikes
If you have a lightning strikes sensor then you can add the following webtags.
- Lightning.json
"LightningStrikesToday":"<#LightningStrikesToday>", "LightningDistance":"<#LightningDistance>", "LightningTime":"<#LightningTime format="ddd d MMM yyyy"> <#LightningTime>",
WetBulb readings
Add the following to the websitedataT.json file. The location for either of these additions is not critical.
- wetbulb.json
"wetbulb":"<#wetbulb>",
If using either of these extras, you do need to pay particular attention to line endings. If added at the end you will need to add a comma to the last line of the existing file.
Fonts
To make all the fonts used on the site responsive there sizes are calculated based on the site width from 1200px down to 400px. This is done using a css feature called clamp. In order to do this I use a website Using Clamp which provides an easy way to specify the range of sizes required.
The base font size is specified in the main.css file on line 54. All other fonts are based as a percentage of this size.