Latest News From Tracing our History

There have been a number of things happening at Tracing our History over the last couple of days, including the overhaul of Kevin’s Portal as mentioned in an earlier post. The latest happenings are listed below:

1. The latest issue of Research has been completed and is now available online via the link below:
   http://tracingourhistory.com/newsletter/research.html

2. The first collaboration project has been launched via the Tracing our History Stixyboard (a password is required – please request one). Details of the project and how to use Stixyboard are covered in the above-mentioned newsletter.

3. Collaboration features of the Tracing our History site have been moved to a new section of the site. Visit the collaboration page at:
   http://tracingourhistory.com/collaboration.html

4. The Kevin’s Portal updates can be found at:
   http://kevinmatthews.zxq.net/

   The updates and overhaul at Kevin’s Portal are also covered in the newsletter.

 

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Tracing our History: New Domain Name

I have just registered the domain name tracingourhistory.com for my family history site. I will no longer be updating the old site at http://particularbaptist.com/matthewshistory/index.html .

So what does this mean? You will need to continue to use the old site for the next couple of months while I build the new site/transfer files. When the work is completed I will add a link to the new site (at the old site) directing users to it. This work will need to be completed by June 2011, for this is when I will no longer have an account at the current host. The new domain, tracingourhistory.com, will be on a new host site. This will save me a fair amount of money over time.

The new site will bring all the sites associated with my family history under the same name of ‘Tracing our History.’ This name takes the focus of any one particular surname such as Blanch, Lilley or Matthews, and allows the user of my site to look at all the surnames being researched without bias to any one in particular. I want to be able to include all of the family in my collaborative and interactive research site/s.

By doing this I am hoping to establish the next step in my family history research and provide a much better tool for my family and those family members yet to come.

You will be able to follow my progress on the new site by visiting the tracingourhistory.com site. This Blog will also follow progress on the site and the feed is also on the old site.

IMPROVEMENTS TO WEB SITE

Every so often I feel the need to change the appearance of the web site and to try and improve it as much and as best as I can. I have once again arrived at this point – a few changes are coming and underway.

 

I don’t expect that there will be wholesale changes across the entire site, but I would expect that there will be some fairly noticeable changes, particularly to the home page. I’m hoping to get the site a little more interactive and to encourage visitor collaboration and participation in the compilation of my (our) family history.

 

Visit the web site at:

Kevin’s Family – Online History Site

 

The Tracing our History community is already in place – though I am the only member at the moment. This social network community provides a fantastic opportunity for family members to communicate and interact with each other, as well as contributing to our family history research.

 

Visit the site at:

Tracing our History

 

I am also hoping to set up a collaborative family tree site, which will allow visitors (members in a secure, password protected site) to provide updates and corrections to research already compiled. I hope to add this feature as soon as possible, but not until I have completed work on the gedcom file (which is still a little way off) with which I will create the site. I am heavily leaning toward either Geni or Famiva at this stage.

 

The front page of the web site will also contain an RSS feed of this Blog and news from other of my social networking sites, Blogs, Twitter, etc.

 

So please feel free to visit Kevin’s Family – Online History Site.

NEWSLETTER DISCONTINUED: BLOG REPLACES IT

The newsletter for ‘Kevin’s Family – Online History Site,’ known as ‘Kevin’s Mailout,’ will be discontinued. In fact, the newsletter’s last issue was back in 2004, so it could be argued that it had already been discontinued and this is a fair argument. I did begin another issue in 2008, but it was never completed.

With the emergence of this Blog, ‘Tracing our History,’ the newsletter seems to be somewhat superfluous, even though there are undoubtedly a great number of family members and friends who don’t have Internet access. Having said that, I don’t believe there was any ‘official’ circulation of the newsletter in hard copy anyhow.

Anything that I would have placed in the newsletter will now be placed on the Blog instead and will not have to wait (possibly years) for the next issue of the newsletter. This seems a far better idea to me and will save a large amount of work for me also. The energy used in putting together a newsletter can now be placed into actual research and web site development, which will also be a far better result I think.

The archives of the newsletter will still be available via the web site at:

http://particularbaptist.com/matthewshistory/newsletter.html