The Moral of the Story. . .

Since my last post, I’ve decided to completely redo both the genealogy site and the blog and now I’m left with a mess that includes not only a partially functioning database and loss of all my media links, but also a renewed determination to make this thing work like I want it to.

The Backstory

From the beginning, I’ve wanted a website that included a blog as the home page and the genealogy database (referred to hereafter as TNG) as a subfolder, with the two linked together, so that blog posts could be accessed from TNG and the TNG menus could be accessed from the blog. This is not easily accomplished with TNG, because of the way the style sheets are set up (however, it is still the best genealogy website software available; I certainly don’t want to switch). At the time (December 2007), I couldn’t find any examples of TNG websites that worked like I wanted; several people in the TNG forums were working on solutions, but none had achieved the kind of integration that I wanted.

My first priority was the genealogy database, so I decided to focus on that and set up the blog at Blogger, with simple links back to each on their respective homepages. This worked fine for a while, but I soon tired of editing the static html home page on the TNG site and of logging into a separate application to make blog posts (hence the lack of blog activity over the past few months).

The Past Week

I stumbled across a website that integrates Wordpress and TNG exactly the way I want (and also includes some cool TNG mods). What’s more, the owner includes instructions on her site for accomplishing the “mashup,” as she calls it. I can’t really code on my own, but I can certainly follow directions. Oh, if it were only that easy.

So far, I’ve installed and reinstalled Wordpress four times. I’ve edited all the files as directed, but I can’t get the theme to work; it’s just a gray screen. On the TNG side, I’ve tried moving the files into a subfolder, deleting, reinstalling, restoring, repeat, repeat, repeat. Each time, I discovered one thing I wish I had done differently.

However, I made one, almost, fatal flaw. The last time I did a reinstall, I uploaded a gedcom backup. I had exported said gedcom last weekend, before I started the TNG upgrade mentioned in the previous post, so I didn’t think I needed to do another export, as I had made no content changes during the week. In the midst of the upload, I realized that I hadn’t included media links when I exported the gedcom. I’ve tried and tried, but I can’t get them back. I’ve decided I can live with it; I’ll have to manually link all my photos and other media.

The moral of the story? Do a fresh backup of everything, absolutely everything, whether you think you’ll need it or not.

Website Update

This summer, TNG came out with a new version of the software I use to power my genealogy website. I had put off upgrading, because, frankly, I was apprehensive; I was afraid I would "break" the site and I wasn't sure how much time would be required to redo all the modifications I had made. I know just enough about coding to be dangerous.

Since the weather wasn't great yesterday, I decided to bite the bullet. I downloaded the upgrade, transferred all the files to my host, Simply Hosting, using Smart FTP. I followed the instructions step-by-step, until I got to the point where I was supposed to open the instructions from the website, rather than my local computer. I couldn't figure out how to do that. So, I forged on as best I could, but, sure enough, the site was broken. I played around for awhile and finally figured out how to open the file using Legacy File Manager, rather than File Manager in cPanel. This allowed me to click on a link to run a script and voila the site was fixed.

However, as I had suspected, many of my prior mods were gone. Rather than try to fix them, I decided to switch templates to create a new look and feel. I had been thinking about doing this for awhile, so it made sense to spend the time modifying a new template instead of the old one. (TNG users: I switched from template 6 to template 4.) I had always liked the layout of template 6, but I found the brick red color scheme too harsh. I had changed many of the colors in the old template, so I knew I could change this one also.

I'm happy with the new layout, but I still have some work to do. My next post will be about the specific changes I've made and how I did it.

To Do List

One of the challenges I face when working on a new project is that I want everything completed right now. For some reason, I'm fine with the genealogy research being long-term, but I become overwhelmed with all the things I want to do on the website. It would be easy for me to focus all my short-term time and attention on the website and ignore the research, but I don't really want to do that.

So, I decided to make a to-do list and post it here. Sort of a "coming attractions" trailer. I may add this as a sidebar list.

• Military page, detailing veterans of the American Revolution, Civil War, other American wars, etc.
• DAR-approved lineage proofs of all American Revolution ancestors.
• Unite the blog and the website, possibly through a content management system like Joomla or postNuke.
• Possibly add a wiki.
• Add Google Maps for places and cemeteries.
• Add a website search feature, possibly Google search.
• Possibly add charts like those on the Roy-Reyes site.
• Possibly add some marriage charts for common counties, like this.
• Customize the photo in the header bar.
• Continue customizing the home page. In fact, I need to really think about the home page, because I'm not sure if the current layout is effective in drawing people into the site. Here is an example of another TNG site that I really like. This is not one of the standard TNG templates and, frankly, may be beyond my meager php abilities, but I can probably manage to replicate a few of the elements that I like.

That's ten things, which will surely keep me busy for weeks, if not months, to come.

And now, since it's 10 pm on Christmas Eve, I think I'll check out where Santa is on his journey.

Merry Christmas to all!

What's New Last Week

Last week was fruitful in the discovery of media to add to my genealogy site, http://www.toniasroots.net/. I got some great old photographs from my grandmother, including a photo of her father at his still, a photo that includes her parents when they were courting, and a photo of her brother.

I also found a court document at the Maryland State Archives that references Sutton Quinney, my 7x great-grandfather. The document is dated 1700-1701.

I also found a good website - http://www.findagrave.com/. Users can add cemetery records, including headstone photographs. The website is searchable. I did a quick search by state and county, then scanned through some cemetery names that I recognized. I found three headstone photos of my ancestors - Elizabeth Tucker Ellis, Churchwell Branch Tucker, and Rosamund Maude McKinney Tucker.

On the minus side, I ran into a glitch with my new genealogy website program, TNG. I had added some information to Ancestry, so I wanted to import a new gedcom into TNG. Big mistake! Apparently there is a well-known glitch with Family Tree Maker, and I'm assuming it also applies to Ancestry, because the results were the same. Individuals were tied to unrelated persons over and over again. The database is a complete mess. The clean-up process is tedious, because there is no easy way to identify the corrupted records. I'm going through family by family to clean it up. If you see something crazy, like a child born 100 years before the parents, please let me know.