Sunday, November 22, 2015

First steps in Mothballing parts of the Hertfordshire Genealogy web site.

Following my recent post about the future of the site I have identified the following ares where mothballing can immediately be applied. In most cases this will have little immediate effect on what you can do - as the "restrictions" have effectively been in place for most of this year because the time I have been able to spend on running the site has been limited.
Area MothballedNature and extent of "mothballing"
Re: updates to old queries
All answers were made using resources given at the date given, which in some cases maybe before the censuses became available online. Answers given more than 2 years ago should be considered to be "mothballed" in that they do not refer to the latest sources. Users interested in these pages should check the more recent sources for themselves before asking any supplementary questions. However additional information, based on your own research, is always welcome.
Re: Reviews of new books
The vast majority of books reviewed on this web site form part of my personal library of Hertfordshire material. There is already a good coverage of the better known older books. There are no funds (beyond my own pension) to extend the library to include recently published or further second-hand material. As such it is impossible to cover the torrent of new books, booklets, etc., produced by individual historians, local history societies and other organisations unless review copies are supplied.
Explore Old Hertfordshire with a map
This map interface was set up some time ago as an alternative to the Places menu. However user statistics at the time suggested that place pages were more likely to be accessed via the menus, via Find It, or directly through search engines such as google. The current system works for towns and villages, and will continue to be available. It will not be extended to cover hamlets and major buildings.
Re: Links to external web sites
This web site contains a very large number of links to external web sites, and in some cases descriptive pages. Current resources do not allow these links and pages to be regularly checked and updated - and many pages on this site may contain an old description of the external web site. Please notify me of any external links which no longer work.
Re: No requests for action from users
Over the years a number of updates have been started, sometimes on an experimental basis, and as no one expressed interest in the work being completed the original "Men at Work" warning is still in place. This includes cases where a book page has been started with a message to say a review will be provided on request. All such instances are being mothballed until such time as there is a clear user-driven interest in the update being completed.
I started to set up this tutorial many years ago, but work stopped when it was found that the demand for an online tutorial was insufficient to justify the time completing the exercise. It is now out of date as the external web sites it refers to have changed. However as it contains extensive information on the Lewin family of St Albans, and examples of how useful a family bible can be, it has been decided to keep it online
Recent statistics, etc., will be looked at over the next few months to identify when the work load of running and maintaining the site can be minimized.
Your comments on which parts of the web site you find most useful will play an important role in deciding which areas of the site will get the most favourable treatment and which will end up being mothballed.

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This is the newsletter for the Genealogy in Hertfordshire Web site. Comments on this blog are moderated and may be transferred to the web site where appropriate. If you have a local or family history query you want answered you must use "Ask Chris" - See box in right hand column. Anonymous comments cannot be answered.