Genealogy Computer Tips & Tutorials

NEW TRAINING SESSION STARTS May 12th!

While this class is geared towards small business owners, ANYONE from the webmaster of a hobby site, a genealogy site or a volunteer webmaster for a church or other organization, who wants to increase traffic to their website can benefit from the classes. It’s not to late, you can join the class anytime. This is one of the best things you can do for your website.

We provide a structured SEO training class through our private Yahoo group: SEO Techniques. The online class is 100% free and is email based. You work at a pace that is comfortable for you.

The SEO Training Class helps small business owners learn the basics of search engine optimization to increase the visibility of their business in the search engines. By combining these techniques with excellent marketing skills, you will be well on your way to building a successful online business. - from SEO Training Class -

Intensive Full Month Long Training Session starts May 12th

We are working to add more in depth training to help you better understand and implement the lessons, along with the addition of a few more advanced topics and interactive assignments. I am also currently working on training tutorials for effective newsletters.

Everything we do will be focused on greatly increasing the targeted traffic to your website to help you develop a successful online business.

- SEO Techniques Training
- Successful Website Marketing Training

You will want to get registered now so that you don’t miss a thing!

If you can somehow find 3-5 hours per week to dedicate to your website, you are going to LOVE this upcoming session. The focus will be entirely on increasing business to your site!

Website Development Training Center
- HTML and CSS Training
- RSS Feeds and Basic WordPress
- Optional Interactive Discussion Groups

As always, the training classes are provided at absolutely NO CHARGE. If you are 100% serious about learning how to develop a successful online business, and you are willing to work hard, we would love to invite you to register to join us!

- The classrooms are extremely structured.

- Membership is NOT approved unless ALL registration steps have been completed.

- Both the Marketing Class and the SEO Class are required. You cannot join one without the other.

- Individual emails are REQUIRED. Please plan which email address you will be using before joining.

Overview of the main classes can be found on the following page:

SEO Training Class
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The registration checklist can be found here:

Training Class Registration Information

Recently a question was asked on the RootsWeb Help Mailing list about the problem of validating a page that contained the <NOBR> tag.

<NOBR>
(no break)

The NOBR tag ensures that a line of text does not wrap to the next line. This tag is useful for words or phrases that must be kept together on one line. NOTE: if the line of text is long, it can extend beyond the margin of the browser window, so the user must use scrollbars to view the text OR you may not be able to see it at all as is the case in the example below. The <NOBR> tag does not validate.

EXAMPLE:

This line of test will continue in an unbroken line even though it may extend past the margins of the page. This tag should be used with caution.

Instead of using the <NOBR> tag create a css class which can substitute for the <NOBR> tag.

.nobr {white-space: nowrap}

and then apply the style to the element.

EXAMPLE:

<td><nobr><input TYPE=”SUBMIT” VALUE=”Search” name=”SEARCH”/></nobr></td>

The above line of code will NOT validate.

<td class=”nobr><input TYPE=”SUBMIT” VALUE=”Search” name=”SEARCH”/></td>

The above line of code will validate.

By Joan Young

Previously published in RootsWeb Review: 9 April 2008, Vol. 11, No. 14

Family history researchers are acutely aware of the importance of preserving their family’s information. We wish our ancestors had left us a better paper trail. But are we doing the same for those that follow us?During my time working with RootsWeb, I handled many cases where users were moved to a nursing home, became disabled, passed on, or for one reason or another became unable to manage their information on RootsWeb. It’s important to make provisions now for someone to manage your information when you no longer can. Doing so will save your family, and fellow researchers, lots of time and effort.

DELETE IT, LEAVE IT BE, OR FIND A CUSTODIAN

Your information will remain on the site unless you or a legal heir or guardian requests that it be removed. Notes can be added to some information to let researchers know you can no longer be contacted. Or, you may wish to pass on the care of certain accounts and information to a relative or friend.

Whatever course of action you decide on, leave instructions in your will or simply prepare a separate letter of instruction for your heirs or chosen guardians. Continue Reading »

The rapid growth of the Internet has outstripped the pace at which citation standards have been revised to include Internet sources. So, the purpose of this page is to serve as a guideline, if preliminary, to citing genealogically related material found on the Internet. For the most part, the citation examples below are modeled after traditional citation styles.

The ProGenealogist Family History Research Group has provided the Internet Citation Guide for Genealogists which gives helpful guidelines as well Citation Templates you can copy and paste to your documentation.

Since we all know how important documenting your resources is, this is another guide to add to your arsenal.

Last night I spent about half an hour upgrading four WordPress blogs using the new WordPress Automatic upgrade plugin.

Wordpress Automatic Upgrade allows a user to automatically upgrade the wordpress installation to the latest one provided by wordpress.org using the 5 steps provided in the wordpress upgrade instructions.

I tried it out first on my test blog but it was so easy and quick following the instructions, I upgraded the other three.

To do a new installation of the program:

Step 1: Download the plugin from wordpress.org and unzip it.

Step 2: Upload wordpress-automatic-upgrade folder to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory

Step 3: Activate the plugin

Click on the thumbnail to view a larger screenshot.

Step 4: Run the plugin

Click on the thumbnail to view a larger screenshot.

Wordpress automatic upgrade upgrades your wordpress installation by doing the following steps which are outlined in the wordpress upgrade process:

1. Backs up the files and makes available a link to download it.
2. Backs up the database and makes available a link to download it.
3. Downloads the latest files from http://wordpress.org/latest.zip and unzips it.
4. Puts the site in maintenance mode.
5. De-activates all active plugins and remembers it.
6. Upgrades wordpress files.
7. Gives you a link that will open in a new window to upgrade installation.
8. Re-activates the plugins. NOTE: This part of the process did NOT work for me. I had to go in and reactivate all of my plugins.

The plugin can also can be run in a automated mode where in you do not have to click on any links to go to the next step. NOTE: I did NOT run the upgrade in the automated mode.

Once I finished the process, I double checked my plugins, my theme, and the changes I had made to make sure they were all still working.

There is a FAQ section you should read first. Once the blog was updated to the latest version I then explored the new look.

NOTE: There is a problem with the Dragon Site Map Generator with the newest version of WordPress in that if you limit the number of items per page, it will not advance to the rest of the map. I changed the items per page options to 0 (unlimited) and it now works. Not an ideal solution but it works for now.

Here is a list of Themes compatible with WordPress Version 2.5.

Here is a list of plugins that have been tested for compatibility with Version 2.5.

This particular site use WordPress and is a Blog. I am not very knowledgeable where php is concerned so modifying the code to set up a blog is not easy for me. But I keep at it and hopefully get it done so the blog will continue to work and the code will validate. While browsing the Expression Web forum this morning, I noticed an interesting post Designing a WordPress Blog Theme Using Expression Web. Since Expression Web is my HTML editor I went to read this with a great deal of interest.

I’ve been working with Expression Web for about 6 months now and I’ve found that above all other things, what sets this program apart from the competition is it’s handling of CSS. More specifically how easy it is to not only write CSS from scratch but also to modify existing code for fantastic results. Case in point: The new look of this blog. If you’ve visited before you’ll notice that I recently upgraded it from the dull look of a standard WordPress blog to something altogether different. And what will (hopefully) surprise you is that once the design was conceived (which took some time) the actual coding only took a couple of hours! All this thanks to Expression Web and how it handles CSS code.

People often ask me how to make their WordPress blog look great. In the past I’ve always told them that it’s a lengthy process and you really need to know a lot of code to get to where you want to be. That’s just not the case any more. I am willing to go as far as saying that with some basic training and a rudimentary understanding of html, anyone can make significant and functional changes to their blog using Expression Web without ever knowing what CSS is and how it works (this technique will work on any blog or other website that uses CSS btw.)Rather than just blabbering on and on about how great this program is for designing and re-designing blogs (and no, I’m not on the Microsoft payroll even though I’d like to be - hint hint people!) I’m going to show you just how easy it is to make changes to your blog by tweaking the CSS code with Expression Web.

Interested in learning more? Visit the above link to read the complete post along with step-by-step instructions and screenshots. Now to go and try it out. Happy Blogging!

Expression Web Version 2 Beta has just been released. You can download the program from:

http://www.microsoft.com/expression/products/download.aspx?key=web2beta

You will also need to download and install the .NET Framework 3.5 before you install Expression Web 2 Beta.

You can install EW 2 Beta alongside Expression Web 1 BUT if you have a private preview of ew2 you should uninstall that first.

What’s new or fixed?

• The program will now REMEMBER your username and password when publishing via ftp.
• Expression Web 2 lets you add or remove a BOM in existing documents, and control whether a BOM is added to new documents.
• Expression Web 2 lets you insert Flash SWF and Windows Media files into your pages, edit their properties, and preview your Flash files in Design view. In addition, you can insert and run any other type of ActiveX control, such as QuickTime or RealPlayer.
• You have the choice of setting the default file extension as htm OR html.
• You can now preview php pages locally.
• Checkout the rest of the features from the link included above.

This tutorial comes under the heading of “Why didn’t I think of that?” I design FREE CSS layout templates for use by the genealogy community or anyone for that matter. When I post them, I usually use filler content so you can see what the page would look like with content instead of just blank. Once the template is finished, I head on over to http://www.lipsum.com/ enter the number of paragraphs I want or the list items, press the Generate Lorem Ipsum button, copy the text in the browser window, and then paste it into my page in Expression Web template that I am using as the example. Time consuming but it works.

Then I came across Creating a “content” snippet, a tutorial by Anna Ullrich which gives step by step directions for creating a code snippet for inserting the dummy text in Expression Web. What a time-saver. Can you think of other things to use it for? Thank you Anna!

In my wanderings around the Internet tonight, I came across an article by Chris Coyier called What Beautiful HTML Code Looks Like.

I have an addiction. I can’t help but view source on every nice looking website I see. It’s like if you had x-ray glasses that allowed you to see any person you ever saw in their underwear at will. How could you not?

It’s just so tempting to see if a beautiful website is built with beautiful code as well, or if it’s beauty if only skin-deep. Code? Beautiful? Sure. After all, Code is Art. This is just HTML, so it can’t be quite as intricate and elegant as a dynamic language, but it still bears the brush strokes of it’s creator and there is craftsmanship abound.

Since I also have this addiction, I thought I would share his article with with you. He makes a number of points:

• DOCTYPE Properly Declared
• Tidy Head Section
• Body IDed
• Semantically Clean Menu
• Main Div for all Page Content
• Common Content INCLUDED
• Code is Tabbed into Sections
• Proper Ending Tags
• Hierarchy of Header Tags
• Content, Content, Content
• No Styling

He includes a neat graphic image and you can download the entire thing in pdf format. Check out What Beautiful HTML Code Looks Like and see what YOU think.