Saturday, January 21, 2012

Genealogy Today Wrap-Up for January 20, 2012

Not the day that I expected, but most never are... didn't get to work on the items I planned to, but instead focused on the Genealogy Today blog, search enhancements, permanent links for menu items and monthly site cleanup chores (guided by Google's Webmaster Tools).

I've decided to let the Genealogy Today blog (hosted by Blogger.com) be a "blog" and not try to force it into the design layout of the rest of the web site. This will allow the use of the Blogger widgets, which promote social networking of the information that gets posted.

One of the more visible changes made today to the Genealogy Today search are the real-time results from the OneGreatFamily.com service. There are more features like this in the works. Oh, did you get a chance to read Randy Seaver's blog post at GeneaMusings about the improved Genealogy Today Search? He does a nice job (with screen shots) of showing off some of the features.

This is a weird item, but it should save me some time in the future... I went through the site layout/design and setup "permanent" URL's for the menu items which call dynamic pages. Sounds simple, and I'm kicking myself for not doing this years ago. Well, it's a geek thing, and kind of boring, but it's done and will begin propagating around the site next week.

And the last item is my review of Google's Webmaster Tools analysis of the site, and this month it found a bunch of mistakes made with some inter-page links. All cleaned up, so no more "page not found" errors. Google's WT is really a great tool for managing large amounts of content, and it's free!

One more thought, did you read the article "Is your Genealogy in the Clouds?: Cloud Computing for Genealogists" posted yesterday? Nice explanation of the cloud computing concept, its uses and value to genealogy, in addition to highlighting a variety of services -- many of which are free, that allow researchers to store data online and access it from anywhere there is an Internet connection. Of course, if you were signed up for The Genealogy News, you wouldn't have missed it!

While I was hoping to get some new data transcribed, I can still go to sleep knowing Genealogy Today is better off than it was before the day started! Happy Searching!

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.