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Keeping up to date

I have been a little behind in updates for these pages of late.  The forum was getting a bit untidy, with spammers always busy.

I have changed some of the security features which may help.

The forum doesnt get a lot of posts these days, probably as other media like email, facebook or the queries on here are more convenient, but I keep regular checks for any new interest.

I will start adding DNA info on here as the DNA data starts to develop. One thing I have noticed with the DNA project is how slow the testing is. Patience is a requisite.

Has anyone visited the STRUDWICK APPRECIATION page on facebook. Its a bit of fun

Always Spam, but so far so good

When I set up the forum on the old website, I had to employ a multitude of defenses to prevent the site being flooded with spam messages, and unwanted contributions advertising all manner of unsavoury items and sites.

I am pleased to see that the blog on this new site framework (WordPress) has been actively capturing the spam and undesirable blog comments straight out of the box.

Some fifty comments have been intercepted, and quarantined, and so far the blog pages are remaining clean and tidy.  Thereare further options to make the site more secure, widgets or add ons that can be incorporated, but at the moment these are proving unnecessary. (There is always a penalty in using these as they can slow the overall delivery of content from the site)

However, so far so good, and fingers crossed the maintenance free nature of the wordpress site continues.

Getting the trees online.

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Having committed to trying Gramps as the preferred option for displaying my tree data I have begun modifying the output so that the website matches the color and format of the wordpress site.

This has proved much easier than I anticipated, with Gramps able to add in css header and footer as it generates the website files.

While Gramps is a static component, it appears so far to be working effectively at serving the genealogy tree data.

Time will tell..

Goodbye Old, Hello New

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The new site has now gone live, although there is still plenty of material to transfer from the old layout.  The wills are taking some time to transition across as they will be served from the database, which will be much faster than the old html text.

The new site is a wordpress php layout using a gravit child theme customised by me.

The tree data is being tested using various programs. The Ged2Html program I used on the old site is no longer supported.  I experimented with embedding TNG php coding  within the wordpress theme, however I use Ancestry Family Tree Maker 2014 as my main Genealogy program, and TNG does not really  like the GEDCOM exports from FTM. GRAMPS is currently being tested and data in the trees will appear using that for the time being.

All records are now served direct from the backbone SQL database using tablepress plugin.

I will be testing the site and adjusting settings over the next few days and completing the transfer of the data from the old website pages.

Records, Transcriptions and trees

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As I upgrade from my previous website, I have been reconsidering the content I had and how relevant it still may be. When the earlier site was designed, my One Name Study involved collecting indexes and creating databases of Strudwick info. Now many if these records are easily available through sites such as Ancestry, and so the value of these on my site is diminished. The more important records now are those where I have value added, so for instance the transcriptions of wills and archival material. These are otherwise readily available but difficult to read or search. The incorporation of the database material into my tree structure has also added value to these records.
Ultimately, I have decided to keep the earlier databases online, for historical interest, but concentrate more on the analysis and synthesis of the records collected or to be collected.