www.nalven.org

I began with M$ FrontPage last April. After spending some two weeks getting everything just right, (themes, forms, databases, discussion groups, etc for those of you in the know) I uploaded the site only to find several problems! Anyone who may have viewed our page in that time would have seen what seemed to be a silly graphics combined with some FrontPage enabled extensions that didn't always work and was very slow and/or unviewable in some browsers. It reflected my anti-technology sentiment at the time which has since been redirected at a major corporation ending in "soft"! I still do however adhere to the quote:

In my opinion, most of the great men of the past were only there for the beer!    A. J. P. Taylor, British Historian

Frustrated, I have taken a hiatus to pursue alternatives. I now use a Debian GNU/Linux system and Open Source software as far as I am able to. I am also an associate member of the Free Software Foundation.

I will code only with agreed friendly elements as set forth by the World Wide Web Consortium and the AnyBrowser Campaign. Any help here or there is always welcome!

    

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With that out of the way, let's get on to planning.

Purpose: To collect and disseminate Family related information.

Users: The public at large, especially for any genealogical data. Some information (addresses and other contact information?) may be considered private. I propose a password system to protect the viewing of any sensitive information and the modification of any data. Until the data elements have been agreed to and separated, viewing the database will require a password from all. Your password is your 3 character initials plus day and month of birth according to the Eva Magnus geneology. This yields a 7 character password with a 0 (zero) prepended to months January through September and days first through ninth, eg: a birthday of March 9, 1947 becomes xxx0309.

Data: Genealogical, contact information, biographies, resumes, rants, postings for whatever. Eventually chats? It would be great to be able to _centralize_ us. To be able to communicate "I'll see you at nalven dot org tonight".

Goals: My previous goal of an end of April '02 upload was obviously not met. Two moves, my 50^th birthday and a change in careers has wreaked havoc with my available time. I am back to my first love (apropo for this 14th of February) electronics and communication. With a snowstorm due this weekend, I may have time to continue automating the input of data for this site. For now it will be a simple appending to a formatted html page.

User areas and passwording will be next. If you email me, I will enter any information that I receive. If only I could find my copy of The genealogy!

Site Management: Comments, suggestions and offers to help should presently be sent to me at the webmaster link below. There is much that can be done. I know that there is considerable talent out there. Hopefully, some of our retirees would be be able to put some serious time into transcribing, correcting, telling anecdotes, etc.

We will not be using the _latest and greatest_ out of Redmond, Washington. If you know how to code for the least common denominator, please contact me. I would prefer to spend my time making this site useful as an information source not troubleshooting.