I Need Your Help
I need some help putting together this web site. Are you good at writing, graphic design, or web design? Can you scan old pictures in your house? Or write up your memories of the family? Here are some of the areas that need work before we have things fully functional:
Decisions
There are a couple of decisions we need to make. I've posted this page at WillandAnnie.com for now. Greg Yost (Dudley/David/Mindy) told me that these domain names are also currently available: TheRealSmiths.com and DecendantsofSmith.com. Which site would be best?
Also, what parts of this site should be public, and what should be private (available only to registered users, with their own passwords).
Content
Hopefully, we will eventually have a site that everyone can edit in their own browser. Once that happens, we will need help from each part of the family to check the address and phone lists, to write something about each part of the family, and to help digitize some of the old archives.
And if you have pictures in your house, it would be nice to digitize whatever you think would be of general interest. Also, I've heard that Uncle Don and Uncle Chuck have autobiographies and other writings. We may need some help editing those, getting them ready to publish online (if we decide we want to publish it online).
Publicity
It would be nice to have a representative from each family who would help organize and publicize this site within the family, and encourage people to participate somehow. Any ideas? I plan to create a Facebook group and a MySpace account for our family, for those of us who use those sites.
Graphic Design / Branding
This first version of the web page is just a free template from online (from styleshout). If anyone's good at CSS web design, let me know. Also: anyone with marketing experience or graphic design skills? The above logo image I (Matthew Weathers) made just as a temporary thing. I would be happy for someone to design a better one. Why am I talking about "branding" and "marketing"? Although we're not selling anything here, I think having good-looking site with a consistent image can help foster community.
Technical Info
This section is for those who are curious about some of the technical details of this web site. Any suggestions? Write me below.
Domain Name - The domain WillandAnnie.com is registered at DirectNic.com for two years (Until March 2010, through the next reunion). But domains are cheap, and Greg noticed that these are free (available, not $0) as well: TheRealSmiths.com and DecendentsofSmith.com. Any comments on which would be best long-term? "Will and Annie" is the name of the book published about 10 years ago, and it's short. But is it memorable enough?
Hosting - Currently free because it's hosted on my (Matthew) web server that I already pay for for other things. Greg has suggested SiteGround as a good hosting company if we decide to switch. But I'm happy to keep it hosted on my account for now (which is at Pair.com, a reliable company I've used for more than 10 years)
Design - Just from a free CSS template, as a temporary thing to get up and running today. The template is called Enlighten 1.1 from styleshout.
Collaborative Web Pages
Eventually, I would like to make all of the pages on this site editable by people in the family. Perhaps we can have a few static pages up front, but make most of the content available to be edited. Maybe we can use wiki or CMS software. I have been looking at TWiki 4.2 (twiki.org) as a possibility.
Here are the features I'm looking for: separate user accounts, ability to set permissions for each individual page, ability to make some pages public (no login required), while making other pages private, a WYSIWYG editor for pages, a version log. Oh... and free! (open source).
My web server has MySQL, PHP, Perl, etc, so I think I could run most wiki and CMS software. But I don't have much experience... so I'm open to suggestion.
--Matthew Weathers (Dudley/Esther/Matthew)