Time marches ever onward

Those of you familiar with this site will notice a significant change that we underwent today.

We upgraded

We upgraded from WordPress 2.1 to WordPress 2.6 (and applied the permalinks patch).

We converted most of our information from pages to posts

We did this for a few reasons; posts are easier to update and maintain than pages (in our experience), post are more quickly indexed in search engines (which will make your task of finding the information you need faster and easier), and we generally have more flexibility in adding content than we did before. Unfortunately, this also means that search engines and bookmarks that point to the old pages will now be redirected to the homepage, but from there you can use our search box (over there on the left) to quickly find what you’re looking for.

We changed over our theme

We really liked the old one, but it wasn’t compatible with WordPress 2.6, so this one seems to do what we need it to do without being overly “heavy” (again, the point here is to help you find what you’re looking for that much faster).

We changed from categories to tags

Tags are the new in-thing, and they work much better for what we’re trying to do. Categories, by definition, are hierarchical, so there has to be a rigid structure. This can be limiting in the way we arrange our information. Tags, on the other hand are, by definition, NON-hierarchical. This means we can add valuable meta-information to our articles and histories, without being shackled down to pre-established categories.

Google Ads

We had some Yahoo Ads running on the site before, that never paid off for us, so now we’ve switched over to Google Ads. Most of the feedback that we got from you (our readers) was that the Yahoo Ads either weren’t all that relevant to the article, or you just didn’t trust Yahoo as much as you do Google. You asked, we listened, and we now have Google Ads running in the sidebars and at the bottom of the page. If you see something you’re interested in feel free to click. This ultimately helps us to keep the site running.

Health

Ed health has been degrading over the last several months. Team that up with his new “job” helping people over the phone with getting up and running with their family histories, and, well, he doesn’t have a lot of extra time, and that which he does is precious to his family.

Natalie and I are trying to help him compile the histories that he has for personal use first, and will likely then publish them here as well.

Thank you for sticking with us and for all the thoughts and prayers for Ed!

Joe

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