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=== The Birth of The USGenWeb Project === | === The Birth of The USGenWeb Project === | ||
We family historians have long been used to zeroing in on a county to find information on our ancestors so the whole idea of websites devoted to genealogy for a county was exciting. During late May and early June of 1996, Jeff, Bill and a few other people kicked around the whole idea of state and county sites and out of those conversations the concept of the USGenWeb was born: a web of inter-connected genealogy sites - a site for every state in the U.S. with each state site linking to all the counties (parishes or townships) within the state and to tie the whole thing together, a national site with links to all the state sites. Since it was to be a web of genealogy sites it would be named "US GenWeb." The name had to be changed to USGenWeb because US GenWeb was a copyright violation. The words "The" and "Project" weren't added until later | We family historians have long been used to zeroing in on a county to find information on our ancestors so the whole idea of websites devoted to genealogy for a county was exciting. During late May and early June of 1996, Jeff, Bill and a few other people kicked around the whole idea of state and county sites and out of those conversations the concept of the USGenWeb was born: a web of inter-connected genealogy sites - a site for every state in the U.S. with each state site linking to all the counties (parishes or townships) within the state and to tie the whole thing together, a national site with links to all the state sites. Since it was to be a web of genealogy sites it would be named "US GenWeb." The name had to be changed to USGenWeb because US GenWeb was a copyright violation. The words "The" and "Project" weren't added until later. | ||
By June 20th twenty state sites were either on-line or ready to be uploaded with eleven more "in the works." The national site had been placed on-line around June 15th. As each state was uploaded Jeff added a link to the new state's site. The new state coordinators began looking for volunteers to take over the county sites. It didn't take long before the USGenWeb's first major problem was encountered | Concept to realization took place in less than 15 days. The announcement of USGenWeb was made on Jun 16, 1996 and volunteers rushed to adopt the proposed new state sites. On Jun 18, 1996, Dale Schneider set up an email list on his personal server and subbed 18 people to the list. Those 18 people became the first state coordinators and not a one knew the first thing about webpages or html. John Rigdon designed a shell county site and Jeff a state shell site. John also wrote the necessary code for a query site and placed it on-line. The volunteers, using the basic shell and a minimal amount of html coding, added links to the query site and whatever small amount of genealogy information was found on the web and uploaded the sites. | ||
By June 20th twenty state sites were either on-line or ready to be uploaded with eleven more "in the works." The national site had been placed on-line around June 15th. As each state was uploaded Jeff added a link to the new state's site. The new state coordinators began looking for volunteers to take over the county sites. It didn't take long before the USGenWeb's first major problem was encountered, ''Money''. | |||
Free server space was rare and many people who wanted to adopt sites couldn't afford to pay for server space. Although Dale Schneider was willing to host the new sites on his personal server he couldn't afford to do it for free. Fund raising suggestions were made, but for most people on the list freely sharing genealogy information was a way of life. Another way needed to be found and that "way" turned out to be RootsWeb. | Free server space was rare and many people who wanted to adopt sites couldn't afford to pay for server space. Although Dale Schneider was willing to host the new sites on his personal server he couldn't afford to do it for free. Fund raising suggestions were made, but for most people on the list freely sharing genealogy information was a way of life. Another way needed to be found and that "way" turned out to be RootsWeb. | ||
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Very few of the new state and county coordinators were interested in sites containing nothing but queries and links. Adding information became the order of the day: information from their own family history files, information donated by visitors, information on the state or county's history, information on state and local genealogy societies and whatever other genealogy or historical information came their way. In a short period of time 45GB of information was stored on the RootsWeb servers - an unheard of amount of web space at the time. | Very few of the new state and county coordinators were interested in sites containing nothing but queries and links. Adding information became the order of the day: information from their own family history files, information donated by visitors, information on the state or county's history, information on state and local genealogy societies and whatever other genealogy or historical information came their way. In a short period of time 45GB of information was stored on the RootsWeb servers - an unheard of amount of web space at the time. | ||
By early 1997 the USGenWeb was in full operation and the family historians on the Internet flocked to the Project's websites. By Jan 1997 RootsWeb had clocked, 7,548,846 page views of USGenWeb pages. By Jan 1998 the total had reached 15,506,224 and by Jan 1999, 21,910,869 - not too shabby for a group only three years old. | By early 1997 the USGenWeb was in full operation and the family historians on the Internet flocked to the Project's websites. By Jan 1997 RootsWeb had clocked, 7,548,846 page views of USGenWeb pages. By Jan 1998 the total had reached 15,506,224 and by Jan 1999, 21,910,869 - not too shabby for a group only three years old. | ||
=== Free === | === Free === | ||