A lot of the changes I have made are purely cosmetic. Though they may seem trivial, these are the ones that have the potential to cause problems! I would appreciate any feedback on problems that anyone may be having! Here are a few of the cosmetic changes.

Personalized Theme

I’ve been playing around with modifying my theme to more closely match my website’s theme. It’s not anything spectacular but I believe it is easy enough on the eyes. Here are some things I’ve done that may create problems for some readers:

• Changed the font size to a little larger font for easier reading.
• Changed the background color for the text area.
• Changed the background area for surrounding areas.
• Added a little text introduction on my right-sidebar.
• Changed the number of posts to display per page to 3, though I may up that to 5.

My main point in making these changes is to make my blog more personal and also easier to read. I’ve tried to read and make sure the changes I made are correct but I will only know by asking my readers to inform me of any problems they encounter.

Updated “About” Page

In order to make my “About” page a little more useful, I have changed it to reflect the main purpose of my blog, first and foremost being sharing my research with my family. Further down the page I added a little information about me and then even further down I added a contact form.

Because this page is more informational in content, I have disabled comments on it.

Added An “Archives” Page

In order to remove some of the clutter on my sidebar, I have opted to create an Archives page. I’m still not totally pleased with the way it looks but for the time being it does take the clutter away.

If any of my readers have any suggestions or can point me to a source to learn more, I would gladly welcome any input!

Changed “Contact Me!” Page

I’m trying to be a little more professional here so I have opted to add a Contact Form on my “Contact Me!” page. I’ve opted to go without any kind of captcha for now but if there is any kind of increase in spam I may have to change that.

Changed “Blog Roll” Page

Over the years I have added a lot of great blogs to my “Blog Roll” page. When going through them all, I discovered that there were quite a few that were no longer active. I’ve also discovered so many more great blogs and realized that there was no way I could link to them and keep up with it all.

I have opted to simply put two links for genealogy blogs, the Blog Roll at Geneabloggers and the Blog Finder at The Genealogue. I believe this would give readers a better option and would also help support those sites!

This will also free up room for me to feature other blogs and sites that I enjoy.

Upcoming Changes

I have plans to redo my “Genealogy Toolbox” page. I would like to make it more of a “Genealogy Research Toolbox” that might serve to help my readers to find more information!

I also am in the process of redoing my Categories. Unfortunately I didn’t put a lot of thought into my categories when I first started and I am regretting that. I would like to get my categories down to at least 20 but hopefully less. It can be done!

The one main change that you will notice is that I am starting to focus more on posting my research topics and not trying to post information about what is going on in the genealogy community. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy those conversations but I think that would be better served if I posted my opinions in the comment sections of the poster’s blog! I want my readers to realize that I am focused on presenting what is on my “About” page.

There’s always a time for those “off topic” posts but I want to limit those as much as possible in the future.

What do you think of the changes at Beyond Fiction? Are they helpful? Are they distracting? Can they be built upon or do you have further suggestions? Post a comment or feel free to write me.

First off, the beginnings. I have finished uploading the pages for my main surnames and now have enabled the links for them. It’s a small beginning to getting my website back like I want it to be.

These pages are only those of my direct lines, nothing branches out to siblings lines yet. I also have a lot of work to do on adding sources and such but that will come soon.

The ending is a sad one, for me. Today is the day that my domain name for my original website expires. It’s been sitting dormant for the last 2 years and basically only had a redirect page but it’s still somewhat sad. I regret that I made a bad choice of domain names but it did serve its purpose well for the short time it was in existence. So, if anyone is interested in forbes-stevenson.com then it should be available soon!

Well, I guess I should get back to updating those pages.

Hope you all have a wonderful week!

Ken

Now I am trying to clean up everything. It imported all the blog posts from 2007 and 2008 but it didn’t include any of the pictures and such. It also created the pages I had on my blog at that time, which left me with two “About” pages. It added in my old “Blog Roll”, “Contact Me” and “Genealogy Toolbox” pages.

So, first off, I eliminated the second “About” page. I kept the original (from 2007) and deleted the 2010 one. I added a small paragraph into the old “About” page that detailed why all of 2009 and some of 2010 are missing. This is all in bold letters. Hopefully that will suffice to please everyone.

I’ve gone through the first 4 months of my blogging (up to July 4, 2007) and have added in the pictures needed for those posts. Fortunately I had a backup of my web site and those pictures were included in that backup. My mistake was that I never actually backed up my blog itself!

So, you may still find some dead links in the posts and there may be posts that the pictures don’t show up on but I am working on that. I still have to go through the old “Blog Roll” page and the “Genealogy Toolbox” page and make sure those links are good and also add any links I may need to add.

I simply ask for your patience as I do all of this!

Have a great week,

Ken

Let me take this time to say that I do have lots of plans for my site. I figure if I am going to do this then I need to include everything I have tried out in the past but never incorporated completely into my site. As time goes by you will start to see these things introduced into the site:

• A Wiki – I believe this would be a great way to let others add their own info to the site!
• A Message Board/Forum – I’ve tried several and will go back to the one I liked most!
• A Family Lounge – a secure area where I can post birthdays, anniversaries, photos, etc…
• A Newsletter – With postage being outrageous, I figure an on-line version would be easy to maintain
• Whatever else might enhance my site!

Are these goals too lofty? Should I just focus on the work at hand? I’m sure I will be busy enough with trying to get my actual genealogy data up and running but I also like to have future plans for things that might enhance my site and attract folks to come back!

Once again, please excuse the mess. I’ll get it all cleaned up as soon as possible!

Here’s wishing you all a wonderful week!

Ken

I just wanted to pop in and let you know that I have changed my mind about how to redo my website. I am confident that Joomla! will be great once I learn it but the problem is that I have to take the time to learn it.  Since I want my site up and running quickly, I have decided to go ahead and start it off the old fashioned way!

I found a backup of one of my sites from 2009. It’s not recent and it is from my original Forbes-Stevenson site but it will be enough to give me a base to build on. I’m uninstalling my Joomla! right now and as soon as that finishes I will start to upload the html files and css files. With any luck I’ll have something to view soon.

That’s it for now! Hope you all have a wonderful day!

Ken

At this moment, the site is still in “maintenance mode” for lack of a better description. I can log in and see my progress as I make changes but I don’t want to publish it while it is still not ready.

The good news is that I am starting to make progress in learning Joomla! I’ve managed to get the sample data deleted and actually have a welcome post on the front page right now. I’ve got a template that I like but I might have to do a little tweaking on it. I’m still debating the menus and such so that is going to take a while. I am thinking I will be able to publish the “shell” of my site sometime next week. It will not be anything spectacular but at least it will be online!

Once my site is up, I will then have to get my research going again. It seems like it has been forever since I actually set down and looked at everything. The only question is which line do I start with?

It’s going to be a long process but I am excited about getting it all going.

Now if I can just cure that addiction to FarmVille!

It’s bedtime now so I am off to dreamland.

Have a great Sunday everyone!

Ken

Starting over isn’t always a bad thing though. My site had fallen into a state of pages that were rarely updated and was very tedious to manage. Why? Simply because I didn’t take the time to really think about the layout of my site. Should I have used style sheets to manage the look? Should I have used an HTML software to help me? I know a lot of the things that I didn’t like about my old site but I also know there were a few things I enjoyed.

Taking that knowledge, I want to try to design my site so that it is very easy to maintain. I would also like it to be more interactive and perhaps allow it to enable others, such as my family members, to be able to post items also! How do I do that? Well, that is the stage I am at right now. I still have all these ideas from my old site but I am taking a careful approach as to how I want to present them this time. At the moment, I am considering using a Content Management System (or CMS, for short!).

Using a CMS has a lot of advantages, it seems. I am just worried about the learning curve and how long it will take to actually figure it out and make it work for me. In essence, I am already using one type of CMS. My blog is run by WordPress and, until recently, I never thought of it as a CMS. I really don’t want to use WordPress as a CMS for my website itself. I am trying different CMS applications at the moment and seeing which will work best for me.

Let’s hope the decision doesn’t take very long! I’m ready to get my site back up and running!

Have a great day everyone!

Ken