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An elusive ancestor website
is devoted to presenting all the information,
both direct and indirect, about an ancestor
that is very difficult and uncertain. The
particular ancestor who is the subject of
this site is my husband's great-grandfather.
The difficulty with this ancestor is that
he committed crimes and changed his name
to hide from the authorities. Thus, there
are two different sets of genealogical records
which must be somehow integrated to prove
the case: the pre-life before the crime
was committed and the after-life when he
was hiding his identity. |
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This
sample website has been completely built
with Microsoft Publisher 2003. Microsoft
Publisher is an inexpensive but powerful
desktop publishing program that has
a very easy-to-use website creation
capability. The great thing about Microsoft
Publisher is that it permits WYSIWYG
creation of your content - text, pictures,
documents - then, behind the scenes,
turns your creation into a proper website.
|
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Notice
that as a Microsoft Publisher document,
it can be turned into a genealogy book
in a straight forward project. Microsoft
Publisher is very capable of organizing
and creating a complex document and
makes it very practical to reformat
the website into a book. While
this would be a time-consuming project,
it would be very straight-forward because
all the difficult tasks of collecting
and synthesizing information has already
been completed with the website.
|
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Like
any genealogy website, the purpose of
an elusive ancestor site is to communicate.
When my husband is communicating with
fellow researchers, he uses this website
to present his evolving information
giving interested researchers a simple
link to the website instead of a pile
of paper. Notice that, unlike a book,
they always have his latest information.
|
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A website
such as this is a great organizing tool
that structures the work for the genealogist.
The elusive ancestor project can be
laid-out from the top-down with web
pages identified for each part of the
presentation and proof. At first many
of the web pages will be "stubs"
with a "Coming Soon" message.
Later, through the months (and years),
the content will be filled in and perfected
as more and more is discovered about
the elusive ancestor.
|
- This site has a
domain name of "poill27.info"
which is registered and owned by my husband.
The domain name is used to form the website
name of "www.poill27.info."
This domain name demonstrates how to deal
with the common case that the first choice
of a genealogy website is already taken
(i.e., in this case the domain name of
"poill.info" is already taken).
If that should happen to you then just
find the first domain name using a serial
number. For example, for an elusive ancestor
or surname website, put a number after
the surname part walking up the numbers.
In this case it was the 27th one. (Actually
this is a fabricated example - it was
not necessary for the surname "Poill"
but this example was constructed to demonstrate
how to deal with this common problem.)
|
| Detailed
Article |
Article:
Elusive Ancestor Website (click here)
Here is a detailed article describing the
www.poill27.info elusive ancestor website.
Also, see
other articles |
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click
the figure above
to see this elusive Ancestor website
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Here's
What you Need for an Elusive Ancestor Website
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An elusive ancestor website
focuses on the presentation of hard evidence such
as scans of historical documents and its content
will grow and be perfected through the years as
new information is discovered. This means my husband
needs an open-ended disk space capability. My husband
purchased the Economy
Hosting Plan  which gives him more disk space
than he'll ever need. Here is what
you would need to build your own elusive ancestor
website. |
| Domain
Name (Click Here):
|
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From
$1.99 per year
(includes many free
services)
The domain
name is the web address of a website. For example,
the domain name of the website "www.olsen42.org"
is "olsen42.org." It will not
only be used to form your website name but also
could be your genealogy e-mail address. In fact,
once you own a domain name, you can use it as
your permanent e-mail address (e.g., "jim@olsen42.org")
and end once and for all the e-mail chaos when
you change your Internet Service Provider (ISP).
For a genealogy website, it's best to use a domain
name ending in .name, .org, or .info. If your
domain name such as "olsen.org" is not
available (someone else has already claimed it)
then try a numbered name such as "olsen42.org"
as in this example. Also, try variations such
as "olsenfamily.org."
|
| Economy
Hosting Plan (Click Here):
|
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From
$2.79 per month (free with domain name but with
advertising)
This will be the home of your genealogy website.
Your website is actually just a bunch of files (i.e.,
linked together) in which you copy the files from
your computer to your website using standard file
functions (e.g., Windows drag and drop). We have
a full line of hosting
plans. Also, you obtain
a free "Economy Hosting Plan" when you
register or renew a domain name which is identical
to the paid-plan but is ad-supported. |
| C-Site
Copyright Protection - Optional (Click
Here): |
 |
Just
$14.99 one time (plus government filing fee)
A growing problem for genealogists is to see their
genealogy work, verbatim, on other genealogy websites
and without giving any credit to the author who
did all the work to create the information. In fact,
anyone who visits your genealogy website can download
your work and claim to be the author. The solution
is to obtain an official federal copyright of your
website. While you can always copyright your work
by just putting the copyright words (e.g., "Copyright
2007 by Mildred Smith") on each web page of
your website, without a federal copyright, it’s
difficult to prove actual authorship. With c-Site,
we’ve made it easy for you to protect your
website contents and file for a federal copyright
– the indisputable legal proof you need to
claim ownership of your work. |
| Online
File Folder
- Optional (Click
Here): |
 |
From
$4.95 per year
Every genealogist needs online file storage. Online
file storage is disk storage housed on a internet
server and is an addendum to the disk storage on
your local computer. The point is that the online
file storage is accessible from any place in the
world from the internet, not just your home computer.
Our "Online File Folder" service provides
disk space on our highly reliable servers. You access
your "Online File Folder" using any standard
web browser such as Internet Explorer or Netscape
Navigator. With an Online File Folder, you'll be
able to upload (or download) any files from any
computer with internet access using a very easy
and user-friendly interface. This capability is
great on genealogy trips when you are using the
public computers in a library or research center.
Prior to the trip, you'll be able to easily upload
files from home to be used on the trip (i.e., accessed
from any public computer). Or you can easily upload
files from the library (i.e., those great files
available only at that library) then download your
treasures once you're back home. We have written
an article on the genealogy
road warrior which explains these procedures
in detail. AND this is also a great secure offsite
storage location for those irreplaceable family
history files and folders or your financial records. |
| Traffic
Blazer
- Optional (Click
Here): |
 |
From
$17.74 per year (usually one year is enough)
One of the main purposes of a genealogy website
is communication with your fellow genealogists and
family members. How will your long-lost cousin who
has the family bible and is activity searching for
your mutual ancestors ever find your genealogy website?
Search engines - that's how! You must get your genealogy
website listed in all the major search engines for
the genealogy keywords and phrases (family names,
locales, etc.) that are important to your genealogy
website. This process is known as "search engine
optimization." It is a process of refining
your website so that it is in the best possible
position to gain a high search engine ranking. However,
search engine optimization is a lengthy and tedious
process. In fact, the author of a website must design
and execute a time-consuming campaign to complete
the search engine optimization of the website. The
campaign will be an iterative process in which the
website is optimized for search engines then tested
to see if the author was able to second-guess the
logic of the search engine to collect the right
keywords or phrases as well as judge the website
as relevant for those keywords or phrases when a
visitor searches for them.This is where "Traffic
Blazer" can help. “Traffic Blazer”
is a search engine optimization and submission tool.
It provides all the tools you will need to undertake
a successful search engine optimization campaign.
For a modest yearly fee, the ”Traffic Blazer”
battery of tools will be available to you to analyze
your website, optimize its contents for search engines,
and track the results of your campaign. “Traffic
Blazer” guides you through every step of the
search engine optimization campaign. In this way,
your website will be found by your long-lost cousin
when he or she performs a search. |
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