Zalewski Family Genealogy

I decided that a new theme was needed. The previous one was nice, but it has been falling behind in some things. The web moves fast. This one gives me more control over certain things and it listed to have been tested and working in the most common browsers (sadly, even IE6, which I wish would die already.) I’ll probably be making some minor changes and tweaks in the next few days, but I’m pretty happy with it already. It’s slick, simple, and it looks nice without taking you away from the content, which is king.

I have a new site to show all of you. But, first, how it all came to be.

While I was searching for more information on a passenger ship from one of my ancestors a few months back, I ran across a site called “Everything I Know About Hyman Victor.” The site is basically one man’s story about his great-grandfather. It shows off all of the vital records, memories, and information about Mr. Victor.

I was very impressed by both the idea and the layout of the website. Since I noticed the site was built using Wordpress, just like this site, I emailed the owner of the website and asked him about how he put it together. He was a very nice guy and said that he would send me some of the files I would need. Recently, I received these files and started putting together a site for my great-great-grandfather, Frank Zalewski.

I wanted to do this for a few reasons. First, I wanted to create a nice site dedicated to Frank and his life. Secondly, going back over a lot of this information may bring me new discoveries. Sadly, I didn’t find anything new, but now all my information is better organized.

I can’t take too much credit for the site, since most of the work was done by Elliot Malkin at Everything I Know About Hyman Victor. Thank you Elliot for the help. Though, I did tweak a few things for my own use.

Without further delay, I bring you Everything I Know About Frank Zalewski.

I had some inspiration yesterday on a new look for my family site. Previously, the family site design just copied this blog design (with some tweaks) to make it easier. I had an idea to show off some of the great photos I have in my collection to visitors of the site. Last night and today I put it all together and it is live now.

The main photo at the top puts the spotlight on a few pictures. Currently, there are only 3 photos rotating through that area. I will add more as I find good photos to use. The photo also includes a line of information about the photo and usually a link to get more info on the individual or family.

Then I broke the main areas of the site into three categories: People, Memories, and Explore. “People” points you to the areas that deal more with the people, such as the “Surnames” area. “Memories” points you to areas like “Photos” and “Headstones.” “Explore” takes you to areas like “Places” and “Notes” so you can just browse around.

The inside pages don’t look as nice. I need to sit down and try to figure out what exactly to do. They take most of the design, but it doesn’t work as well by itself. Plus, a lot of the areas I’d like to tweak are hard to access due to the family tree web software I use. Don’t get me wrong, he developed it very nice. It’s very easy to customize, but some small areas are hard to pinpoint.

I also tried to keep it visible to people with monitor resolutions at 1024×768 and above (the common standard) but it may go a bit over at 1024 exactly. It won’t cut off any content, but it may have a horizontal scroll bar. Anyone above 1024×768 will see it fine.

Take a look at the main page and let me know how you like it. If something looks strange, let me know.

I developed it using no HTML tables, which people should try to do. Using no tables can sometimes cause issues in older browsers. I tested it in 3 of the most recent browsers: Mozilla Firefox 3.5, Google Chrome, Internet Explorer 8. I’m pretty sure it breaks horribly in Internet Explorer 6, but I really don’t care. I know for a fact a lot of the images will look bad in IE6 since I’m using transparent PNG files, which IE6 doesn’t support, but they look wonderful in everything else. IE6 is extremely old and out-dated (2001!) and I don’t plan on spending hours trying to fix it’s problems. People using IE6 should get an alert message asking them to update their browser. I’m not sure on IE7, but I hope it works overall. I didn’t do anything drastic in the design. IE7 is pretty good, overall.

It makes me feel good. One of the few times I had inspiration and finished (most of) it that quickly.

Seems I’ve been tagged with the KreativBlogger award by Julie at GenBlog. Thank you very much.

I guess I’m supposed to tag 5 others according to the rules. I’m hoping I can find 5 bloggers that can be tagged. I usually get caught at the end of these, which I’m used to since it comes with having a “Z” surname.

Rules

1. Copy the award to your site.
2. Link to the person from whom you received the award.
3. Nominate 5 other bloggers.
4. Link to those sites on your blog.
5. Leave a message on the blogs you nominate.

And the award goes to…

• John at Transylvanian Dutch
• Elyse at Elyse’s Genealogy Blog
• Steve at Steve’s Genealogy Blog
• Henk at Trace Your Dutch Roots
• Alexis at Your Future, Your Past

You’ve been doing all of this work on your family tree in your software of choice like Rootsmagic or Family Tree Maker. You’re in contact with some people via the Internet about different people and generations in your tree. You find it annoying that you need to type the information into emails and message posts all the time. Plus, when you update the info, the posting is still old. What do you do?

Setting up your family tree onto your own hosted website isn’t very difficult today. There are tons of hosts out there now that are extremely cheap compared to few years ago. For example, my host, Dreamhost, gives you more space and bandwidth than you’d ever need for like $9.95 a month (depending on how much you pay at a time.)

There are a few options out there to host your own family tree website. I’m currently using The Next Generation of Genealogy Sitebuilding for my family tree hosting. I had used a free, open-source program before, but it had some issues with my current host so I looked for something else. TNGGS has worked wonderfully for me and it’s very powerful and customizable.

Most Linux-based hosts have all of the items you need to run TNGGS. MySQL and PHP are almost standards in web hosting. A Windows-based host may have these capabilities, also, but your mileage may vary.

The only caveat to using TNGGS is that it’s not free, but I wouldn’t hold that against it. The developer, Darrin Lythgoe, has put a lot of work into it and has answered any questions that I’ve sent to him. I’ve also received free updates since I purchased my original copy.

There are other options such as Ancestry’s online tree and dynastree.com, etc but you don’t have a ton of control over these. The pro for them is that you can search and connect to other people’s trees, which I do also. For example, at Ancestry I wanted to update my online tree with some new information I had. Unfortunately, if I would do this than I would lose all of the items (census, records, etc) I have connected to my family tree.

Now when you need to put some information into an email or a message posting, you can just paste in a URL. The person on the other end can just visit your online tree and see the latest info. Or, if you enable the option, they can log in to your site and add their own info or edits.

Feel free to email me about my experience with TNGGS or stop over at the official site and take a look. I definitely recommend it. I can also help you set it up or answer any questions about hosting, etc. I have a bit of experience.

*This is just a personal opinion. TNGGS has in no way, shape, or form paid for my review.

Sorry for the low post count. Haven’t had a lot of time lately for Genealogy research. Should be back soon enough. For now, I wanted to make sure all new visitors see the Zalewski-related projects I’m working on in case they want to help out. Info linked below.

• Working to compile the largest database of Zalewski family trees this side of Poland. – Zalewski Family Tree Project
• Want to find out as much information as you can about the Zalewski surname and where it comes from? Is your Zalewski ancestor related to one of the many Zalewski families being researched by others? Zalewski DNA Project

Feel free to contact me about anything and everything, either in the comments or using my contact form. I’ll respond to everyone. Thanks.

I changed the theme tonight. The old one, while nice, was starting to get clunky and cause me issues. It was hard to fix/edit due to a lot of the comments being written in German (Just because I have German heritage doesn’t mean I can speak it.) It was also statring to load a bit slow, at least for me. I’d rather have the site be bland as long as the content is working.

I found this decent theme, which is simple, yet pretty. I also added a random photo from my photo gallery to the right. I wanted it to just grab from my genealogy album, but I guess it doesn’t have that ability yet. So, you may get some other random photos from vacations, etc. Let me know how you like it, or if something weird is happening in your browser. I tested it in Firefox 2 and Internet Explorer 7, so far. That covers most of the major issues, usually. Thanks.

Well, my Grandpa is doing much better now. My wife and I visited him in the hospital on Saturday and he was his old joking self. Hopefully, he’ll be coming home shortly.

I’ve been out of the “genealogy circuit” here for the last few weeks, so that’s why I’ve been slow on the posts. I’m working on getting more information that will allow me to post more often, even when I’m not actively researching since I don’t always have time to do family research.

For all of you genealogy bloggers out there, where do you find the inspiration and information to be able to post quite often even when not actively researching? I’d like some tips to help me get the ball rolling.