What a wonderful site! I am not an Adamthwaite, but have just discovered that John Allen Adamthwaite was my 4xgreat grandad's attorney out in Jamaica for a time. My 4xgreat grandad was John Pigot and he was the excutor of John Appleton's will - another connection. He and John were friends, as my John leaves bequests to John Appleton in his own will, but by the time of the codicil, John Appleton has died. I am at present engaged in research of my John Pigot, so you can imagine my delight at finding John Allen Adamthwaite on the web! I hope you don't mind me 'dropping in'. - All the best - Gail
Website design notes
The first version of the Adamthwaite Archive started life in early 2006 as a few pages tacked on to the end of my own family history website. It was a very amateur affair, only shared with a few other Adamthwaite researchers. However, as the Adamthwaite mailing list on Rootsweb.com grew, and as more people found the website through search engines, more and more information was added. As a result, the website expanded (just like Topsy!) until it became necessary to transfer the whole site to a new url of its very own.
Version two moved to the current url in August 2007. It still followed the original design and was still constructed with Microsoft Frontpage - however, with the increased volumes of data, particularly on the pages showing births, marriages and deaths, upload time was a problem. There were also the usual difficulties associated with sites built with Frontpage - such as incompatibility with some browsers. Also the time taken to update some of the pages meant that instant corrections were not always possible.
Version three was loaded up over the course of several months onto a host site at www.moonfruit.com and transferred to the original url in January 2009. Although the new design requires the use of Flash Player, the advantages of speed of uploading and consistency with all browsers were considered worth the change. And now I can make corrections and add pages whenever necessary; all that I need is a connection to the internet.
Hopefully, the extended use of pdf files to present the data spreadsheets and many of the large format files will not cause problems to any users. It remains to be seen how long it will take Google and other search engines to trawl the new pages, as now only the Welcome page has the same url as the old site. The Moonfruit Sitemaker also provides other possible tools that we may decide to use in the future - such as blogs, and member-only pages. I can't really see us needing the video facilities, but you never know!
I would very much welcome your comments on the new design; and in particular I hope that you will tell me of any difficulties you experience in viewing any pages, images or files. Just click on 'Add a Comment' and fill in the form. As always, contributions of photos, stories, memories are very welcome, as are corrections or additional information to any of the data spreadsheets (but email me directly with these).
Sue Mastel
website coordinator
please tell us what you think (NB your email address won't appear)
-
(Posted on 2009-08-16 22:08:00 by )
-
thanks Shirley - I'll look into the blog option and see how it works - sue
(Posted on 2009-04-19 17:30:00 by ) -
Brilliant work, Sue! There is something new everytime I drop in on the site! Would love a "blog" link to chat to other Adamthwaites.
(Posted on 2009-04-18 11:02:00 by ) -
I have just read the latest newsletter and hasten to say the new website is absolutely marvellous. I have had no trouble at all, everything loads very quickly and it is so easy to follow the links to find the information you want. The trouble is the site is so fascinating I get led astray and spend far too much browsing back & forth when really I should be doing other things.
(Posted on 2009-03-10 15:35:00 by ) -
The new web site is a great improvement on the old and has a much more professional look.
I particularly like the drop down menus and the new home page.
I recently lost my family tree data and with the aid of some hard copy and swiftly moving around
the ARCHIVE I quickly restored it all thanks to the lists of BMDs and the colour coding system.
(Posted on 2009-01-20 21:33:00 by ) -
Hi Sue, The website looks really good! It did take a while for the photos in the photo galleries to download though, Kate
(Posted on 2009-01-20 17:37:00 by ) -
what do you think of the new layout? do the links to the BMD spreadsheets work ok for you? what about the photo gallery? Please click 'add comment' and tell me what you REALLY think!
(Posted on 2009-01-11 22:49:00 by )
NEW!
calling all Adamthwaites:
the Adamthwaite quiz
contact details:
adamthwaite @ one-name.org
hi Gail - I would be very interested to hear more about John Allen Adamthwaite's involvement with your John Pigot in Jamaica - can you email me at the contact address on the left? Sue