Why build this site?
This site was developed to publish the genealogical history of my family in order to
allow others to see and use this valuable information. The work displayed on this site
is the sum total of hundreds of manhours of labor and research and the person who deserve
the most credit are the ones who entered all this information into Family Tree Maker
to begin with. To those people I owe my undying gratitude. If it wasn't for them this
information would still be buried in record vaults and musty tomes.
How this site works
This site is designed with three main navigation bars that all the user to access the
entire site. These navigation bars will work in any browser and are enhanced using the
newer browsers via inline javascript programming.
Main Navigation Bar
The main navigation bar looks like the graphics above. It appears at the top and bottom
of every page. This navigation bar allows you to access all the top level pages in the
site. If you get lost go to either the home page or the table of contents to regain
your bearings.
Flow Navigation Bar
The Flow Navigation Bar is the graphics just above this one. It consists of the Back
and Next Buttons. If there is no previous or next page the button will not appear. Use
this navigation bar to traverse the pages that reside on the same level.
Child Navigation Bar
The Child Navigation bar looks similar to the image at the right
and provides a graphical link to all subpages from the current page.
Note: The All records page does not have a Child Navigation
Bar due to the fact that it contains linkes to over 700 subpages. If two graphics were
added for every link we would soon overrun our server space and it would take a lifetime
to download the page using a typical modem.
How this site was built
This site was built using Microsoft
FrontPage98. This is a WYSIWYG editor and is very handy for building relatively
complex sites in a uniform manner. This site uses a modification of the Nature theme
that comes with FrontPage98. It uses a basic FrontPage98 layout but the order of pages
is not based upon any template. If you would like me to make you a Frontpage Website
for your business, genealogical or personal use please email me at wluke@netport.com.
After publishing the site from FrontPage98 to my local harddrive, the
site is imported into Macromedia's Dreamweaver.
In Dreamweaver and using a text editor called Textpad32
the web pages are checked for correct HTML and the HTML coding is edited by hand to
fit with Geocities' specifications and directory limitations.
All genealogical data is stored in Broderbund
Software's Family Tree Maker package. This software package is currently up to version
4.4.
All genealogical data found on these pages was exported from Family Tree
Maker into a text-based GEDCOM format and formatted for the internet using GEDPAGE
2.2. This excellent program while being no-frills gets the job done fast and efficiently.
It took about 35 seconds to process my GEDCOM files. Each family page then has to be
hand edited to add the look and feel from the rest of the site to it.
The links, graphics and spelling are all checked, tested and doublechecked.
Only then is the site uploaded to the Geocities server and tested in an online state.
We are currently using Netscape Communicator 4.04, Microsoft Internet Explorer and AOL
4.0 to test this site. You can find links to Communicator and Internet Explorer on our
downloads page. If you wish to upgrade to AOL 4.0 please contact
AOL for an upgrade disk.
About the Author
My name is Wayne Luke and while I am certainly interested in my family
history, I have never under taken the vast and time consuming research it takes to document
the information. I am a computer programmer and a freelance internet developer by trade.
I built this site to contribute something to my future and to let my children know where
they came from. I cannot take credit for all the information on these pages just the
display and format of that information. If you like this site or would like to talk
to me about your own site please feel free to contact me by email at wluke@netport.com
