I started my blog on 3 January 2011 to encourage myself not to give up on researches. I’ve had several longish periods of time in 2011 when I haven’t had time to do anything, but it has persuaded me to take up my researches again when time is available. According to the WordPress stats, I did make 52 posts, so an average of one each week is OK.
Sites I started using this year:
http://www.genealogyintime.com/
http://beta.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/ – browsing and searching is free, seeing the full results needs a subscription. Worth doing the searches, and then if you find anything you can decide on credits or subscription.
http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?db=easter_family – moved my family trees here. Still getting used to it – you upload your whole GEDCOM each time, and I’ve found duplicates that aren’t in my original GEDCOM. I have searched and found others researching the same families, but no replies to contacts yet.
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/
http://mocavo.co.uk launched the UK version – can’t see a lot of difference to the .com version yet – most results are still from my trees. Again it depends how many people upload their trees. A recent update lets you mark search results as already read, and whether they were relevant to your researches.
http://maps.osi.ie/publicviewer/ – OS maps for Ireland. Set preview (right) to historic, and select “Historic layers”. If your ancestry is Irish, it’s worth taking a look.
http://www.surreyarchives.org.uk/
http://www.exploringsurreyspast.org.uk/
http://www.lerwill-life.org.uk/history/devtales.htm Devon History Selection – links to many resources for Devon family history and genealogy.
Joined more groups at Genealogywise – I wish this genealogy networking site was more active, it would be an excellent hub. Take a look if you haven’t visited it yet.
Several contacts have come through this blog and my main website, so if you have the time and don’t already have a blog or site it’s worth considering. If you’re not a techie, using one of the blog providers is easy and free – I use wordpress.com but there are several others.
Plans for the next twelve months
I’m thinking about watermarking my gallery photos – some have been donated by other family members. I’ve no objection to relatives downloading them, but I wouldn’t be happy about commercial bots harvesting them and using them for profit. I could include a note on the gallery telling any relatives to contact me for unmarked copies.
Collecting information from people who have contacted me and adding it to the main family history site. Thanks Lucy, Jane, Glyn, Dom, Gill, Patricia, Dorothy, Mary, Lynn.
Increasing the gallery. Several people have offered photos.
After I initially commented I seem to have clicked the -Notify me when new comments are added- checkbox and from now on every time a comment is added I receive four emails with the same comment.
Perhaps there is a means you are able to remove me from that
service? Kudos!
Hi, I’ve dug about in the support, and found this on the forum:
You cannot do this for the subscriber. Subscribers control their own subscriptions and we cannot delete, block or unsubscribe any subscriber from a public blog.
Here are brief instructions for your followers re:unsubscribing
1. They can click the “unsubscribe” link on the emails of the post they receive at the very bottom of the emails.
2. Or they can go here > http://wordpress.com/#!/read/edit/ and locate this:
“Get new posts by email” in the drop-down menu they have these choices:
never
instantly
daily
weekly
3. They can also click the “x” next to any blog there to unfollow it and no longer receive posts in their Reader or by email.
Related:
You can unfollow a blog http://en.support.wordpress.com/following/#unfollow-a-blog as well as leaving a blog. http://en.support.wordpress.com/my-blogs/#leave-a-blog
Hope this helps!