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To volunteer to host a website, Contact Us with our Automated Form!
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(But read the info below first!!!)
So maybe you've been cruising through our websites and find that you're excited by
what you see us trying to do.
And you're asking yourself, how do I become a part of this? Or maybe you're saying
to yourself, I wish I could
do this, but I don't think I have the skills. Or maybe you're just saying I need
to know more of what's involved
before I commit to anything. You've come to the right page. :-)
We are a group of volunteers trying to put
as much free genealogical and
historical data online as possible. If that's not where your interests lie, then
there's really no point in you
reading on. But if you agree with our philosophy of trying to put as much data
online for the free use of all,
then you're exactly what we're looking for!
First.... a little history ABOUT
US
We started Illinois Trails in March 2000, to
try and create one central place
that Illinois researchers could go to search through free online data for their
ancestors. The support for our
efforts was almost 100% positive. And we say "almost" because there h
as always been one complaint. "Why
weren't there more states online full of data just like our Illinois sites?"
It was a valid complaint, but
one we never thought we'd be in a position to do anything about. After 6 years of
hard work of transcribing Illinois
genealogical and historical data, our Illinois Trails hosts felt that we COULD do
something about it. We're researchers
too, and it's frustrating to search online for data from other states only to just
not find it available. So, after
much discussion amongst our hosts, we decided to try and branch out to cover other
states.
File organization issues made a new name and domain imperative, so on March 1,
2006, Genealogy Trails History Group
was born, and Illinois Trails became another wonderful stop along the nationwide
trail of free genealogy websites.
We started with those same Illinois Trails hosts and maintained the same group
philosophy of putting data online
for free... now we're doing it for the other states of our beautiful country as
well!
And here we are today.... still working on transcribing free data. And if you're
interested in joining us, read
on...
We are, and always have been, very choosy about our hosts. We could easily adopt
out every county of every state
if we weren't so picky, but our sites would not be the quality sites you are used
to seeing from us. Our group
was founded on the idea of transcribing
data
and the reality is, it's work. The rewards make the work very worthwhile though.
The people you work with are individuals
who are dedicated to the same ideals and have the same goals as you. The
researchers you will meet through your
position as host will help further your own family research - it happens to
everybody. Some of our hosts are "long-lost"
family members who met each other through these very websites and now are
returning the favor by hosting their
own sites for us.
What we're NOT.... We're not a political organization, there's no elections to various offices, no
unintelligible by-laws to memorize,
no long list of rules and regulations that have nothing to do with genealogy to
adhere to .... we'll leave that
to other groups. Genealogy Trails is all about transcribing
data and we're all just trying to do our jobs in
the best way we know how, with the least bit
of conflict possible.
So just to be absolutely
clear: If you are an individual who
enjoys the political world of online genealogy, if you like serving on committees,
if you think there aren't enough
by-laws in the world today, if you really enjoy the debating of rules and deciding
who is and isn't following them
--- WE ARE NOT THE PLACE FOR YOU. We
really want to stress that!
We are ALL ABOUT ADDING DATA to
our websites and enjoying each others company while we're doing it - that's it.
There's no point in continuing
reading if you are only looking for a place to hone or exercise your political
prowess.
So, if you're still interested in becoming a host for us, continue reading! If
not, thanks for your time and Happy
Hunting along your genie trails!
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Where does your interest lie?
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If you're interested in
contributing your data to our group
- view
this
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If you're interested in
becoming a County Host, view
this
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If you're interested in
becoming a State Host, view
this
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County Host Information
Now for the details about joining our group as an
unpaid volunteer County Host....
(did we just lose you? :-)
What's needed to host a county website....
You
pretty much need to know how
to type - accuracy is more important than speed.
You need to have access to non-copyrighted
data to transcribe for your county and the desire to transcribe that data.
You must know how to make a basic
webpage.
If you're
stopping reading
right here..... There are tutorials to help you learn how to make webpages - it's not that tough,
honest. Many of our hosts were
complete html newbies and now they're churning out webpages left and right. We
can't teach you how though, cuz we're absolutely
swamped with transcribing. If you don't want to learn the ins and outs of html, then you can always use
download an html editor, looking for
the word "WYSIWYG" is the programs description - that means it works
like WORD works... all the html
formatting is done for you behind the scenes. Examples of FREE WYSIWYG editors
are Pagebreeze,
html-notepad.com,
TRELLIAN
WEBPAGE, KOMPOZER,
SEAMONKEY,
Bluegriffon,
Microsoft Web
Expressions 4 ...
and the old Frontpage if you can find a copy. Want a head start on designing an index page, (which is usually a bit more
complicated than the interior webpages)...
Here's a basic
webpage template to make a county index
page.
If you've tried, but you just can't pick up the "how-to's" of making a webpage,
write us and we'll see if we can't set something up for you. But first, PLEASE giv
e it a try.
What's involved in hosting a County website?
The responsibilities of a County Host are as
follows:
1. The
biggest responsibility of
a Genealogy Trails Host is to transcribe data on a regular basis.
That's what our group is about. If you don't want to transcribe data, you might
as well stop reading right now.This is a deal-breaker.
Many of our hosts try to make monthly updates, some weekly, others every two or three months. Some folks work
in spurts as their schedules allow and that is fine too. Just make the effort to
keep the website current and we'll
be happy. We ask that all hosts try to add a little something to their sites every
quarter. We're not talking
transcribing a census every quarter - though feel free to, lol. Researchers will
LOVE YOU if you do. But what
we're talking about is transcribing a couple of obituaries and/or biographies
every 3 months. If you don't have the
time to do even that, then hosting a site is probably not for you. Websites that
sit without any new data added
to them for extended periods of time quickly lose their appeal to researchers. The
more you transcribe, the more
likely your website visitors will be inspired to contribute data to your site.
Data to be included are items such as Census, Cemeteries, Marriages, Deaths,
Histories, Biographies, etc. following
all copyright laws. A good place to begin is with the documents you already
have gathered from your own family
history. Putting your data online will also increase the chances you'll meet up
with somebody researching your
own family. As you get that data online, you'll want to branch out into data
that is beneficial to a wider
range of researchers rather than just the ones researching your own family lines. You'll
want to progress to transcribing
lists of names, rather than just snagging one or two surnames out of a list.
2. Accept data contributions and
place them online. If researchers donate their
records to Genealogy Trails for your County, it's your job
to place that data online, giving a copyright to the person who submitted the
material. However, this doesn't mean
you have to accept someone's gedcom or family tree and post it online for them;
rather we want the records they
found that helped them create that family tree, rather than the tree itself. Just a note about the data - It
is important to realize
that researchers are contributing their family information to the Genealogy
Trails project, not to
YOU, the county host. If you leave our group for
whatever reason, every attempt will be made to retain the data
that researchers contributed to for that website. It's a confusing point and many
of our hosts get attached to
"their" researchers, so it's just good to make things as clear as we can. Any
data that's on a site
when you join us WILL remain with that site. Onward.....
What should your website look like?
You can be as creative as you'd like with your pages in the style and color of
your choice, making sure to include
the following WEBPAGE ELEMENTS:
LINKS - Required
ones are: back to
our main Genealogy Trails page, your state's main index page and to the
surrounding counties.
The links must be displayed on your main
index page, usually near the
bottom of the page is a good place. CURRENT EMAIL ADDRESS -
displayed
in an obvious place on the index page of the website so researchers can contact
you with questions or data contributions. LOGO:
Your main page must include the
OFFICIAL Genealogy
Trails Logo of your choice and it needs
to be displayed near the top of
your index page. Once you join us, you can visit our Graphics Page to pick up one
of the OFFICIAL Genealogy Trails
Logo. (No, you cannot make your own
logo, nor can you alter one of
ours) We don't require logos on every page
of the website, but you should
be sure to include a link back to your county's own main index page for the
visitor's convenience. Your site should Include a brief history
of your County. Let visitors know what
your County was all about. You can include historical photographs,
biographies, public officials, tax lists from the past. Libraries are excellent
places to find public-domain materials
like this to include. Other than that, you're free to add whatever other
copyright-free data you can find.
You can create your pages in any style or color
that you like, as long as the
above elements are present. We would appreciate it if you crunch/optimize any graphics used in making the
site. We try and keep our sites
quick loading and big graphics, besides being wasteful of our server space, can
slow a website down to a crawl,
costing you viewers. Also, our data files
are in html format, trying to
keep the webpages as simple as possible for the fastest loading possible. We do
not use pdf files due to their
large size, the long time they take to actually open and the fact they do not get
included in search engines.
It is your choice as to whether you add surname/query/brickwall webpages, links to
informational websites such
as area libraries and societies, etc. The only type of links we don't want are
links to commercial websites (ancestry,
familytreemaker, genealogy.com, etc - they don't need our help and many users
can't access them). Remember though
- a link is an excuse to leave your website. You're doing a lot of work to attract
visitors to your site and when
you provide a link, you're providing an easy way for visitors to leave your
site... so you'll want to make sure
that there's a good reason for providing a link that's going to take your
website's visitor away to someone else's
site.
We have no commercial ads or banners on our sites. We want to keep it that way.
Where do I place my site? Hosts are NOT required to use our server,
though the index page of your
website must be
on our server
under our domain umbrella, and displaying only our group's logo. The other
webpages of the site may be placed on
any server you want - you are not required to use our webspace. There are
companies who offer free webspace, though
they're dwindling rapidly...
We offer unlimited webspace for Genealogy Trails websites under our
genealogytrails.com domain. If you choose to
put your webpages on our server, you will be given a password and that space will
be considered yours as long as
you are hosting for Genealogy Trails. We will respect your privacy and not
interfere with the files you place in
it. There may be instances where we will have to access the ftp space you are
using, but these instances are extremely
rare and are usually confined to cases of administrative emergencies. If you leave
our group, the password will
be changed to protect the privacy of the next host. Again, we ask that you use the
space we provide wisely and
it is ONLY for our G.T. sites.
DATA ISSUES - who owns the data? If a researcher contributes it, it's their data. If a host transcribes it from copyright-free sources, it's their data. But here's the thing - you're joining a group whose goal is to transcribe data,
data and more data for the sole
purpose of keeping genealogy free. Why then would you ask for it to be removed? As
much as we want to accommodate
every request to remove an ex-host's data, it's just not possible to do,
especially for a very active transcriber.
And it's definitely not fair to the researchers to have to visit an empty site. So
our policy is that if a host
feels the need to ask for their own
transcribed data to be removed, we will attempt to remove the data that host transcribed for
their own county
site(s) only. If in the unlikely event that the ex-host plans on asking for their
data to be removed from their own county site, they need to do that within 3
days of leaving the group. After the 3
days elapses, the data WILL REMAIN
ONLINE on the county site of the host, as the host originally intended.
We all work together on unhosted sites and we have a transcription team whose sole
function is to transcribe data.
Having that data there one day and gone the next is totally unfair to the
researchers and other hosts, especially
since we provide a lot of the data to be transcribed and also pay for the
subscriptions which a host can also use
for their family research. Accordingly then, our policy for host contributed data
to sites other
than their own is that the data will not
be removed once it's online. It's just
too hard and time-consuming to
go through over a 200,000 webpages trying to find who did what, when. So
if a host or transcription team
member made a wonderful gift to researchers by transcribing some data for a county
or state other than their own
site, we will accept that gift in the spirit it was given and will continue to
display the data online, even after
a host has left the group.
To try and make this as clear as possible: --- Your transcribed data for your
individual county site is yours to
do with as you please, leaving it online here, or even contributing it to other
genealogical projects, but if we
don't hear from you within 3 days of leaving the group, it will continue to be
used by and posted on Genealogy
Trails websites for the free use of researchers just like you originally intended
it to be. Any data you contributed
to a site other than your own county will NOT be removed. Material contributed
by others, which a host may have
posted, will remain the property of the contributor, not the host, and should not
be used on any other site without
the written permission of the submitter.
For 99.9% of our hosts, all of the above means nothing because they've already
made it very clear they want their
data to remain online for the free use of all researchers. For that other .1% --
we'll try our best to accommodate
the wishes of the host, but there's a point where it's just not feasible, and the
guidelines above reflect those
instances.
And now, moving on....
And lastly, does this cost anything?
Well.... yes.... our volunteers pay to work for free. How crazy is that!!! But
being a group of volunteers with
no big corporations hiding behind us to pay our server bill, we need to be able to
pay that bill somehow. So the
volunteers of the group decided that Annual
Dues of $5 would be more than enough to pay for
our server space which we offer to hosts
under our domain name. We collect dues once a year in February cuz
that's when the server bill is
due. It is a flat fee of $5 per host, not per number of counties that the host may
manage. The dues are required
even if you do not host your site on our server. If the $5 is a hardship, we can
work this out. Please do not let this be the only reason you
decide not to join us. Many of our hosts contribute a little extra every year to
help cover hosts who can't pay.
Did I mention we have a really good bunch of folks working together?
Sound good? Still interested? Contact
Us and
let's set the process in
motion!!!
IMPORTANT: We are not a
commercial website - we are volunteer
based and do not receive payment. We do not allow our hosts to make a profit from
this project and a host should
never ask a researcher for money. Also, we do not allow hosts to advertise or link
to their own commercial businesses
from a Genealogy Trails website. This includes any Professional Genealogy Research
business. back to
the top
Thinking about wanting to be a STATE HOST?
Skills and requirements are a little different for this job because there's more
work involved.... First, see if
the state is available here.
If so, here are the job responsibilities.
What skills do I need?
You need to know how to type
- accuracy is more important than speed.
You need to have access to non-copyrighted
data to transcribe for your county and state and the desire to transcribe that
data.
You must know how to make a basic
webpage.
What are my responsibilities as a State
host?
State Hosts are also expected to
transcribe data - this is why we're different
from other online projects and this is why folks are so supportive of our group
... data... data... data.
State hosts are making a commitment to work on a number of sites that are not
their "own". They're agreeing
to add contributed data from researchers and hosts to the unhosted county sites in
the state. They need to agree
to do this on a regular schedule. As a state host, you need to be able to commit
the time every month to add data
to the sites or you will fall hopelessly behind. (We get a lot of data
contributions!) At the end of a year, in
a perfect world, a state host should have tried to add some pieces of data to
every unhosted county site.
If you feel like you have the time to devote to hosting a state, we're going to
still start you off hosting a county
site only for the first month or two. This will give you time to adjust to online
genealogy, get your "sea-legs"
under you and will help you decide if this is really something you want to do
before making the full commitment
to host the state. After the initial month or two and if everybody's happy with
each other, we'll expand to the
full state hosting duties.
State Host Data Requirements:
1. State Hosts should host at least one county and provide transcribed data for
that county, as well as state-based
transcribed data (when able to). Set a good example for your county hosts. When
they see you working hard transcribing,
they will be inspired to work just as hard with you. View the county
host responsibilities above - they apply
here as well.
2. State Hosts are responsible for accepting transcribed data for unhosted
counties and placing it within the website
on a timely basis and providing a link to that data. (However, this doesn't mean
you have to accept someone's gedcom
or family tree and post it online for them; rather we want the records they found
that helped them create that
family tree.) (View the county
host
responsibilities above - they apply here as well.)
Just a note about the data - It
is important to realize
that researchers are contributing their family information to the Genealogy
Trails project, not to
YOU, the State host. If you leave our group for
whatever reason, every attempt will be made to retain the data
that researchers contributed to the websites. It's a confusing point and many of
our hosts get attached to "their"
researchers, so it's just good to make things as clear as we can. (View the county
host responsibilities above - they
apply here as well.) Onward.....
Administrative Duties:
1. Help new hosts get their pages up and running, so you need to have a pretty
good grasp of html and ftp'ing.
We do have tech people who can help out here though and our mailing list is ALWAYS
available for asking questions.
2. State Hosts should periodically check to make sure all site requirements are on
the county website pages. Logos
and links should all be correct.
3. State Hosts can expect to handle day-to-day personnel issues that arise with
their county hosts. They should
respond to emails within a reasonable time, whether from the public or their
County Hosts. If there are complaints
or inquiries about County Hosts, the State Host is responsible for alerting the
National Coordinator (Kim) of those
complaints. You're won't be alone in handling "issues" which may arise
- there's always someone to help
and our mailing list is available 24/7.
What should your website look like?
You can be as creative as you'd like with your state webpage in the style and
color of your choice, making sure
to include the following WEBPAGE
ELEMENTS:
- Proper placement of an OFFICIAL Genealogy Trails
logo at the top of the page,
a link to the main Genealogy Trails page (usually at the bottom of the page) and
links to the hosted counties of
the state which can be either on the index page or a page linked to from the
index page - your choice. Your main index page must include
the Genealogy Trails Logo and
it needs to be displayed near the top of your index page. Once you join us, you
can visit our Graphics Page to
pick up one of the OFFICIAL Genealogy Trails Logo. (No,
you cannot
make your own logo, nor can you alter one of ours) A
state site should have
a G.T. logo on every page. - A current email address displayed in an obvious place on the index page of the
website so researchers can contact
you with questions or data contributions. - Information on adopting available counties - A brief history of the state. - Information on the state's research
resources with [optional] links
to informational websites. Genealogical/Historical Society website links are
optional, but snail mail addresses
should be provided. The only type of links we don't want are links to commercial
websites (ancestry, familytreemaker,
genealogy.com, etc - they don't need our help). Remember though - a link is an
excuse to leave your website. You're
doing a lot of work to attract visitors to your site and when you provide a link,
you're providing an easy way
for visitors to leave your site. We have no banner ads on our sites. We want to keep it that way.
Feel free to create your state
pages in any style or
color that you like, as long as the
above elements are present. However, our county
sites are set up already, even
the unhosted ones. They don't need a mass overhaul
or massive redecorating project, so if you just like to design websites, this
isn't what we're looking for in a
state host. We live in a busy world, we all have busy schedules and limited time,
so we want your available time
to be spent in adding data, not redecorating already decorated websites.
*****
Where do I place my site? Hosts are NOT required to use our server,
though the index
page of your website must be on our
server displaying our logo. Your state
interior data pages may be placed on any server you want.
All unhosted county sites must remain on our server.
We offer unlimited webspace for Genealogy Trails websites under our
genealogytrails.com domain. If you choose to
put your webpages on our server, you will be given a password and that space will
be considered yours as long as
you are hosting for Genealogy Trails. We will respect your privacy and not
interfere with the files you place in
it. There may be instances where we will have to access the ftp space you are
using, but these instances are extremely
rare and are usually confined to cases of administrative emergencies. If you leave
our group, the password will
be changed to protect the privacy of the next host.
DATA ISSUES - who owns the data? If a researcher contributes it, it's their data. If a host transcribes it from
copyright-free sources, it's their
data. But here's the thing - you're joining a group whose goal is to transcribe
data, data and more data for the
sole purpose of keeping genealogy free. Why then would you ask for it to be
removed? As much as we want to accommodate
every request to remove an ex-host's data, it's just not possible to do,
especially for a very active transcriber.
And it's definitely not fair to the researchers to have to visit an empty site. So
our policy is that if a host
feels the need to ask for their own transcribed data to be removed, we will remove
the data that host transcribed
for their own county
site(s) only,
and that request must be made within 3
days
of leaving the group. After the 3 days elapses, the data WILL REMAIN ONLINE on the
county site of the host, as
the host originally intended.
STATE HOSTS -- Any data you transcribe for your state's unhosted county sites will
remain with that county site,
even if you ask it to be removed. A state host is assuming a lot of
responsibility, including that for unhosted
sites and to remove the data they added would most likely be very detrimental to
the whole state and we won't allow
a state to be stripped bare. Sorry, that's just the way it needs to be.
We all work together on unhosted sites and we have a transcription team whose sole
function is to transcribe data.
Having that data there one day and gone the next is totally unfair to the
researchers and other hosts, especially
since we provide a lot of the data to be transcribed and also pay for the
subscriptions which a host uses to obtain
that data. Accordingly then, our policy for host contributed data to sites other
than their own is that the data will not
be removed once it's online. It's just
too hard and time-consuming to
go through over a hundred thousand webpages trying to find who did what, when. So
if a host or transcription team
member made a wonderful gift to researchers by transcribing some data for a county
or state other than their own
site, we will accept that gift in the spirit it was given and will continue to
display the data online, even after
a host has left the group.
To try and make this as clear as possible: --- Your transcribed data for your
individual county site is yours to
do with as you please, leaving it online here, or even contributing it to other
genealogical projects, but if we
don't hear from you within 3 days of leaving the group, it will continue to be
used by and posted on Genealogy
Trails websites for the free use of researchers just like you originally intended
it to be. Any data you contributed
to a site other than your own county will NOT be removed. Material contributed
by others, which a host may have
posted, will remain the property of the contributor, not the host, and should not
be used on any other site without
the written permission of the submitter.
For 99.9% of our hosts, all of the above means nothing because they've already
made it very clear they want their
data to remain online for the free use of all researchers. For that other .1% --
we try our best to accommodate
the wishes of the host, but there's a point where it's just not feasible, and the
guidelines above reflect those
instances.
And now, moving on....
And lastly, does this cost anything?
Well.... yes.... our volunteers pay to work for free. How crazy is that!!! But
being a group of volunteers with
no big corporations hiding behind us to pay our server bill, we need to be able to
pay that bill somehow. So the
volunteers of the group decided that Annual
Dues of $5 would be more than enough to pay for
our unlimited
server space which we offer to hosts
under our domain name. Any extra
goes to purchase data to transcribe. We collect dues once a year in March cuz
that's when the server bill is due.
It is a flat fee of $5 per host, not per number of counties that the host may
manage. The dues are required even if you do not host your site
on our server. If the $5 is a hardship, we can work this out. Please do not let
this be the only reason you decide
not to join us. Many of our hosts contribute a little extra every year to help
cover hosts who can't pay. Did I
mention we have a really good bunch of folks working together?
Sound good? Still interested? Contact
Us and
set the process in motion!!!
IMPORTANT: We are not a commercial
website - we are volunteer based
and do not receive payment. We do not allow our hosts to make a profit from this
project and a host should never
ask a researcher for money. Also, we do not allow hosts to advertise or link to
their own commercial businesses
from a Genealogy Trails website. This includes any Professional Genealogy Research
business.
back
to the top
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