> > > I'm fairly new at web designing, but I've been around computers since the days of paper tape and punched cards as their input and output. Even though HTML and the web will evolve, and may have successors, the huge investment in current content guarantees that as long as human technological civilization endures, there will be migration paths. So, it seems to me, your main concerns should be: 1} having a succession of "heirs" to preserve or continue your work; and 2) having a precautions that important things are not thrown out in the physical or electronic trash when you die, or lost when a website dies, such as Anglefire did. Obviously there is no 100% guarantee that your successors will have successors forever. But having a site that others find meaningful and others are involved in helps. For me, having work continue on my family tree is one of the most important elements. GEDCOMS will be replaced by XML, which will be replaced by something else, but there will be a conversion path available if anyone cares enough to migrate it. For now, I upload copies of my full, unfiltered GEDCOM on Google Docs and have several people authorized to access it when I no longer can maintain it. Other "cloud" environments would serve. In many decades of working (or at least dabbling) in almost every aspect of information science, the toughest problems have almost always been the humans, not the technological problems. The latter have solutions or "work arounds". The former is permanent and based in human nature. > ----- Original Message ----- > Date: Sun, 22 Apr 2012 16:53:42 +100 > From: Warwick Sherring <warwick.sherring@bigpond.com> > Subject: [FreeHelp] Web page permanency > To: FREEPAGES-HELP@rootsweb.com > Message-ID: <4F93AAF6.8080702@bigpond.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed > > To make my research available to others and to ensure its availability > after I am 'pushing up daisies', I have created two web pages using html > and css and I have considered the use of java script at times. > > However, on reading a recent transcript of an address by an archivist, I > was wondering about the safety of straying from straight html/css. > > The archivist mainly talked about the problems of retaining material > recorded on outmoded systems ie tapes and CDs; however he did also raise > the problem of web pages that make calls to now defunct off-site plug-ins. > > I wondered if the more experienced web designers could comment on this > matter. > > Warwick Sherring > Lismore NSW > http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~sherring/ > http://freepages.family.rootsweb.com/~sherring/parry/wormy

As it stands right now there is no one else in my family to carry on when I'm gone. That could change by then, but........... That's one reason I keep most everything on Rootsweb. My hope is that Ancestry/Rootsweb, or it's successors, will keep those page available for researchers into the future. They are, after all, into at least collecting information and making it available. I know some people in the past have been upset with *claims* that the information they worked for and made available has been used for the "for pay" sites. [ I don't *know* that this has ever happened ] My personal feeling is that at least its available somewhere. So, if at some point my "pages" wind up as information on "for pay" site I hope they at least make corrections to whatever I got wrong. On 04/23/2012 05:18 AM, William Thompson wrote: > So, it seems to me, your main concerns should be: > 1} having a succession of "heirs" to preserve or continue your work; and > 2) having a precautions that important things are not thrown out in the > physical or electronic trash when you die, or lost when a website dies, > such as Anglefire did. -- “The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government lest it come to dominate our lives and interests”. - Patrick Henry - _ _... ..._ _ _._ ._ ..... ._.. ... .._