Hi family, I've received two messages asking about the money collection for our annual fees, considering other lists our cousins belong to don't do this. So, this message is targeted to our newest cousins ~ those having joined the family this year. You cousins who have been with me from the beginning are certainly welcome to add to this explanation as I'm going to make a long story short... First off no, Rootsweb lists do not collect $$. This is an "in-family" thing for our family/list only. Two years ago when I established the Howell Research Room as a cyberhome for our collective family, I set us up at GeoCities. Well, I'm afraid it didn't take long before Yahoo stepped in and made some major changes to its free accounts. I began receiving notice after notice after notice about our home having too much traffic and was being shut down by GeoCities for hours or days at a time. The cousins (and me) were literally unable to get to our online home (and our data) because of the site's heavy traffic and the fact that we quickly used the data transfer permitted by GeoCities for free sites. We put up with this for oh... maybe 6 months. A real unhappiness among the cousins sent me looking for another free hosting site. How was anyone, especially our visitors, going to view our data if everyone is chronically locked out??? By then however, there were no other free hosts with enough storage room for us. In addition, the double pop-up ads was driving everyone nuts! So, a second requirement was no banner or pop-up ads. I presented the cousins with the following options ~ did everyone... * want to stay at GeoCities and upgrade to one of their packages? * want to get out of GeoCities and open our own domain? * want to leave things as they are? :) * want me to find another free site that can handle our traffic and data transfer rate? Immediately the votes came in for us to move out of GeoCities and get our own domain. The agreement is... I build and manage our home, putting everyone's data online... the cousins pay for our home. Now, let me explain this "pay" business... Our annual fees are $110 per year. Everyone sends me what they can afford to help pay for the site. Only in this way does this way make the Howell Research Room OUR home, and not just mine. Only in this way does it give EVERYONE a vested interest in seeing that the site stays online. Let me also add here that if the contributions go over the $110. that money is rolled over to the next year ~ I don't keep a dime of it ~ it's family funds. (Though I will admit that if enough money comes in to pay for a second year, I'll do so.) My promise to the family is that I'll treat putting your research online as carefully as I'd treat my own, particularly when it comes to presentation. If it weren't for all of us feeding data into our site, we wouldn't have as nice a home as we do. The cousins also know that I will NEVER, but NEVER move our home without discussing it with the family first. Your data is there and I refuse to arbitrarily move it without talking to all of you first. You have as much a vested interest in the Research Room's cyberspace placement as I do. It turns into a win-win situation for everyone. :) Everything you submit to the HRR is credited back to you... I take NONE of the credit. You're given an email hyperlink on all pages with your research, photos, clippings, certificates, etc. so our visitors can contact you directly. You have final approval on the pages I build for you. You can submit as much material as you'd like, including pictures, clippings, certificates... whatever. The only requirement is that the data not include anything about people still living ~ a step that is for protection of your loved ones from identity theft. (Besides, we don't research the living anyway.) We have an award-winning site, and have had a lot of hits since we came online. I hope you newer cousins will take advantage of our cyberhome. Colleen