Hi everyone (especially Barbara :), I feel very heartened to know you were missing "our old website" :) The good news is: It isn't gone, it just moved! I apologize for forgetting to put a notice on the old Rootsweb server linking you to the new site and have now fixed that upon getting Barbara's post. Now for the rationale.... I suspect many of you know by now of the new Message Board system set up by Rootsweb/Ancestry.com that "replaces" the GenConnect Bulletin board system. Cathy and I have known all along that RW/A said at the time of the buy out last year that the GenConnect Boards were in a different category, so while we are not entirely happy about some of the changes in the system from an Admin POV, we are trying not to throw out the baby with the bath water. Still, I was curious enough about what was going on to do a bit of research that let me know Marin County was among only 6 other counties in the whole state of CA still using Rootsweb as a host for their GenWeb pages. By far, most of the sites are hosted by Compuology, a CA genealogical server devoted to providing free service. I wrote to the CA state GenWeb Coordinator, Richard Wilson to ask about the server and came to the conclusion that it offers everything Rootsweb used to, but more protection for our data plus the cgi-capability for us to put all our own vital information directly on our site where we KNOW it will remain under our direct control. Tara Works, the new San Mateo GenWeb Coordinator and I are collaborating on the creation of what we hope will be pretty much a "re-run" of the old Boards. I bought the software and Tara has the cgi skills ;). Once we get it the way we want it, we will donate it to the CA GenWeb Project for *all* CA counties to use hosted from the Compuology server if they so choose. Richard Wilson has given us the go-ahead for this. Our goal here is to be sure Cathy has the same control she has enjoyed over what gets posted on the Marin Boards plus the ability to correct typos, etc., herself. The new RW/A Message Boards do not any longer allow us this. We have also been concerned that many folks intended to contribute content to our Marin GenWeb pages (a free system) rather than to RW/A (a commercial system). By moving our pages to the CA Compuology server, we will insure ourselves that what is given in Marin will remain in Marin. FYI, if you posted Marin County data to the GenConnect Boards, you OWN the data and can tell RW/A to remove your posts from their new Boards. contact me off-list if you need to know how to do this. We have backed up the almost 10,000 posts that our Marin site has acquired in the last 2 years and once we have the new Boards established and the data repositioned, Cathy, Carolyn and I will insist RW/A remove our posts from their server. Please let me be very clear, we have no reason to believe RW/A will do anything other than what they promise. It is just that little by little our control over our data is being removed and we would rather insure this does not become a problem, ever. I apologize if this is "too tecchie" for you... the long and the short of it is that I have moved the Marin County GenWeb pages OFF the RW/A server and onto the Compuology server... the new address is: http://www.cagenweb.com/marin/ *YOU MIGHT WANT TO BOOKMARK THE SITE* You will see that everything looks pretty much the same, though we are updating and streamlining a few things, and the old puzzle pieces are gone as we create our own new Bulletin Board system. For now, we are keeping Marin County Queries on the RW/A site and linking to the Board, as the search and indexing system offered on the boards still makes it very efficient for researchers to find and be found by each other. As for the Marin County Genealogical Society website, it currently remains on the RW/A server at http://www.rootsweb.com/~camargs/index.html. However, in researching sites, I have learned that most Genealogical Societies at this point have purchased their own domain names, which simply makes it easier to find a Society's site and adds the benefit that Officers will have email boxes for the Society. Carl Black as Society President, Cathy Gowdy as Society Vice President and Jana Black as Society Webmaster have decided to donate the price of a domain name for two years to the Society. We have reserved the domain maringensoc.org for ourselves and *eventually* the web address for the Marin County Genealogical Society website will be simply www.maringensoc.org We will announce this change when it happens as we are currently looking over what the various servers offer us in terms of domain hosting (obviously, we want the "biggest bang for hopefully NO bucks") and email services. It is indeed a whole new world in genealogy!!! Onward... Jana Black