Hi Joe: There's no need to apologize whatsoever. Your caution is warranted as I should have introduced Judy to the list myself back in the winter. Judy is a dynamo and a fine manager, carrying on the tradition of quality and openness to new ideas of the founder of the site, Rex Stevenson. (No, she's not related to Rex.) >I apologize for being wary about giving information to a person who "said" >that they were with your website. I now know better. Many people are coming >to her defense. I did not mean to start a war, on me. My intentions were >purely innocent. Please will everyone and Judi forgive me. Mea culpa, Mea >culpa, Mea culpa! If you've visited Herk/Mont GenWeb in the last few days you'll see an announcement of a site renovation. Our site is 2 1/2 years old now and has become difficult to use and time consuming to maintain and update. Because it's a site created by visitors it's the largest site in the NYGenWeb system, and a cause to be proud of thanks to all your sharing with each other. Briefly, if I can :-), I need to tell you all our plans to accommodate future growth. 1) The data on Herkimer/Montgomery Counties GenWeb is organized by town, cross-indexed by some major sections. Behind the scenes we'll be moving material into subdirectories, which will allow us to make changes and add new material in less time. Because we'll be moving most of the files, their individual URLs will change. If you have specific pages bookmarked, chances are that the pages will have new URLs by June. So far Judy, Lisa Slaski (towns of Ohio/Webb/Wilmurt editor) and I have moved Ohio, Webb/Wilmurt, Stark and Schuyler material. A file movement will not be reflected in the search engine until at least a week, after Rootsweb re-indexes the site. This movement will save us countless maintainance hours better spent on preparing new material. 2) We're the only double-county site in the US, which will not change. However, we'll be separating the two counties by moving most of the Montgomery files over to our server space at ~nymontgo. We'll eventually have two large sections called "Just for Herkimer" and "Just for Montgomery", within which will include the town tables currently on the front page of the site, as well as portions of some other sections. Articles pertaining to both counties joint history will be directly accessible from one location. 3) After all is moved and new sections are set up we'll be changing the graphics and navigation of the site. Rest assured that all features will still be fully accessible by Netscape 3.0 and earlier versions of IE. 4) In anticipation of what will be a bigger and better Herk/Mont, Judy is asking now for more input for the Montgomery offerings on the site. The primary reason there is more for the Herkimer half is that over a third of the Herkimer towns have been "adopted" by town editors. What's a town editor? A researcher with a strong interest in a town and willingness to chat with/advise fellow town researchers and prepare at least 3 or 4 items a year for their town. Montgomery County has only one town editor. If you're interested in being a town editor please email Judy or me. If more than one person is interested in a town, don't we wish!, we'll figure something out. When a town has an editor it has more information. As a bonus, the town editor tends to make great personal contacts. :-) You don't have to know HTML or have web development skills to be a town editor. And you don't have to be a town editor to contribute to the site. Judy was starting a drive for just about anything similar to what we already have on the site that would help your fellow Montgomery County researchers. We'd like to have a nice splash of Mont Co. items to go on line after the new site rolls out. A few items are in progress. There are a few restrictions that all GenWeb county coordinators have to abide by - material must be out of copyright or have permission of authors/heirs/publishers if more recent than 1924 and no GEDCOM's (unless incorporated into a larger, original article). I have my own personal policy that material must be edited to protect the privacy of the living, no mother's maiden names linked to the living, and sources need to be credited. No item is too small. We especially welcome obits and wills. Because Montgomery County was once much larger, we encourage that material pertaining to what is now Fulton County be sent to our colleague to the north, Jeanette Shiel, new coordinator of Fulton County GenWeb, so that her site will grow. Pre-Revolutionary War material should be donated to Tryon County NYGenWeb. Items not pertaining to our county - there are 60-some other NYGenWeb coordinators who need your contributions. The list of all NYGenWeb counties is at: http://www.rootsweb.com/~nygenweb That's about it. It's a big undertaking and there will be some inconvenience as URL changes will be made on an almost daily basis. There won't be any major visible difference until May, after all the files have been moved. In the meantime, if you have email address changes, updated info to what's already on line, or would like to donate items, please contact Asst. Coordinator Judy at [email protected] during the month of April. Thank you, everyone on this list who's ever helped with Herk/Mont. You did it! Martha S. Magill Coordinator Herkimer/Montgomery Counties NYGenWeb http://www.rootsweb.com/~nyherkim/ email:[email protected]