Hi all, This is a resource that many of the County and Local Coordinators (Town Coordinators) in the MEGenWeb Project and throughout the USGenWeb Project use. It has served the MEGenWeb Project well. I asked Tom Raynor, USGenWeb Coordinator for Cumberland and York Counties Maine, who developed the program, to share this resource with all of you. Below is a description of the Query Manager System. Thank you Tom, for writing this description and sharing this resource with all of us. Sincerely, Tina S. Vickery ASC MEGenWeb Project SC WIGenWeb Project [Please feel free to share with appropriate Project lists] _______ The USGenWeb Query Manager system has been around since 1997, and is available free for use by any USGenWeb Town, County or State Coordinator. One of the original cornerstones of the USGenWeb Project was to provide a place for on-line genealogical queries, similar to what you might find in the back of a genealogical society's magazine. In the beginning, visitors e-mailed their queries. Coordinators copied, reformatted and pasted the queries to display on their web pages. The Query Manager (QM for short) was created to automated this process. Using QM, visitors submit their own formatted queries, which are stored on a database for instant search and retrieval by other visitors. Using QM, visitors to any participating site can enter or search queries for that or any other area. Each participating site is a "window" into the entire system. QM does not try to "steal" visitors from your USGenWeb site. Page headings and default values are customized to give the appearance that the visitor has never left your site. All "return to home page" links direct the user back to the your site. Rather than sending them away, QM can actually bring more visitors to your site. In addition to every other participating USGenWeb site, QM data is searchable via the GENDEX genealogical index. Visitors from that system may never have heard of USGenWeb until they follow a query to your site. The same search tools available to end users allow you, the local coordinator, to monitor queries submitted at - or about - your area. Most coordinators check new queries once a week or every few days to see if there are any new ones they can help with. To use QM, you just copy a few links to your web site. The links tell QM the area your site covers, and the address to send your visitors back to when they are finished. You don't even need to know any HTML; there is a QM setup page which will create the links for you. To learn more about QM, visit the following page: http://www.raynorshyn.com/MEGenWeb/QMAbout.html That page can get you up and running on QM in minutes, or you can click the link to the QM FAQ page from there. - Tom Raynor USGenWeb Coordinator Cumberland and York Counties, Maine http://www.raynorshyn.com/ContactUs.asp?Addressee=USGW