Greetings This is a brief discussion of TNGenWeb server history to NOW. It is presented here for the benefit of our newer volunteers. For those of you who know this, please exercise your delete option now. US Internet is the server for the TNGenWeb. It has been our server since we started in 1996. USIT, as it is affectionately known, is a private company located in Knoxville Tennessee. We can say that this arrangement between TNGenWeb and USIT is a partnership between volunteerism and free enterprise. The arrangement was established by our founding State Coordinator Billie McNamara. USIT tells us now that it was established on an experimental, "lets see how it works out," basis. >From last December, after Bridgett became SC, and for a few months thereafter, we were not sure if we would be able to keep USIT as our server. Our relation with USIT needed to be defined. To compound the question, USIT changed our account status, which, among other things, generated a monthly bill. We did not need to pay this bill, however, it did show USIT how much in retail terms they gave to us each month. (Currently, over $700 monthly.) Billie McNamara, for some unknown reason was sent the monthly billings, but she kindly forwarded them to me. USIT began to look at the billings too, and realized that their service to us was considerable, yet they received little for their efforts. Nancy Cole interceded on our behalf and made an agreement with USIT that include a "Book Finder" link page, and most importantly NO pop up banners, or any other kind of invasive advertising. Oh yes, we would stay on USIT too. Strangely, I received a phone call from a USIT "advertising executive" who had a great interest in the USIT logos that were in use on my pages and pages of others. He did not know of the arrangement that had been made. I gave him Bridgett’s and Nancy’s phone numbers. (This is called the fine art of passing the buck.) Well, late last week, the chickens came home to roost. USIT needed their logo on ALL our pages. Pandemonium is the appropriate word for the next event. In the process, Nancy decides that it would be a cool thing to get her highly talented son Jim Cole to write a script to handle the logo question. Then came "whoops." The "whoops" is, nobody got notified. Hence the most diligent of our CCs, like Athol Foster, got stung the worse because they were too efficient. I have tried to consider the most appropriate way reprove our pixie culprit, Willow Woman, aka Nancy Cole. I reckon that a one week suspension without pay might be in order.(But then, who will do my uploads?) And for Athol, who worked so hard to do the right thing, all that I can say is, sorry buddy. The next time I’m in God’s Country (*Middle* Tennessee) we will go down to Miss Mary Bobo’s and have dinner (that’s lunch to you Yankees that hide in Connecticut). Some have asked, why do we not just go to Rootsweb. Well, for one thing, they don’t like domain names. Yes they allow domain names for the USGenWeb pages, but when Bridgett checked, they declined us that privilege. They are not keen on graphics either, and we have a 60mg Indian Treaty Map project in the pipeline. We don’t want to give Rootsweb folks a conniption fit. But somewhere in the future, we might need to look at other options. Maybe it will be Rootsweb, or our own private server, or maybe the USGenWeb Project will have their own server for all states. "Don’t know" is how I see our future, but one thing for sure, we are growing and we will be best served it we think ahead. In the interim, the system pages are being revised so that if and when we change servers, no one in the outside world will need to change links to the project, and the internal pages will be movable without rewriting. So in spite of the bumps in the road, we are moving ahead. Respectfully, Fred Smoot