The Wheel: The Technology
I have commited to a 2 year hosting contract with Dreamhost.com. It is a very robust hosting service that provides the most storage and bandwidth along with many tools to get one started on just about any project quickly and easily.
One feature that I found to be very interesting is a Donate Directly to Host system where one can donate directly to the host service provider elimating the wonder of if donations are actually going to fixed costs or enhancing the lifestyle of the website creator. As you can see on the side and below there is a donate button. A funny message is given when you actually click the button and are taken to the Paypal donation link.
The host provides a number of free tools and open source software such as blogger, email, forum, merchant carts, and security tools.
The domains have been registered, roces.org and rocesfamily.com. When they go on sale again, I'll register some others like familiaderoces.org and rocesfamily.org. The other week I had a handful or registrations that should have only cost me $40 but because I delayed and didn't do it right away, in the 2 weeks the price soared from $40 to over $150.
The blog will be moved to the family server as soon as I can figure out how to point the existing URL to the new blog page. This will ensure that anyone who stumbles upon the blogger.com page gets funneled to the right direction. Since blogger.com is a google product it will also be good for me to keep it there and allow it to get ranked and cataloged into google. This will help when someone types in ROCES at google.com they won't just get pages on where to buy rollerblades.
I can host email for anyone who would like to have @roces.org or @rocesfamily.com, had this been the mid-90's it would have much more cachet, but like telephone numbers we all have way too many of them. I think I have about 4 different email addresses between work and personal activities. The rocesfamily@gmail will still be a collecting point since again, google does a better job at preserving information than any one else on the planet. I will just configure it so that it eventually goes to a @roces.org/@rocesfamily.com mailbox.
Another tool provided is a phpbb forum. Forums are the modern equivalent of the old 300 baud bulletin boards of the 80's. While I know vbulletin much better from an administration point of view, I have seen some pretty impressive phpbb boards that have user photo galleries which is a key element to this project. I'm hoping that I can allow people to create video galleries as well.
The family tree is morphing from a simple organizational chart into the multimedia family tree. The ability to annotate each family member with photos, audio, video, will help preserve their memories over time. I can recall one conversation with Lola Enchay but only remember that I did not understand her since I did not speak Spanish very well.
I do also want to respect people's privacy to collect some of this information without revealing themselves to other family members. This is a tricky concept because of course we all think that family is family and why would they care? Some people just like the anonymity of the internet and I need to strike a balance of being an adminstrator first and a family member second in some cases. So as I stated before there will be a public area for the general public, but I also need to figure out a way to validate family members as family members. The actress Susan Roces has no affiliation with the family but has the moniker. I know that it's going to be tricky especially as I encounter people whom I have not been able to attach to the family tree.
There are a few items that I have to pass over with some legal friends, such as COPPA compliance here in the US, privacy policy, copyrights, and of course one has to be concerned with legal liabilities.
One feature that I found to be very interesting is a Donate Directly to Host system where one can donate directly to the host service provider elimating the wonder of if donations are actually going to fixed costs or enhancing the lifestyle of the website creator. As you can see on the side and below there is a donate button. A funny message is given when you actually click the button and are taken to the Paypal donation link.
Donate to rocesfamily.com!
Your donation will go toward rocesfamily.com's web hosting bill here at DreamHost Web Hosting! Because you're donating directly through DreamHost, rest assured that your donation will only be used to pay for this site's hosting fees. The site owner won't be able to run off and spend your donation on DVDs, fine steak dinners, or anything else completely unrelated to their web hosting bill! Please select the amount you'd like to donate now!
The host provides a number of free tools and open source software such as blogger, email, forum, merchant carts, and security tools.
The domains have been registered, roces.org and rocesfamily.com. When they go on sale again, I'll register some others like familiaderoces.org and rocesfamily.org. The other week I had a handful or registrations that should have only cost me $40 but because I delayed and didn't do it right away, in the 2 weeks the price soared from $40 to over $150.
The blog will be moved to the family server as soon as I can figure out how to point the existing URL to the new blog page. This will ensure that anyone who stumbles upon the blogger.com page gets funneled to the right direction. Since blogger.com is a google product it will also be good for me to keep it there and allow it to get ranked and cataloged into google. This will help when someone types in ROCES at google.com they won't just get pages on where to buy rollerblades.
I can host email for anyone who would like to have @roces.org or @rocesfamily.com, had this been the mid-90's it would have much more cachet, but like telephone numbers we all have way too many of them. I think I have about 4 different email addresses between work and personal activities. The rocesfamily@gmail will still be a collecting point since again, google does a better job at preserving information than any one else on the planet. I will just configure it so that it eventually goes to a @roces.org/@rocesfamily.com mailbox.
Another tool provided is a phpbb forum. Forums are the modern equivalent of the old 300 baud bulletin boards of the 80's. While I know vbulletin much better from an administration point of view, I have seen some pretty impressive phpbb boards that have user photo galleries which is a key element to this project. I'm hoping that I can allow people to create video galleries as well.
The family tree is morphing from a simple organizational chart into the multimedia family tree. The ability to annotate each family member with photos, audio, video, will help preserve their memories over time. I can recall one conversation with Lola Enchay but only remember that I did not understand her since I did not speak Spanish very well.
I do also want to respect people's privacy to collect some of this information without revealing themselves to other family members. This is a tricky concept because of course we all think that family is family and why would they care? Some people just like the anonymity of the internet and I need to strike a balance of being an adminstrator first and a family member second in some cases. So as I stated before there will be a public area for the general public, but I also need to figure out a way to validate family members as family members. The actress Susan Roces has no affiliation with the family but has the moniker. I know that it's going to be tricky especially as I encounter people whom I have not been able to attach to the family tree.
There are a few items that I have to pass over with some legal friends, such as COPPA compliance here in the US, privacy policy, copyrights, and of course one has to be concerned with legal liabilities.
posted by Brian at
7/02/2005 01:40:00 PM
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