Before 2020
The site has been around for some time in various guises:
15 January 2020 - Redirecting the website to the Guild of One-Name Studies.
20 December 2019 - Now looking for an alternative to TNG.
20 November 2019 - Getting better at manipulating the data on TNG but this is now mostly down to the way its put on my database in the firstplace. More bouncing back and forwards on the 'private' issue... I am not sure I am being taken seriously; this may be because other users do not have the number of references to test this problem. Really angry with the uploading and constant resorting of images.
20 October 2019 - Now convinced that TNG, while saying the right things, will not actually resolve the showing of information I have marked as 'private'. Now losing interest as I find some utilities are spread over different windows when the seem that they should be in one place. Its a very pretty interface but that hides a few awkward touches.
21 August 2019 - While I lose my patience with the uploading I am now getting quite annoyed at the response to the TNG showing 'private' information.
25 January 2019 - Problems with the Next Generation (TNG) software showing 'private' information becomes an issue and numerous messages go back and forth to the originator and the Guild of One-Name Studies to no avail. Loading media is painfully slow and somehow random, it seemed to misplace sources but I persist.
29 December 2018 - Started with a dedicated software package called The Next Generation (TNG). Another learning curve but some results fairly swiftly. Initially I had no media on it as I couldn't get pictures to work. The software is what I would call 'R in the month' software, that is , everything had to be just right for it but overall not bad. TNG had some attractive and interesting elements, statistics and guest log-on variations although adding my own pages was awkward. Changing the 'look' from the standard templates involved my spending more time in program-land than I wanted. And oh, what a palaver it was to upload my media. The whole updating of the website would take an age and media had to be uploaded every time it seemed with no capacity to not upload when nothing had changed.
18 November 2018 - The site increasingly down as Joomla fails on uploading, this was my fault as a contact who recommended it has no trouble with it at for shopping websites. However. I finally gave up on Joomla and looked elsewhere.
15 September 2017 - Increasingly frustrated with the learning curve for Joomla and finding it hard to envisage anything resembling a family history site. On top of this the new hosting company was charging more and not really helping much.
5 March 2016 - the site was relaunched as a remnant of its former self using a complicated content management system called Joomla. I never did get a handle on this system, however quick it was, as I could never grasp the logic and find things myself. I got very confused on menus and was spending more time messing with the content system rather than genealogy.
6 February 2015 - The site was showing an off-line page as the company which hosted the site complained of too much traffic. However, in the process of shutting down a rather complicated content management system the site and its latest contents were lost. Although much content was safe on the main Dowling One-Name Study database all the website organisation, artwork and general information not put in the database was entirely lost.
9 February 2009 - Managed to update the site with this message, "I am sorry for delays in answering e-mails but over the last year I have been undergoing treatment for head & neck cancer and have not been able to cope with all life's demands. I am much improved and am now slowly working through tens of thousands of e-mails, most of which are 'spam'. There will also be some changes to site submissions to reduce spam and make the responses less onourous. - Regards, Brian"
20 January 2008 - Nothing new added this year - I acquired head and neck cancer and underwent surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy... not a good year. E-mails really backed up.
8 June 2007 - Added some pages on DNA, very basic as my knowledge is scant. Generally more information on all menu pages. Really quite big. Health not good this year as work is wearing me down a little.
10 June 2006 - More of the same... site now quite extensive. Takes a while to upload the whole thing but with Dreamweaver I can get away with just the page I have changed not the whole thing.
25 October 2005 - Added Missing page for anyone alive and missing. Most of the pages listed below are now much elaborated on. Miscellany now has a lot of 'Topics' which cover Dowling things seen on the internet... I can't buy them all!
19 August 2004 - Retired from full time employment in police to run my own restorative justice company and carry on criminology research. Family history takes a bit of a back seat.
6 June 2004 - Dreamweaver based site working well if a lot of additional work. Generating a lot of interest for Dowling's of the World and e-mails.
8 February 2014 - Website up using combination of Dreamweaver software and other website production. The site still does not have automatic links to my database so every page, where the information is based on information the database, is a duplication of work... this I not efficient. The site, while it looks good albeit maybe a little amateurish, has become so big as to be unwieldy, making adding or changing content a burden on top of the actual genealogical research.
18 January 2003 - Prepared with Microsoft FrontPage the site has been running for some years now and looks good with a side fixed menu and head with only the content scrolling (later this proved awkward as more people viewed content on mobile phones). Has pages for
Branches,
Database (not the full research database but some transcripts),
Heraldry,
Information (to Ancients, 1500s, 1600s, 1700s, 1800s, 1900s, 2000s),
Interests (Classified pages were correspondents left there target research names),
Links to other sites,
Look-ups (list of resources, such as CD ROMS that I could look up names in),
Meaning and Origins,
Miscellany (Children's pages, Gallery, Reunion, Tartan & Trivia),
Search,
Site Author page (including my family chart), Statistics (numbers and some analysis including top ten first names) ,
Stories (2 tales),
Wanted, What's New and
Dowling's of the World (work intensive area where people could send me information for their own page).
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