While our highest resolution photographs, with the most documentation, are hosted on the Maine Memory Network, an unbeatable searchable database on historic Maine images and documents, we have a great many materials and resources that are not fit for the format or requirements of the MMN site. Yet, many are still of value and interest, even if we have no documentation about them. Also, I hope that if they are posted online, those with information or knowledge will be inspired to contact me, or Jack Nivison, so that we can obtain and preserve that information.
Thus, I longed for a way to host a Town history website locally, with complete freedom to post on it whatever we saw fit (which is likely to be everything we can get our hands on. This Weebly site was originally intended to be a temporary way of posting the first 100 scanned images so that committee members could view them and chime in if they knew information about them, or if they wanted to take on the task of researching and documenting any images.
During 2012, I was waiting for the development of the new Town of Winslow website. The hosting of the site was to be moved to servers, shared I believe with Waterville. It was also to feature a new interactive interface, allowing department personnel to update and edit the site. So I waited to see what it would be like before further developing Winslow History's online presence. I was given access and a short introduction by our librarian, Pam Bonney, a few months ago. Only this week did I finally get enough free time to check it out.
The first obstacle was that Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox was required to get the full functionality of the editing interface. I just purchased a refurbished MacBook with a one terabyte hard drive to, amongst other things, facilitate my interest in the scanning of Winslow's old photographs. So IE was out, and I downloaded Firefox. Well, the site development tools seemed a bit limited for my full intentions, and frankly, Weebly has a lot more features and ability to post photos and documents in various ways, do multiple images uploads, and create albums, hyperlinks, connections to social media, and many more tricks. It also has very robust technical support and user forums.
For all these reasons, I have decided to keep the hosting on Weebly. Having finally arrived at that decision, I can move ahead with further development of the site, uploading of information, etc. Today I uploaded survey plans and documents I'd had sitting on my hard drive for a long time. I am excited to continue with more photographs soon. Those I intend to start organizing by topic. Watch for many more additions in upcoming months. And soon, perhaps, we'll have a little meeting at the library to highlight what's been accomplished, talk about goals, and identify people interested in helping out with goals.
Thus, I longed for a way to host a Town history website locally, with complete freedom to post on it whatever we saw fit (which is likely to be everything we can get our hands on. This Weebly site was originally intended to be a temporary way of posting the first 100 scanned images so that committee members could view them and chime in if they knew information about them, or if they wanted to take on the task of researching and documenting any images.
During 2012, I was waiting for the development of the new Town of Winslow website. The hosting of the site was to be moved to servers, shared I believe with Waterville. It was also to feature a new interactive interface, allowing department personnel to update and edit the site. So I waited to see what it would be like before further developing Winslow History's online presence. I was given access and a short introduction by our librarian, Pam Bonney, a few months ago. Only this week did I finally get enough free time to check it out.
The first obstacle was that Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox was required to get the full functionality of the editing interface. I just purchased a refurbished MacBook with a one terabyte hard drive to, amongst other things, facilitate my interest in the scanning of Winslow's old photographs. So IE was out, and I downloaded Firefox. Well, the site development tools seemed a bit limited for my full intentions, and frankly, Weebly has a lot more features and ability to post photos and documents in various ways, do multiple images uploads, and create albums, hyperlinks, connections to social media, and many more tricks. It also has very robust technical support and user forums.
For all these reasons, I have decided to keep the hosting on Weebly. Having finally arrived at that decision, I can move ahead with further development of the site, uploading of information, etc. Today I uploaded survey plans and documents I'd had sitting on my hard drive for a long time. I am excited to continue with more photographs soon. Those I intend to start organizing by topic. Watch for many more additions in upcoming months. And soon, perhaps, we'll have a little meeting at the library to highlight what's been accomplished, talk about goals, and identify people interested in helping out with goals.