NEWS AND NOTES AT ROOTSWEB
ROOTSWEB ANNOUNCES BETA TEST OF UNLIMITED FREE WEB SITE SPACE
Beginning today, RootsWeb will provide unlimited free Web site
space to all RootsWeb users. A user may maintain multiple Web
sites on RootsWeb at no charge, each containing literally
hundreds of megabytes of material. The initial rollout of this
program is a beta test. We expect that problems will arise and
ask that you have patience with us as we solve them.
To the best of our knowledge, this offer is unprecedented in
two ways. First, no major Web space provider offers more than
25 megabytes of free Web space. Second, each RootsWeb webmaster
may use such Web space to host multiple Web sites, with each
such Web site located in a different section on RootsWeb. For
example, a user with multiple interests may locate Web sites
in different RootsWeb communities, such as genealogy, crafts,
military history, etc., or locate multiple Web sites in the
same community. Other sites may have one or both of these
features, but if they do, we have not heard about it.
This offer is particularly aimed at encouraging our users to
post genealogical information that, owing to its storage and
bandwidth requirements, has been prohibitively expensive to
bring on line. Examples include large collections of
photographs and scanned documents. We are sure that you will
come up with many uses which we have not considered. (We
encourage you not to place GEDCOMs in this Web space, as soon
we will announce a better GEDCOM posting and editing solution.)
To obtain your free Web space, please fill out the request form
at <
http://cgi.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/acctform.cgi>. Please allow
us up to two weeks to process your request, as we expect an
initial surge of demand. We will process requests as quickly as
possible on a first come, first served basis.
The Fine Print:
1. This is a beta test. We will change features of the offering
based upon your feedback. You can expect that there will be
malfunctions, problems, delays, etc. in this beta test. Please
be understanding and please provide your complaints and
suggestions for improvements to the RootsWeb HelpDesk at
<
http://helpdesk.rootsweb.com/help.cgi/>.
2. Commercial advertising banners will appear at the top and,
possibly, at the bottom of each Web page. These banners will
require no programming by webmasters Simply upload your Web
site to RootsWeb and the banners will appear automatically.
Unlike free Web space provided by other major Web space
providers, there will be no annoying interstitial "popup"
advertisements on your Web site.
3. We will provide free Web space for any non-commercial use
that, in our sole judgement, is not offensive to other RootsWeb
users (for example, pornography, bomb formulas, excessively
spicy recipes, any site that makes fun of the RootsWeb CEO,
etc.). If you are interested in locating a commercial Web site
on RootsWeb, please contact us at <rrti(a)rootsweb.com> and we
will discuss other arrangements.
4. Webmasters may locate their Web sites in whatever RootsWeb
communities they feel are appropriate. We suggest that
Webmasters building Web sites that do not obviously fit into
any of the existing RootsWeb interest area communities place
those Web sites in a miscellaneous area we will be providing,
and then move them into appropriate interest area communities
as such communities form. RootsWeb reserves the right, in its
sole judgement, to determine whether a Web site has been
located in an inappropriate community.
5. Webmasters may choose their own account names as part of
the registration process. We will allocate account names on a
first come, first served basis.
6. At present, we cannot support
non-rootsweb.com domain names.
For the non-technical among us, this means that all account
names must end in
rootsweb.com.
7. Free Web space may be used only for publicly accessible
material and not for online backup.
8. We ask that webmasters intending to use more than 100
megabytes of space indicate the amount of space that they
require so that we can properly configure their accounts.
Please make a realistic estimate. If you need more space
later, we will provide it.
9. Webmasters should also be aware of two new mailing lists
relating to Free Pages:
Freepages-Announces -- a moderated list for making
announcements to the Freepages webmasters (similar to
Listowners-Announce).
Freepages-Help -- a list to help webmasters with Free Pages
accounts. The configuration of a Free Page web account will
be slightly different than a regular Web account.
--
John E Cain; 4601 Concord Drive; Garland, TX 75042
http://www.rootsweb.com/~msamite/index.htm -----Amite County MS
http://www.rootsweb.com/~jecain/index.htm ----Cain/Ware list and My Website.