In response to a question recently posed elsewhere in the Project, I
decided to do a review of the 50 states and the District of Columbia to see
approximately how many counties were up for adoption and what servers
provide homes for the Project sites.
What I found in looking at the state sites was a nice variety of
presentations. I found some new ideas to incorporate into my own sites.
Using an old atlas as my guide for number of counties for each state, I
came upon differences in the totals I had and what was presented as
counties/parishes/boroughs on the state sites. Some counties showed as
being hosted though up for adoption while others up for adoption showed no
host.
It took me about 3 days to do this review so any changes made to a state
after I visited either on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday or today are not
reflected in my totals.
Basically I found that of the 3105 units presented as web sites - 3025 show
as adopted - 97.42%, 80 show up for adoption - 2.58%. As the number of
CCs is in constant change - 80 is not a bad number to have unadopted but of
course can be improved upon. 26 states have counties up for adoption while
24 are showing 100% adoption rates.
10 of the 26 states show only 1 county up for adoption. 7 states have 5 or
more counties up for adoption: SD, NE and MS - 5 each; GA - 6; TX - 7; IA -
8; and MT - 14.
As for hosts - Rootsweb - 2108 - 67.89%; AOL - 77 - 2.48%; Geocities - 132
- 4.25%; Rootsquest - 36 - 1.16%; and Other - 745 - 23.99%. The Other
category includes sites hosted by 4 other major providers within 4 states -
CA - compuology; KS - skyways; TN - USIT; UT - lofthouse.
Details by state - can be seen at
http://www.rootsweb.com/~ndgenweb/50states.htm The differences in color
are yellow - visited on Wednesday and Thursday; burnt orange - visited
Friday and today.
Please send me any corrections you have to the totals for your state.
Also, please send me the names of your unadopted counties and I'll add them
to the table.
Thanks,
Tim