According to what I have been reading on the USGW project mailing lists,
Rootsweb.com, the free server that most of us have been using for our
county websites is making a change. Rootsweb is a grouping of servers
owned by Ancestry and the parent company, The Generations Network. They
are going to put a banner on every page of our websites showing
Roostweb.com links and also
Ancestry.com links. This banner is nothing
that we will be adding to our pages ourselves with coding, but is going
to be placed by the parent company on our pages if they are hosted on
their site. It is a very small banner across the top and bottom of
every page and not offensive according to freepages that have already
been changed and able to be viewed, but it does not clearly suggest that
we are not part of ancestry.com's paid site when visitors view our pages
and may discourage potential volunteers.
This is being discussed over on the SW mailing list at Rootswebs mailing
lists for USGenWeb. There are links there on which you can click and
take a look at this new change.
According to what I read this change will take place within the next two
weeks. It has already happened with freepages at
Rootsweb.com
I guess we are to prepare ourselves for the new change that we have no
control over for our webpages that are hosted freely on
Rootsweb.com
I am including the original email sent to our past national coordinator
Linda Haas Davenport.
Sandy
Posted on the SW list by our past NC Linda Haas Davenport
From: RootsWeb Staff
Sent: Wednesday, August 08, 2007 12:26 PM
Subject: Important Information Regarding All USGenWeb Sites
Hosted by RootsWeb
Dear RootsWeb Partner:
As you have probably noticed, there have been some exciting
changes to the RootsWeb homepage; the introduction of the new
RootsWeb logo, and the RootsWeb/Ancestry family colors. These
changes represent the new branding for RootsWeb and The
Generations Network (our parent company). This change in
appearance obviously doesn't change anything about the identity
or mission of RootsWeb; we are still the oldest and largest free
genealogy site. In fact, in addition to the new branding we are
also working on other initiatives to improve the RootsWeb
experience, including adding a number of new servers to make your
experience on RootsWeb better.
As a part of the new branding changes, we will be updating all
websites that are currently hosted by RootsWeb (e.g. all
HomePages, FreePages, Society and _/*County sites*/_). Some of you may
have already noticed the new, cleaner RootsWeb masthead that was
introduced onto the FreePages sites last week (for an example of
the new masthead on a FreePages site, click HERE <in case that
link doesn't come thru on this -
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~familybibles/>
<
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/%7Efamilybibles/%3E>;. Just as
we have updated these FreePages sites, our goal is to update all
websites hosted by RootsWeb with the new RootsWeb logo in order
to have more consistent branding across the site.
As a number of the USGenWeb county and state sites are hosted by
RootsWeb we wanted to give you some advanced notice about these
changes. Please note that your webmasters will not be required
to make any changes to their sites; the new masthead will be
added to their sites seamlessly from our end.
Here is what the masthead will look like: <this image won't
come thru on the list. It's similar to the sample for the free
pages but much smaller. left justified: hosted by rootsweb
right justified: An (logo)
ancestry.com community>
Again, this new masthead should not have any impact on the
formatting or the functionality of the page. It will
automatically appear at the top of your website's pages. With
the new masthead at the top of your page, you will now have more
freedom to control the look of your site, as it eliminates the
need of any other RootsWeb buttons on the page. Feel free to
remove any older "hosted by RootsWeb" buttons you have on your
page as soon as the new masthead is added.
We hope to begin implementing this new masthead on 16 August
2007.
In regards to the USGenWeb pages that are currently hosted by
RootsWeb that do not reside on the
rootsweb.com domain (e.g.
www.usgenweb.org.), we are proud to host and serve these pages
for you and want to give them slightly different branding in the
new masthead to set them apart as special projects.
Below is the current design for the new masthead for your new
project: <same as the masthead above>
<This is the part I missed (sigh)>
We will be waiting a couple weeks to include your
www.usgenweb.org site into the new re-branding initiative so that
you can give us any feedback you have on the current design. If
you do have any feedback, please let us know as soon as possible.
Thank you for being such a vital part of the RootsWeb community.
The RootsWeb Staff
Linda Haas Davenport