Website Credits

This website went live in March 2023, but not just for change sake. Some parts of the old Society website dated back up to fifteen years and in that time it has grown in different directions under different webmasters, and different styles. This resulted in some internal disconnects and a reduced cohesiveness, which in turn affected performance. It also meant that, on occasions, things would happen or pop up that we couldn’t easily trace back and fix. Finally, times and technology have changed and we wanted to take the opportunity to develop a site that integrates with a membership database and management functions, as future-proofing for the Society and to reduce the workload for our volunteers. You will also notice another development in keeping with current times, increased linkages to social media. You can follow the links and the harmonisation of this site with the Society’s Facebook, Twitter and Instagram pages. Have a look, engage.

For those of you who used the old site, there are a couple of items that were in the Members’ area, but changes have been made necessary. First, the Forum as a place for discussing ideas and research topics has been moved to the Society’s Facebook page as this is more active, moderated and it removes the need for a website forum manager. Second, Members’ Interests are a useful tool in family history but they have to be balanced against the current privacy regulations on sharing personal information. We are looking in to an efficient way of doing this for the new website so it should be re-appearing in the near future.

The site is WordPress based, with an inner membership area that uses Memberpress. For the rebuild, the Society contracted a team of website developers that took the old site as a starting point and did the first, large scale changes. This was followed by a number of Society volunteers collaborating with the developers to fine tune the site, provide narratives, source and include photographs and, essentially, personalise it to our current Society. The development team, whom we warmly thank, were from Next Level, see https://nextlevelwebsolutions.com/

While we have not noted credits for each individual photograph on the site, thanks are particularly due to Francis Wilson (Fran Wilson Photography) for the local interest photography, David Naylor for the internal and external shots of the Root Cellar and, within the piece on Ancestral Tourism, Ian Stevenson. 

Now that the website is built, operational and evolving, we are very grateful for it being hosted at 34sp.com under their Support for Registered Charities scheme.

Please use the site. Visit often and let us know what you think. We want our site to grow, remain current and increase in its usefulness. For that to happen effectively, we need your feedback. Pressing the button below is the first step. Thank you.