Today is one of those days where I’m really glad I have a blog category called Family File Hijinks. It makes it all sound more interesting than what it actually is. I’m writing today to update about my progress in two areas. One being my family file clean up and two on the new website progress.
We’ll start with the family file cleanup. I finished my Grandpa Moore’s side yesterday. I thought I’d be done sooner but as I was documenting the Loves and Menzies I found more clues! I used to focus just on census records. With this cleanup though, I’m trying to look other places. I haven’t done newspaper searches yet but I have been utilizing FamilySearch. They put up a bunch of New York and New Jersey records a few months back and that has made this line EXPLODE. I still have to systematically get the records for what I found in the indexes but really I’m just verifying census records with these. Then I upgraded my Ancestry.com account to the World subscription. I know it’s more expensive but I’ve put off doing it for many years (I’ve been a member of ancestry since at least 2003!) My Dad’s side is a league of immigrants and eventually I just had to make the plunge. Well it’s paying off! So if you want, you can click around on my Moore Family Tree. I’m starting on the second half of it today… maybe tomorrow. I might take today off. 😉
Now we’ll go to the site redesign. I started off keeping the color scheme and basic banner from the current page. Then I got the design finished and it didn’t sit right with me. I kept going, but when I tried to incorporate WordPress, it just didn’t work. Now I’ve decided to learn the necessary WordPress coding instead of modifying my own template. I decided to start with a fresh design while I was at it. The above ‘swatch’ is how I started the new design. The main complaint I had with myself was I like colors. I like lots of bold contrasting colors. I’m also prone to migraines so I’m aware too many bold colors will leave everyone with a pounding head. So I started off with a nice neutral blue. My new love is gradients because I can get in between shades. Lots of color mixing! There’s a reason I am 26 years old and still have a million Crayola products in my supplies. So the color swatch is how a website starts for me.
This is what it’s turning into. Will it be exactly like this? Not on your life! There are some spacing issues I’m still figuring out. This is the main design though. Do you see how I took those bold blues and pinks (my favorite colors by the way) and I made them understated? That lets a splash of color come through without killing your eyes and my head. I’ve learned new CSS coding this month while doing this design. I’ve learned a lot of new stuff in this design. The main lesson is I shouldn’t fiddle with it too much! I do love using gradients though. We’ll have to see how this turns out!