Monday, September 29, 2008

Family Website

I'd like to make a website that looks something like the following:

I. Home Page--This would be a welcome page, showing an overview of the website without giving away too much personal information--just news highlights and whatever's been updated on the website.

II. Login Page--Really secure website. You've got to type your info to get any further. Once in, you are allowed to make changes to the website...add your News, add what you know about a person, post pictures, etc. (Probably have the person's name recorded with the changes they made and the time of the changes--and as webmaster be able to roll back to see a previous entry that got erased--tactfulness, and what have you).
III. News--this page would have a Calendar, allow people to post changes to the calendar, and have a Forum to post messages about what's going on with each branch of the family.

IV. Genealogy--I really like the Visual Thesaurus (go here and click 'Look it Up') and would like to see a family tree program like it.   The genealogy page would look like this

excepting that
A. The dot's would represent Unions (marriage) out of which come Children
B. The boxes on the right would show biographical information about whoever you click on.
C. The color of the connecting lines would represent the relationship (parent-child, sibling, married, divorced, etc.)
D. You could add to the tree (just a click and type away), or you could add stuff to the biographical info.
E. Here's what the biographical info would entail:
1. Name, Birthdate, Date of Death, Place of Birth, Place of Death, all that stuff
2. Medical concerns
3. Biographical synopsis of their life
4. Photos, newspaper articles, map of travels
5. List of parents and children, friends, other relationships outside the family
6. Interests and activities
7. Anecdotes from people who knew the biograph-ee

V. Who's Who--this would be an alphabetized phone list, with links to the biographical info above, and give internet presence info too. There would be a section for friends of the family.

VI. Writings--anecdotes written by family members about things like: "How we met", "Growing up with Grandma and Grandpa for parents", "Heirlooms". There would be a different forum started every couple of months.

VII. A timeline with a map--you scroll over the timeline and dots appear on the map (with comments beneath), representing where members of the family are at that time--it could even have search criteria, so you could look at one person, or one branch of the family at a time.

Anyway, that's what I'd like to see.

1 comment:

Jillian said...

Sounds very cool, Sean. My family would love it. So build it. :)

Thanks again for dinner last night.