Dunham-Singletary Family Connections

Before describing the new and improved Dunham-Singletary Family Connections website, I would like to acknowledge the work of Paul Dunham and thank him for his many years of effort on the development and maintenance of the original DSFC website at pcdunham.net. Paul spent a great deal of his personal time gathering together a wealth of information for the benefit of all I am extremely grateful for all I have learned due to his work on the website and the DNA testing project. Paul’s hard work, along with the hard work of others here, has made my “genealogic journey” possible. My sincerest thanks to Paul and I hope that he enjoys his “retirement”.

With Paul stepping down from his role as webmaster for our website, Trudy Dunham and I have stepped up to take over these duties. We have transferred the content from the original website over to a new website at www.dunham-singletary.org. The new website is built using the wiki software mediawiki. This may look very familiar to you as it is exactly the same software that is used to drive the website Wikipedia. This software allows multiple contributors to add to and to edit the website. Currently, Trudy Dunham and I have accounts and can edit the website. As roles or needs change, we can add and remove members who contribute to it and maintain it.

In addition to mediawiki, the new website also employs webtrees genealogy software and adds a discussion forum using phpbb. These components will allow greater sharing of information and collaboration between members. This will allow the website to grow and flourish without the need of a “webmaster” adding things to the main website, the members of the Dunham-Singletary community will naturally add content to it over time.

The genealogy software, webtrees, is very similar to the family tree capabilities on ancestry.com or readily available family tree software. Some of the information on individuals which can be recorded in webtrees are:

• their birth
• their marriage(s)
• their divorce(s)
• their death
• other events in their lives
• their children
• their parents
• facts about them and
• multimedia files about them (photos, scanned documents, etc.)

Webtrees can import and export GEDCOM files. This file format is used to transport genealogical information from one system to another. Those with family trees recorded using their own genealogy software or on ancestry.com can export their family tree using GEDCOM and then import it into webtrees. This will allow you to share your family tree information to all in the community without having to pay for an ancestry.com account.

To begin using webtrees on www.dunham-singletary.org, you will need to have a user account created for you. On the login form select “Request a user account”. If you have any questions related to webtrees, you can contact us or use the new discussion forum.

The discussion forum software has separate sub-forums for general and regional discussions. Under the general forums we have :

• General Discussion and Announcements
• Information Request
• Newsletter
• DNA Testing
• Suggestion Box

The regional forums are broken up into regions for the United States, Canada, the British Isles, and “elsewhere”.

The discussion forum will allow direct interaction between all members of the community. Users can attach documents and reference materials to posts on the forum so that they can share these with the entire Dunham-Singletary community. As the content on this forum grows, a powerful search engine will help you find information on your ancestor quickly.

The discussion forum requires a user login. You will need to request a user account and wait for it to be approved before you can participate. If you desire to use both the discussion forum and the genealogy software, it is suggested that you pick the same user name and password that you use for the webtrees genealogy software to avoid confusion.

In summary, the new website at www.dunham-singletary.org has many new capabilities that we hope you will find useful and enjoy. The wiki backbone, the genealogy software, and the discussion forum will allow us to have greater flexibility, share more information, and allow a greater level of participation by all. If you have any questions or suggestions, you can send an e-mail to webmaster@dunham-singletary.org or use the suggestion box sub-forum on our new discussion forum.

Thanks!,
Jeff