Date: Mon, 06 Mar 2023 13:00:03 -0600 From: russhanson <russhanson@grantsburgtelcom.net> Subject: Free history website using Google Sites Message-ID: <28b84d1d01035462d1ffb0064988bb73@grantsburgtelcom.net>
The Sterling Eureka and Laketown Historical Society has had free website
hosting through the genealogy site rootsweb. Rootsweb was taken over a
few years ago by Ancestry and they are gradually phasing out the
rootsweb functions including their free websites. As of the end of
2023, the groups with sites will have them frozen at their last changes.
The rootsweb sites have been accessible to us to change as we wanted in
the past. An example rootsweb site is the Luck Museum --
https://sites.rootsweb.com/~wilahs/
We use rootsweb for SELHS, the Luck Area Historical Society and the
Polk County Wisconsin Genealogical Society.
If you have a relatively simple website, a free option is to use Google
Sites to make your own website. I spent 2 hours learning about it this
morning and then created a simple draft site as a test. I plan to
continue and use this as a replacement for our free rootsweb site.
The website address is not nice, but neither was the rootsweb. The
tradeoff is that it is free!
Here is a test of the sites.google.com
https://sites.google.com/view/selhs/home Note:I spent an hour on the
site after spending an hour reading about how to make one. It is pretty
easy, and FREE.
Our site on rootsweb was not very fancy either, as we use Facebook
mostly for up-to-date info and think of the website as mostly static
after it is created with some updates for events.
To create one of these you need a google account, and then go to
sites.google.com and create it. It isn't visible to others unless you
"publish" it.
My own experience with local historical society websites is that they
can quickly become expensive as web folks are involved, upgrades, edits,
hosting etc., and the rarely are worth the cost -- for example we had a
professional on made for $1200, then paid something like $500 -1000 per
year for all the upgrades, change, hosting and changes. Too expensive
for a small group. Facebook, emails, Instagram, etc. are free and easy.
Web sites are only as good as the content on them. As a person who is
more the technician behind them, I always hope that someone else will
actually think about the content, layout etc. The kind of folks who
know some graphic design elements and what is pleasing as well as
informative.
Test site
https://sites.google.com/view/selhs/home
Russ Hanson
Sterling Eureka and Laketown Historical Society
Director of the Obsolete Media Lab