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Does this site cost me?

No, the site is free to publish Family Notices of any kind.The site is free to search for family links in Archives or Current Notices, free to register to recieve instant email alerts for notices about friends, family, or districts, and the permanent archiving is free. Also, once you have published a notice, amending that notice at any time is free.  If you wish to advertise on the site, please contact us.

How permanent is the storage of anything I publish?

Everything you publish on Family Notices is preserved in our host servers. Servers are the Black Boxes that form part of the global Internet. As each becomes full, another is added.  By 2005, for example, Google had installed its 150,000th server. Each one holds vast quantities of data. Here is our soft-ware developers explanation of the server set-up.

“Family Notices and its Archives is hosted in Auckland, at a secure data centre on redundant servers with nightly off-site back-ups. Physical access to the data centre is protected by security-card and is monitored 24/7. All servers are firewalled and hardened using best-practice security techniques. Servers are monitored off-site 24/7 using tools which check for unauthorized access, and all servers are kept up-to-date with the latest security patches and virus-checking software. Storage is limitless.”

So basically, everything is done to ensure that the servers (and the information they contain) are preserved indefinitely, with a second copy filed every day in a seperate building as insurance- just remember that the web was in part designed by the U.S. military as a communication platform that could survive a nuclear strike.

How do I save this family notices site so i can view it regularly?

You can bookmark it.

If you have Netscape navigator, #1 click "Communicator" (or Window), #2 click "Bookmarks", #3 click "add Bookmark".

If you have Microsoft Internet Explorer, #1 click "Favourites" on Menu bar, #2 click "add to Favourites", #3 click "OK".

How do i get old family photos on to my computer? Will they get damaged?

Gather up the photos you want to use. If they are in frames, you will need to take them out to get a good copy. If they are really old rare family portraits, use tissue paper to wrap them and stop damage. If they are mounted on an album board and are stuck there, take the board with you.

Go to your nearest photocopy-shop (most likely not a camera shop) and ask if they can copy to disc while you wait. They will usually allow you to stand by them while they put each photo onto the photocopier. Try to make sure the photos are copied all the right way up (saves you having to turn them later) and ask that they copy any photos you have on album boards individually (again, to save you doing that later). Both processes (turning and cropping/separating photos) are a little more complicated than the straight-forward downloading, so being able to avoid them is a bonus. Copy shops will charge for the time it takes, so having you on hand to keep the photos organised will help. Discs cost about $1.00 and hold heaps of photos. The cost will be much less than getting photos copied the old way.

Photocopying is not a chemical process and will in no way endanger your photos.

The disc slips into your computer and you are able to view all the photos on it and open a file to copy them to. Remember that that too many discs downloaded will junk up your computer and slow it down, so it is best to save only the photos you want to use.

 

Do i need a digital camera?

Not at all, although it will save a trip to the copy-shop. Digital camera photos can be downloaded straight from the camera into your computer - your camera instruction booklet will tell you how.

With ordinary photo film, most camera shops with the latest developers will develop your film and copy it straight to disc. This should cost less than having the photographs printed (discs cost about $1.00 and hold heaps of photos). The disc slips straight into your computer and can be viewed and downloaded. Remember that too many discs downloaded will junk up your computer (and slow it down) so it is best to download only those photos you wish to use.  Label the disc with details of its contents and file safely. If you ever want any of the photos on the disc printed, take it into a copy-shop, who should do it while you wait.

can i transfer my own work or articles on to family  histories?
You can, but the crossover will alter the format so it will need to be re-edited. And if you have  exceeded the word number it will not transfer. Here is the process for transferring documents in Windows generally.   #1- Find the document and click on it. #2- Click on Edit (top tool-bar) then click "Select all". #3- Click Edit again then click "Copy". #4- on bottom bar, "Family Archives" will be in a box- click on it. #5- The notice you are working on should now be showing. Click on the place in the text where you want the copy to appear. This will leave the cursor blinking..#6- go to top toolbar again, click on "Edit" then click on "Paste" ... and it will be done!
How  do i save my work as i prepare it?
Save is an automatic process on this site and happens every 60 seconds, so the most you could lose is the last minute of your work.
can i change or add to my notice once it is published?

Yes, you certainly can- and it's very simple- just click My Notices, select the notice you want to change and click the edit button, then go for it! Its your password protected so only you are able to make the changes.

This feature means that you can write a family history and years later as new information is found, you can recover your publication from archives and add to or amend it. You can also add to notices after an event. If you publish an upcoming Family Reunion, for example, you can add all the group photos and names after the celebrations are over. Make sure everyone at the event knows what you are doing and if they register for an email alert on the family reunion name, they will get emailed your update.

Remember that when you alter any notice, it is republished on Current Notices for 14 days and anybody on email alert will get the notice- great if you are changing a venue or time! If you want to make lots of changes, try to do them all at once- otherwise everyone will get email alerts for every single change.

what can i do to make sure my family publications are found by future generations?

Searching in our archives and notices is straightforward, and you will always find your family publications.

Outside of this site, people looking for your family connections, unless they know this sites name, will  use a web search engine, such as Google, which can be very frustrating. The web search engines have a range of criteria on which they base the priority of search results. More and more often these have to do with who has paid for advertising rather than effectiveness. So a result on your family name may generate millions of results, the vast majority of which will be utterly irrelevant. To help overcome this we recommend that wherever possible you use full given names in your publications.

 

 

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