With great help from the NC GenWeb state coordinators, I was able to convert the Martin County, NC site into a WordPress site today. I became county coordinator in October and while I started with a blog, I knew I wanted to do more with the site. I love the power and flexibility of WordPress and using it will make it easier to administer the site. I needed to do this because though I know HTML and well, working with it was becoming too much of a time consumer for me. This way, I don’t have to worry about the HTML nearly as much and I can add content to the site more rapidly.
You can check out the site at http://www.ncgenweb.us/martin. Please let me know what you think! Personally, I woud love to see more USGenWeb sites use content management systems (CMS). The common vertical display of links that I usually see is becoming more and more difficult for me to navigate. This is my second USGenWeb site that I am coordinator for now and these sites are great resources and I would love to see them further enhanced.
Some other USGenWeb sites that are good examples of more “modern” formats include:
These are just some I’ve come across, do you have others? In addition, there are a few counties that have corresponding blogs as I’ve done for my two counties. Genealogue.com recently added a category for UsGenWeb blogs and I would love to see this category grow. Currently, there are only three others listed in addition to my two.
I get a fair amount of communication from researchers through my blogs and try to help as much as I can. Partnerships between county coordinators and local genealogical socities would undoubtedlby even further increase user engagement.
Tri-State Genealogical Society has a blog at http://tsgsblog.blogspot.com/ While it isn’t connected to the Vanderburgh County, IN website, it does give you an idea what is going on in our area.