For those of you who have been helping me figure out the issue with my pictures, thank you so much; I finally got the issue sorted out.

I use Google Chrome as my web browser, and I chose to install a pop-up blocker to make my internet browsing less annoying. Turns out, the pop-up blocker prevented me from posting pictures to my website. I turned it off, and behold!

http://suu.centuryamerica.org/veterans-of-wwi/

My next question is this: is my picture too big? Would it be better smaller? Let me know what you think and I’ll format my pictures based on the feedback.

I felt like my showing at last week’s conference was weak.  My website still has some incomplete sections and the format wasn’t up to date with my desires. That’s going to change though.

Today I reformatted the website to get rid of the left side bar with the outdated “Site Section.” Now each page’s text content has been centered on the website. I may look into increasing the font size to make it more readable, as well as insert indents for the paragraphs.  That’s a maybe: I’ll see if it is ultimately necessary.

I talked to Professor Orihel of SUU about my website and she said she’s willing to help out with editing it: I’ll have her read it over and correct any errors in my citations, as well as grammar and spelling mistakes. It’s nice to have another individual on board for the editing process.

I’m in the process of finishing up two web site sections: “Women and the B.A.C.”  and “Veterans of World War I.” I have enough research for both of them complete, now I just need to get them on the website. Once that is done, next weekend I will set about creating the glossary and formalize the bibliography . My last addition will be the “About” page, which I may just put on the site’s landing page so people will see it.  I will have hyperlinks created where they need to be and start uploading and including pictures. I should have this done as I will complete my senior thesis over this next week and therefore not have to dedicate time on it. That will be a relief on my shoulders.

It’s crunch time.

Again, you can email me at colinnimer@yahoo.com or leave a comment to ask questions about the software.

I’m once again using another vlog to update my research progress. In this video I show how I’ve documented the “The Student,” a pamphlet produced by BAC students during the early years of the school. I also share my ideas for how to utilize the documents for my website.

Also, if anyone is interested in using this software, comment here and I will immediately create a “how to” video to set up and use the software, as well as for how to upload it to Youtube.

I look forward to seeing all of next Thursday!

If anyone finds a name of a soldier who died in the war, they are easily found if they are buried over seas. Use the American Battle Monuments Commission website www.ambc.gov. It is very easy to use and if anyone needs help let me know, but the site is pretty self explanatory.  The information given is helpful too as it gives a date of death, regiment, division, and rank of each soldier.

If they are not buried over seas it will be harder to find, but your best bet is the site www.findagrave.com. This site is a little harder to use, but often times it is linked to ancestry.com searches.

I have a very basic vision for what I want the Shepherd University site to look like when the project comes together. As far as the overall look of the site, I enjoy how this blog looks so I would kind of like it to have an overall feel like this. Content will hopefully go as the outline below

Welcome Page

• This will have a welcoming message with broad information on Shepherd University during WWI.  From there the user will be able to navigate to the other sections of the site.

Shepherd University section

• This section will give more in depth information on Shepherd and include the sub sections below.
• Campus Layout
• Courses
• Important figures (veterans, professors, etc.)
• Campus Organizations

Community Section

• This section of the site will be for the surrounding area of the university. It will talk about the communities close by and how they were affected by using sub sections that will be listed below.
• Shepherdstown
• Sharpsburg
• Harpers Ferry/Storer College (possibly separate sections)
• Charlestown
• Important Community figures (mostly veterans)

I am also considering including community figures as part of the different communities instead of having it be its own category. But that will likely depend on how much information I actually get on the individuals in the community.

In addition I would like to include a timeline in the site. I was having trouble working it, but if I figure it out it looks like a very nice tool to utilize and just had an overall nice look to it that could allow the site to be interactive for the visitor.

Any suggestions on the categories or subcategories/ content will be appreciated. Also if anyone has tips for using the timeline tool I would really appreciate that.

Valley of the Shadow:

I was immediately drawn to this site as it was about the Civil War and its impact on two small towns, one North and one South.  The mention in the beginning of John Brown’s raid caught my attention having worked at Harpers Ferry. However upon entering the site I saw some aspects that I liked, and others that I didn’t.  First I did not like the look of the site, had a plain white background and the graphics seemed almost sloppy making the sight feel like it was from the late 90′s. Furthermore, while the site talked about in the beginning that it was about two towns, I actually had to do some digging and it took a while to find out what exactly the two towns were.  Some good aspects of the site however were that it was very well organized. The site is clearly set up with three main sections: pre-war, war years, and post war/reconstruction. within each category there are sub categories such as images, newspaper articles, etc.  This aspect made the site very easily navigated.  One other note should be that the site is entirely sources from each town. This can be both good and bad depending on what the visitor is looking for, while on one hand some sources probably need further explanation with them for the average reader.

Gilded Age Plains City:

I opened this link not knowing what to expect.  What I found was an interesting concept. The idea for this site is that the reader can get a general understanding of what the town of Lincoln, Nebraska was like in the 1890′s with information on the site centering around a murder case.  The site has a wide variety of information ranging from biographies on the prominent members of the town at the time to simply photographs. I also found the site easily maneuverable since the basic sections of the site were listed on the lefts side of the screen so you can immediately click on what information you wanted to look at. While I enjoyed the site I do not think that for this project I would want to find a singular event within Shepherd to have my information surround, although it is an interesting concept.

Mapping the Republic of Letters:

This site I found no redeeming qualities about. Upon entering the site you are immediately confronted with a large image of a timeline with a complex series of art above it. The image is so large that most the writing on it is small and unable to be read.  Believing that this was to be used to navigate the site and present the information I clicked on it, only to find that it only enlarged the image, but the timeline was still hard to read. Scrolling down I found an explanation of the site, a poorly written one I might add. It took a couple readings of the introductory paragraphs to understand that the site was an examination of letters from the time of the republic and how they related as networking and passing along the information. Even the 2 and 1/2 minute introductory video made it unclear as to what the site was about. The sub sections of the site included case studies, blogs and publications. All of which gave little indication of what the goal of the site was other than studying prominent figures of the time period. If at all possible I want to avoid using this site as a way of designing the site for this course.