Website is now live

I have worked all weekend on the website. But I'm happy to say that its now live. It's not totally finished but it's about 80% done.

What we changed.

- We changed hosting companies. The photos are no longer hosted by Smugmug. This is now going to allow us to have more pages indexed in Google, and you will be able to find more of the images in Google Image search.

- We added some extra links such as adsense, and advertisers that you may be interested in. We don't collect any money from the photos, we are hoping that this way will give us enough money to pay for hosting and upkeep on the sites.

- We have the site set up so it loads faster. You don't have to click through 20 pages to get the photo that you want. We have them all loaded on one page now. So far with testing it seems to load fast with DSL or Cable Modem. We haven't tested it with dial up connections.

- We made less categories and galleries. We think it will be less confusing with less categories. The nice thing is now you can see ALL the galleries on EVERY page. So you don't have to go back to the home page to choose a different gallery.

- Quick overview of photos. If you Want to see all the bridges we have in the county, you now can do it from one page. If you want to see a bigger version of that photo, or read more about that photo you can click on the photo and get the bigger photo and the history of the bridge or the photo.

-Quick Links Across the Top. These take you to the most popular galleries. Notice: This will pull up all the categories with the galleries and will load slower while all the smaller photos load on the page.

-Shopping at Ebay from the site: you can now click on the link at the left to shop at ebay for items containing bridges, mills, and barns. It will take you to Ebay to purchase but I did all the searching and will only bring in the most up to date items for you. This will change hourly.

- About the Password Protected Pages: When at smugmug I had family sections that Grandpap took of the immediate family photos. These were hid pretty well there I still have these on the new site, but unless your family you won't be able to see them. There are MANY unflattering photos of our family shown there, trust me your not missing much.

Whats left to do:

- I want to organize the photos by years within the counties. So when you look at the zillions of photos of Ebenezer Covered Bridge, you can see how it changed over the years. and not see it being moved after you see it already set up at the new location.

-I want to get more information on the photos, or link to Lost Bridges.org for all the information on the bridge itself. I personally feel that I will be linking to Lost Bridges because all the research that they have on the bridges, I could never duplicate it on my site.

- Finish uploading and databasing the rest of the photos. This will be done over the next few weeks. It has been a long weekend for me, All the photos needed uploaded again to the new server, then all the information needed typed in again. So I'm going to take a few days off away from the site and work my full time job, then work on it again next weekend.

- Correct spelling errors and other errors I made over the weekend. Mostly I probably have a zillion spelling errors. Sometimes its because I simply can't spell, or it could be because I wasn't able to read well enough the information off the slide. But then - I can blame it on the keyboard... Which I think I will. All errors is because of the keyboard. :)

Sometime this week Smugmug will be canceled. For me it's bitter-sweet. If it wasn't for that site, I would of never had all these photos organized the way that they are. I never had any problems with them, in fact I would highly recommend them to store photos. The reason that I moved them is for the fact that I make no money off this site, and I simply couldn't afford to host them there any longer. If you are looking for a site to host your photos, do consider SmugMug. You will not be unhappy at all. If you have a problem or a technical question they will respond to you in a matter of hours, not days like most places.

I hope that you like the new site. I am very pleased with the way it turned out for being done so quick. I think it's much better layout and easier to navigate.

If you would like to show some of the photos on your site, you can contact me at fmyphotos@gmail.com and I will work with you to get them to you. If you notice that all photos are now able to be saved to your computer, I am not even going to protect them from being downloaded at this time. But if you do snatch a picture from me, please at least give credit back to the site.

Thanks!

Judy