When your society publishes a book, there usually is no doubt about intellectual property ownership.  But who owns the rights to the Surname Registry on your web site? What about the program written to provide access to your cemetery records? If your webmaster resigned from your society today, could s/he demand that you stop using code they developed?

As societies increasingly expand their on-line presence it is vital that these concerns be addressed. Members of the Dallas Genealogical Society can rest easy knowing that a formal agreement exists between their Webmaster and the Board of Directors.

In the interest of helping to raise this as an area of concern that should be considered by other societies, the DGS is making a copy of their generic agreement publicly available (View it by clicking here) and granting permission for others to use it as starting point for their own document.

Not a member? You can view older versions by going to the Resources page and selecting the Newsletters link, and you can read copies of our annual Journal on the Portal to Texas History web site.

Why not consider becoming a DGS member and supporting our publication efforts? See our Membership page for details.

I would also like to extend my congratulations to the other societies who were recognized by the TSGS: The Franklin County Genealogical Society (2nd place) and the Grand Prairie Genealogical Society (3rd place)!

To access them go to Resources -> Local Records -> Marriage Records.

• Copies of recent eBlasts are now available on-line. Go to Resources -> eBlasts
• Interested in DNA testing? Mic Barnett has provided some great information as well as details about the arrangement the DGS has with Family Tree DNA to provide a discount to DGS members (and some revenue to the DGS!). Go to Resources -> DNA for more information
• Interested in knowing some of the great work that has been accomplished by DGS members  over the years? See the list of Transcription Projects at Resources -> Local Records -> Transcriptions 

Speaking of revenue for the DGS, don’t forget that you can link the DGS to your Tom Thumb rewards card to generate income for the society… The DGS Number is 4253.

The biggest change has to do with accessing ‘Members Only’ features. It has been a technical challenge but I have finally figure out a way to allow you to log in using your established DGS User Name and Password. To celebrate this accomplishemt we have made recent copies of DGS Journals available… and the 2010 edition will be available soon.

The menus have been improved to make navigation easier and many pages have been updated to make it easier to find the expanding amout of material we are making available.

But I think the most significant change has been the addition of Flash based videos like the one created to explain the new login procedures. This capability should make it easier to explain the features of the web site and to create more sophisticated presentations on a variety of topics.

What do you think? I love to hear your comments…

Tony Hanson

What is a mailing list? It is software that allows you to ‘subscribe’ to a particular topic and begin to receive email messages sent by anybody who posts something on that topic. Postings are also archived so you can instead just search past postings to see if somebody has already had something to say on your particular topic (this is also a polite thing to do before you post a question… one sure way to attract some negative attention is to post a question that has already been asked – and answered – numerous times).

There are presently 31,862 genealogy-related lists, so chances are you can find one that matches your interest. They fall in to four broad categories: ‘Surnames’, ‘USA’, ‘International’ and ‘Other’: there are numerous sub-categories under each. For example, Texas has a list for most (probably all) counties in addition to lists for such topics as TX_ASYLUM, TX_JEWISH, TX_EARLY-LEADERS and many others. Some are very active: others, not so much…

You can see for yourself: Go to http://lists.rootsweb.ancestry.com/index/ and look at all the categories.

If you would like to read about one of my own experiences with a mailing list see http://www.rayson.us/New/Stories/Box_Of_Family.php

Tony Hanson

We were hacked. 

What does it mean to be hacked? Simply put, it means that somebody launched some malicious software that looked for sites that had vulnerabilities that they could exploit. In our case (and in many other cases around the country) they were able to gain access to our files and delete them.  They also installed some programs of their own that made restoration even more difficult. 

The only fool-proof restoration method was to have our internet service provider completely delete absolutely everything in the affected storage area and start over. Normally, starting over would mean doing some preliminary things and then restoring everything from known good backups. Only in our case there were no backups. 

Long awkward silence… 

As the webmaster, the responsibility was entirely mine. I had been in this position for 4 months, and ‘Understand the Backup Scheme’ has been near the top of my to do list for  quite awhile. Coming from a corporate environment, I assumed that our Internet Service Provider was performing backups and that in a worst case scenario like this I could rely on that. 

Much to my dismay I discovered that the level of service provided for the $8 a month we are paying was not quite on par with what my Fortune 25 corporation provides. And so, the morning after returning from a two week vacation in Europe, I began re-building the site from the ground up. 

In my case, rebuilding entailed trying to first understand how and why we were so vulnerable to begin with.  I learned a lot, and sincerely hope that the additional security steps I have taken will make us less vulnerable to the next attack.

There has been a small silver lining to this very black cloud… I do now ‘Understand the Backup Scheme’. And starting over has provided me with the opportunity to make some changes to the ‘look and feel’ of the site. These changes were not made for the sake of change alone… I sincerely hope that you will agree that the new site is easier to navigate and use. 

What do you think? Leave a reply… I’ll summarize the feedback in a future post.

Tony Hanson