Today's updates

Some great things have happened this weekend! First off, I found a software program that lets me easily watermark photos by the hundreds! That saves me a lot of time, because I had been watermarking each photograph one at a time. Because I found this, I was able to get a lot of photos uploaded into slideshows! Here's one of some lovely old photographs:

I also figured out how to put a Google search bar on the website. That will be showing up soon, after Miguel and I decide on the location for each page. It will make finding things on the website a lot easier. With 40+ pages it is easy to get lost.

I have added some "jump menus" to a few pages, and I'm sure most of them will wind up with jump menus eventually. You can see an example of this on the Poco de Todo page. It's the little drop-down menu in the upper right corner. These menus are designed to help you easily navigate between various articles/information that are part of that specific window. For example, the Poco de Todo window/page has things to offer such as an Asherton Letter, or the June 2012 Reunion Announcement. These can be found in the drop-down menu, and they all link to each other as well.

Please, if you try out the menu and it's not working, let me know here ASAP.

I got to see the website on my mom's laptop and I found that most of the scroll areas (such as on the Music page) are still longer than a typical browser window! That makes it a little weird. So, I am making those a little shorter. I have also added a border to a few (and will likely do that for all of them) so they are better recognized as scrolling windows. I would hate for anyone to miss out on this fascinating information simply because they didn't know they could scroll!

I've gotten several videos uploaded to YouTube. These will eventually make their way to the website for all to enjoy! Here's one you can enjoy right now. (It will eventually be posted to the Music page.)

I hope you're all enjoying watching the development of the website. It is evolving quite nicely and I am really enjoying myself. Please feel free to give tips or suggestions if you have them! 

Hello again!

Hello readers!

I'm getting a lot done today! Soon we will have a "site map," which will have a link at the bottom of every page. This site map will assist our consumers in going directly to any page in the website without having to search around to figure out where that page was again. Right now we have 40 pages on the site, so there is a lot of opportunity to get lost! I'm diligently working on that map and it is actually pretty fun. You'll be able to see it here when it's done.

Please comment here or using the contact page on the website. I'd love to get some feedback!

:-)

Una familia especial

Hello again! I've gotten up a few important pages. One is about a family that Miguel ran into at a museum in Washington County. You can see the page here. It's got some great pictures as well as a video.

Another great addition is the Community Voice in Education page, which you can see here.

I am experimenting with a drop-down menu for additional entries, which you can see near the top of the Education page. I just realized I have one of the entries coded wrong, so I will get right on fixing that. If this format is something we like, I will probably have a similar one on each page so that all the sub-entries can be accessed easily.

This project is big, and fun! I am really enjoying myself. And thanks to Google Translate, I am able to understand some of what I am posting. :-)

It's coming along nicely!

Be sure to check out the Bustamante family pages! I added an option to jump to some information about Albert Bustamante. :-)

There are two more slideshows added to the website, and they can be viewed on the Galeria de Fotos page.

Enjoy!

Moving right along...

I guess I didn't post again last weekend, but here I am this weekend! I've spent hours and hours on the website and I think it shows! It's really coming together now.

If you check out the Pioneer Families page, you'll see a list of names. Each one of those names will eventually have their own story posted. For now I have three that are live links and I hope you enjoy them all.

Today I added a great feature that lets you email that specific page to a friend or even post it on Facebook or Twitter. It's in the upper right hand corner of every page, under the link to this blog. :-)

I've got more and more photos copyrighted and posted into slideshows. You can see them all on the Galeria de Fotos page of the website, or you can find them scattered throughout the many pages where they relate to the story.

Tomorrow is a big day for the project. There will be an article in the Statesman Journal! I hope you all read it and then come check out the website!

Stay tuned.....

Another weekend

Hello folks!

It's 4:18pm on a Saturday, and again I have been engulfed in web design since 11:00 am! So far so good... I have mainly tackled the Pioneer Families page and I think it looks pretty good! I got the page(s) for one individual family done as well, and it sure is going to take a lot of work before all of it's finished!

I just got done watermarking and copyrighting all of the pictures taken at the Pioneer Family Reunion that you folks had in 2003 with Miguel. There were 109 photos and that certainly took a while. I got them uploaded to a website for slideshow purposes, but I don't exactly know where I'm going to put it yet! Oh wait... I just had a great idea. :-)

Be sure to check out all the new changes here.

I'm sure I'll be posting more tomorrow!

Neverending Weekend!

...is it over yet??

Well here we are, 9:00 pm on Monday night. I only had to work until 1:00 pm today (yes, I have a day job!) and spent the rest of the day doing---you guessed it---web design. Holy cow, folks, I got a lot accomplished this weekend!

If you point your browser to the Cultura page you will see another menu available to you. There is the main page with a lovely article written by Miguel, and then there are links to things such as Faith, Music, Slideshows, and Maintaining Our Identity.

The slideshow program I used before isn't working out. I submitted a support ticket and they told me I'm not allowed to embed a slideshow the way I want to. So... plan B C D E F G. (Did I mention I have invested several hours into figuring out this slideshow issue? Ugh!)

Well... Thanks to Flickr I now have working slideshows! They are pretty great, too! And there are awesome privacy settings that would make Miguel's heart smile. :-)

Updated pages include.... most of them. Go check it out! I'm sure I'll be doing more website work throughout the week, but I imagine the bulk of the progress will come next weekend.

See you then!

Long Productive Saturday

It's 6:24pm right now. I have been busy designing this website since 11am today! I am still going to do more on it for the rest of the evening, but I wanted to take a little break, finally get around to my "morning" coffee, and update our readers on my progress.

I added a visitor counter to the main menu page. It will be interesting to see how many hits we get. Check it out here!

I have researched various slideshow technologies available through Adobe applications as well as internet applications. I found a great one that I could get to work when viewed through my own files (opening it into a browser window from my own files to look at it... I hope that makes sense) but could not get it to work when I uploaded it to the internet. I read through countless online support forums and it looks as though I'm not the only person with this problem. After a couple hours of trying to figure that out, I found Smilebox. It allows me to make some great slideshows, but they don't play inside the web pages I've built. It'll do for now, but I refuse to give up on the great stuff available through the Adobe Creative Suite. You can see the Smilebox slideshow I created for the "Galeria de Fotos" here. Please let me know if you have any problems with it!

I have also added a copyright and watermark to every photo we've got displayed on the Galeria de Fotos and the Cultura pages. This copyright is actually Miguel Salinas's shadow. I have a copyright symbol "©" placed on the shadow and I am using the whole thing as a watermark. It might be fun to go view the slideshow in the galeria and see if you can spot the watermarks!

The shadow I used:

I'm sure you have seen the amazing photograph used on the Welcome page at www.texmexorusa.org. That is actually located at the Salinas residence. Miguel staged the photo with a lot of different artifacts and other items that have meaning to the entire project. Today I added numbers on the photograph (not on the front page, though) and Miguel is going to write up an explanation for each item. A link will be added when that is ready and you can all enjoy knowing what it's all about!

OK, it's back to work for me... Maybe I should eat something, too. Hmm... By the end of the night I will have a slideshow posted on the Cultura page and possibly a lot more of Miguel's amazing photographs published with watermark/copyright on the website. Be sure to check it out!!!

:-)

11/10 Update

Hello to our readers!

This is Monica again. I am working diligently on your website, have no fear! A lot will be accomplished this weekend, so be sure to check back often. It's texmexorusa.org if you forgot! :-)

Please be sure you are typing the address (texmexorusa.org) in the address bar of your browser window. If you look above this blog you should see it. If you were to, say, type it into a search engine's search field you may not get where you were planning to go! Feel free to comment here if you are experiencing trouble finding the website.

Have a great weekend!

Learning new things!

Hey, it's Monica again. And if you look down below you will see that I am posting as Monica instead of Miguel. I just did some exploring and researching and realized I can do that!

Work continues on the website. We are slowly trekking along. I believe that most of the new updates to the website will be completed over the weekends.

Stay tuned!

Welcome to the blog!

Hello everyone! My name is Monica and I am the webmaster for the texmexorusa.org website. This is a big undertaking and will take a while to reach the finish line. Miguel has agreed that having a blog would be a great idea. Here he (or I) can post updates on how the project is coming along and what's being worked on at the moment. I just created the blog, so I figured I would post something to make it official.

Currently, I am trying to pin down which images should be placed where on the website, and with what text. Miguel and I meet regularly despite him living in West Linn and me living in Albany. I have taught Miguel several things about web design and its process. I think he's catching on! :-)