Almost Disappeared: Unearthing My Family History
Family History Blog
I created the blog, Almost Disappeared: Unearthing My Family History for Alvin, who has been researching his family history for over 20 years.
I met with Alvin at a genealogy conference earlier this year. He had been itching to start a blog for a while and was ready to start the process. His goal was to create a space to clearly communicate the voices of his ancestors. In his words, "as long as you can bring back your ancestors' stories, they will not disappear."
His posts would not only showcase his family research, but would also show visitors the appropriate research methodologies for finding their own families in specific historical contexts.Project Goals
The blog had to be accessible, informative, and professional. This would be a website that his family, friends, and other members of the genealogy community would visit.
Alvin also wanted to share various resources to help others in their own genealogical journeys, including: records, PDFs, presentations, podcasts, and more.
Some of his must-haves for the blog were:- Should be easy to navigate
- Should be able to grow easily with the addition of new content
- Should showcase various resources for website visitors
- Should have a professional design
The Process
I wanted to provide Alvin with a design that was unique. I also wanted to engage his visitors with his content from their first visit. On the home page, the user would always see an image that represented the first post. Alongside of that image, he/she would see a short excerpt of the post content. By scrolling down the page (or clicking the "Read More" button), the user could read the full post. At the bottom of the page, the user could access previous posts that were published recently.
For the design, he wanted to use royal blues and earthtones, reminiscent of the Toguna of Mali. With Alvin's colors, I was able to create several color palettes. I used his chosen one to create the final design.
To incorporate his resources, I created a dedicated "Resources" page with sublinks to each type of resource. By categorizing the content based on type, users would be able to quickly find what they needed.
To encourage engagement among website visitors, I included a section for "Recent Comments" on the home page. Other items on the right-hand side of the home page would make it easier for users to search for content and to find specific posts based on the published month or by the post category.