Franklin Memories
Family History Website
Believe it or not, but Franklin Memories had a previous life as a digital archive. It wasn't until recently that I was able to revisit the project and expand upon its initial goal of preserving historical photographs.
I thought that the original project had the potential to go beyond the photographs and preserve the experiences and memories of my ancestors. This website could also host my research findings and make it easier for my relatives to access this information. If relatives were interested enough to collaborate, then they could do so painlessly.
Project Goals
Several factors were crucial to the success of this project:
- Should be easy to navigate: The site had to be so easy to access that relatives at a variety of skill levels would have no problem navigating it.
- Should be immersive: A not so subtle goal of this project was to get my family interested in their history. The content had to be engaging, with lots of photos and easy-to-read text.
- Should be able to grow easily with the addition of new content: The content will likely be never-ending!
- Should be private when needed: I wanted to be able to assure my family that any content could become private at any time.
The Process
One of the challenges with this project was that I had A LOT of content to work with. I had family tree files (GEDCOMs), text, photos, PDFs, and anticipated adding even more file types. How could I present all of this information in an organized way?!
I started by separating the content based on the families. Each family would have their own page with content associated with them.
Above the fold, I presented information about the founding couple, as well as general information about the family. If possible, the image used would be an imagine of the founding couple or of direct members of that particular family.
Below the fold, the user would find a grid of each individual within the family.
Clicking on a person's name would bring you to their specific page, with biographical information, a photo (if available), and interactive family trees that show how this person fits into the family.
For the photo collections, I would display the photos in an easy-to-browse format with captions that were verified or taken directly off of the original photos.
"Stories" was necessary to add depth to each individual.
"Places" would continue to virtually rebuild the communities these people lived in by offering brief histories of the locations my ancestors frequented.
