May 2009 - Latest News on the website covering the history of the Mutch family name in North East Scotland.

Back on-line

After a long break I am starting to issue newsletters for the Mutches Surname website again. Two big changes have taken place in how I manage the mailing list and updates to the site.

New Mailing List

Previous systems that I used took a lot of manual work to maintain. I have now moved over to a more automated system which handles subscriptions and allows individuals to unsubscribe directly. You are receiving this because you have asked to be added to the new list.

The old list had over a hundred names, but a lot of those have gone out of date or not chosen to reply to the registration request. If you are in contact with anyone who you think may have forgotten to pass on a new email address to me, please ask them to get in touch with me and I’ll get them back on the list.

On-screen editing

The second change doesn’t impact the site users but makes a huge saving in time when I want to add new information received or update existing details. The databases behind each family line are linked but hold specific information i.e. Spouse data, Other children (different surnames), Spouse parents, etc. All these are linked so that each web page is created dynamically when a link is clicked.

This arrangement means there is a lot of flexibility for adding new persons as their details become know, but is was very complicated for me to update. Sometimes having to access four or five different databases to ensure all the links were updated. I have now designed an editor which allows the majority of updates to be done from one screen.

Testing has taken a long time but I have now made several updates to the live website using the new editor and everything appears to be working correctly. This now means that I am able to start catching up on the large backlog of data I have received from contributors.

Keep up with changes

I intend to use future newsletters to highlight some of the major updates to the Mutches information, but you can use the “Changelog” link on the website menu to check the latest changes at anytime.