Website comments are turned off

I noticed yesterday that we wre starting to get a number of comments regarding specific pages on the website so I went looking to see what I could find. What it turned out to be was someone who found the site made comments on every page that he could get to promoting porn websites. After cleaning that mess up I've turned off comments on articles and news. While this should prevent this from taking place again it does take away a part of the new website that I really would like to get back. The only possible option that I see right now is to set things up so that you would need to register to view the comments just like you currently do to post to the forums. But for now I'll just leave comments turned off.

Inch by inch, step by step

State content has been finished up to Michigan and we should have one or two more states online in the next day or two. We are starting to see some submissions coming into the site in the way of new links and a lot of comments. Traffic to the site is looking very good so far with roughly 500 visitors per day which is not too bad for this point in the history of the site. That should grow as more people discover the site and we continue to ad content to it.

Coming together slowly

As of yesterday evening we had state content added up to Georgia, and the first article in the Learning Center, "Saving A Cemetery: Getting Started". I don't anticipate adding too much over the weekend but next week should see a lot of material added to the site. I have to say that I'm very pleased with the traffic to the site since turning on the savinggraves.com address and swapping the name over. Before that we were seeing about 10 visitors per day Yesterday alone we were at over 600 visits and the current grand total is at 1800. Things are coming together nicely so far.

So where is everything?

By now you've no doubt noticed that there is very little in the way of actual content on the new website. The structure is in place and ready to go but thats about it. It's not my intention to just copy what we had with the old Saving Graves website. Most of what is there today is very outdated and many of the links no longer work. So what I'm doing is going through each state one by one and starting over fresh by creating new information centers for them. These information centers are a new version of the old state paged with some things removed and other things added in. They are currently broken up into two separate areas - State Preservation and State Profile. As these areas are created I check each link to make sure that it is still working and at the same time search out new ones that would be of value or interest. It's a time consuming process and with luck I can get through two or three states per day. You can help be submitting information on your states that can be added in. Also if your interested you might want to think about becoming the Saving Graves Advocate Board Member for your state. Information on that can be found on the webiste under the navigation links.

Back to our roots

Saving Graves is back. We have reacquired several of the old domain names and are moving forward with the slow process of building Saving Graves from the ground up. There is a lot of work to do here. The domain names that we registered for the star of the new project, gravepreservation.org, .com and . net will still get you here. But our primary web address is savinggraves.com. I should mention that after several months of trying we have been unsuccessful in our attempts to obtain the savinggraves.org domain. That address still points to the old Saving Graves website that has not been updated in several years. If you have any links to that address of if you know of anyone that does please correct them to the savinggraves.com address.

Haddock Cemetery, Gainesboro Arkansas

I just discovered an article printed in the Batesville Daily Guard about a cemetery restoration project that could be used as a model for future projects. It's a great story about how a group of formed a cemetery association and have done everything exactly right so far. Reading the article is like reading a primer on what to do when taking on a project such as this - from writing the history of the cemetery to exploring the possibility of getting prisoner details for clean up crews to researching possible grants to arranging regular maintenance and upkeep of the cemetery by local Boy Scouts and the possibility of reopening this once abandoned cemetery to new burials in the future! It's really great to read about folks like William Coe, Gary Hodge and the others that have come together to form the Haddock Cemetery Association. I wish the the best of luck with the cemetery and support them 100%

http://www.guardonline.com/?q=node/42516