themastersfamily.net

History
The history of The Masters family website dates back to this web site – idano before Elsy and I had kids. It was a place that I would post the pictures that I took. It was designed with a custom ASP application that I designed (this is before blogging really took off).

As the kids came along we started posting pictures of then so our family from around the country could see them. As time went on it was evident that we wanted a better avenue to communicate the growth of our family.

Present
At the time of this post the site has documented our move from Southern California to the Austin, TX area. But during that time the site is taking on a new purpose. The idea of the site is now sort of “The Masters Family History”.

Future
The idea is that I plan on keeping this blog, and all of the archives, for (if possible) the rest of my life. What this will due is document how are family progresses over time. With this in mind it changes what I document and when. It is no longer directed to extended family (although they are included), but it is directed to my kids. Later when they are able to read this they are going to have a better understanding of mom and dad are, where we came from, and why.

The funny part about it is that it seems with this new intention that I have a lot of catching up to do.

Technical
The Masters Family Web Site is powered by WordPress 2.02. You can visit wordpress.org to see the specifics about that. I have several plug-gins which include –

• AutoMeta 0.6 – Automatically generate and include HTML Meta Tags and Technorati Tags based on the full text of your post. By Rich Boakes.
• Akismet 1.14 – Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not. You need a WordPress.com API key to use this service. You can review the spam it catches under “Manage” and it automatically deletes old spam after 15 days. Hat tip: Michael Hampton and Chris J. Davis for help with the plug-in. By Matt Mullenweg.
• FAlbum 0.5.6 – A plug-in for displaying your Flickr photo-sets and photos in a gallery format on your WordPress site. By Elijah Cornell.
• Head META Description R1.1.2 – Insert HTML META description tag: excerpt/content brief for post/Page, description for category, and blog tag-line for everything else. By Kaf Oseo.
• Optimal Title 1.0 – Mirrors the function of wp_title() exactly, but moves the position of the ‘separator’ to after the title rather than before. By Aaron Schaefer.
• Google Sitemaps 3.0b1 – This generator will create a Google compliant sitemap of your WordPress blog. Configuration Page By Arne Brachhold.
• WP-ShortStat 1.6 – Track your blog stats. Visit Dashboard|ShortStat. Based on Shaun Inman’s ShortStat and Jeff Minards’s plug-in wp-shortstat 1.2 By Markus Kaemmerer.
• WordPress Email Notification Plug-in v2.3.1 2.3.1 – Allow People To Sign Up For E-Mail Notifications By Brian Groce.
• WordPress Database Backup 1.7 – On-demand backup of your WordPress database. By Scott Merrill.
• WP-ContactForm 1.4.2 WP – Contact Form is a drop in form for users to contact you. It can be implemented on a page or a post. It currently works with WordPress 1.5+ By Ryan Duff.

As you can see there is a lot that has gone into the website. The majority of the plug-ins are for Search Engine optimization. The SEO part of the site is mostly for experimentation, Thus the reason for this post (for inbound links), but that will taper off as I start other projects.

Soon to come will be a customized theme that will reflect the Masters Family more accurately.

Technorati : Dan Masters, Family Blog, Family Web site, The Masters Family, WordPress