Two unrelated issues we have been looking at over the last couple of days.
We have implemented a Captcha functionality sitewide to prevent spambloggers. This requires a little configuration on individual blogs, so have a look when you get a chance and ensure it is doing the business, otherwise you might get some unwanted registrations!
And the living? Well, we wanted to include the living in family trees but needed to institute some kind of opt-in / opt-out privacy for users so that, for example, dates of birth aren’t available to all and sundry. We achieved this with the Member Access plugin which can ensure that all pages are private by default. On Dixon-Spain we created a “You need to be a member …” page for the blocked pages to divert visitors to.
reTheme, Simplify and Widgetize
Had to happen really. The theme we were using was beautiful in Mac browsers, but very ugly in IE, and let’s face it, most of the world still ends up using windows in one form or another, so it had to go. What did we choose? As you can see, something simple, useable and highly widgetized.
I know, I know, this post is trans-atlanticized with the ‘z’. I apologise, with an ’s’. But actually, it is widgetize, because WPMU is an American-based open-source creation and therefore deserves an en-US treatment eh? Anyway, the widgets allow anyone who creates a blog on OIF.com the option of including all sorts of goodies in the sidebars, between posts, above pages and in the footer. Joy eh?
What has happened is that we have lost the opening family tree page. I think this is to the good, as the posts and research reports are equally as important as the people pages. Well, that is the way it seems to me.
The theme by the way is the excellent Thematic. We did look at Carrington, but it has too much personality and we did so want something we could impose upon … in a particularly kind of Illustrious way!?