A New Home for Shiels.ca

Today we added a new feature to Shiels.ca — the What’s New section. Family history is never really finished. New information is discovered, photographs are found, stories are corrected or expanded, and new connections are made with relatives around the world. As Shiels.ca continues to grow, we wanted a simple way to record those changes….

With the new homepage in place, the next major step was completing the ten generation pages that form the backbone of Shiels.ca. Beginning with Micheal Shiels, born in Ireland around 1690, the story follows the family through Scotland and eventually across the Atlantic to Canada. Each generation has its own page, combining family information with…

A familiar feature from the earlier Shiels Family History website has returned with the addition of a new Guestbook page. Over the years, visitors to Shiels.ca have left comments, shared family connections and sometimes provided information that helped expand or correct our family history. Fortunately, many of those messages have been preserved. The new Guestbook…

With the move to our new web host complete, attention turned to rebuilding the Shiels Family History website itself. On September 4, the new Shiels.ca homepage was completed, establishing the look and structure that would be used throughout the rebuilt site. The new homepage was designed to make more than three centuries of family history…

With the rebuilding of the family-history pages largely complete, attention turned to making sure Shiels.ca could be found easily and worked properly for visitors. The website was reviewed for search engines, photographs were given descriptive information where appropriate, and the main family pages were submitted to Google for indexing. Work also began with Microsoft Bing…

With the main generations and family branches now online, we began a detailed review of the individual pages throughout Shiels.ca. Each page was checked for consistency, readability and accuracy. Headings and page layouts were standardized, photographs were reviewed and improved where possible, and family stories were edited to make them easier to follow while preserving…