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About Perras Family Website

Saturday, January 19, 2008 Perras Family Web Site... A Few More Changes...

Time for another update on what makes the site tick. About a year and a half ago, I removed the site from my main computer listed below and moved it over to a newly acquired older but very usable computer. It's a P3, 733mhz with 512 megs of ram. I put in two 20 gig hard drives and installed Windows 2000 Server on the main drive, then mirrored the drives in the operating system software, which provides a certain level of redundency and backup, which is definitely needed. I've purchased an APC Back-UPS 1500, and get this, attached it to two 850 CCA car batteries. When the power goes out, the web server can stay alive for nearly 4 hours. Sweet.

About the same time as the hardware change over, I switched from using MS Frontpage to Adobe's (Macromedia) Dreamweaver 8. It took me quite a while to get used to it, and frankly, I don't really know that much about it and find it difficult to use. I took the site off the net (still running and functional, just off the net) from May of 2007 until December of 2007, and so the site sat dormant during that time, with the exception of the photo album of course. Using Dreamweaver was a big change, and so about 10 days ago I started taking a class on how to use it. I'm expecting to finally tidy up a few things on the site that have been in need of a little TLC.

Wednesday, November 30, 2005 Perras Family Web Site... A Few Changes...

With this site being hosted on my DSL connection, it is limited in it's upload speed. As such, it is designed to be simple, clean, and free of clutter, and with the exception of the photo album, mostly text. The main feature being the photo album where you can view some 18,363 photos (as of January 15, 2009). It took me a long time to find a suitable program to create the album. One of the reasons for taking over 2 years to update the site was that the amount of pictures I have has gone up exponentially due to a digital camera purchase. This made it extremely time consuming to create the older style picture pages, and with life simply being very busy otherwise, I just gave up on updating the site. Now that the photo album creation is a fully automated process, (I simply download the pictures from the camera to the computer), I would like to begin working on the other half of the website, the family tree portion.

Time for an update on what makes up the Perras Family Web Site. About two years ago, I decided to update this machines hardware rather than buy a new one. Seemed like a good idea from a money stand point, since I would have no doubt spent around $1500 for a new machine. I know, Dell sells some cheap ones for a pretty reasonable price, but seriously, by the time I added in a lot of extra ram, more hard drives, etc., etc., the price really went up. So, taking my time over several months while doing some searching and some ebaying, I was able to turn this machine into a very usable computer. To this day, I'm satisfied with it. More power is always welcome, but I don't play the latest games, just the usual stuff most people do... surf, mail, pictures, some video. I added a faster processor, a 933mhz off of ebay. Purchased two new identical hard drives from Maxtor, 120 gigs each. Maxed out the ram to 512... I know, I still need more, but the mother board will not support any more. Added one of ATI's All In Wonder video cards and threw in a DVD burner from Sony. Oh yea, also put in a firewire card so I could transfer video from the Sony video camera. The machine is now capable of doing just about anything I ask of it, less the new Doom3 game. And I still run the web server from it. The web site building program, FrontPage, has recently been upgraded to the 2003 version. The photo album is now fully automated, updating every Sunday night. A massive time saver. Thank you Jalbum.

Saturday, May 26, 2001 Perras Family Web Site... Opening Day...

This site has actually been up for some time now. Its changed a lot in this time... some 6 times as I tried to learn Microsoft's FrontPage web site authoring program, and Cerious software's ThumbsPlus. This site is authored in FrontPage 2000. The program has more features than I think I will ever learn, need, or use and I have found it relatively simple to use. ThumbsPlus is the program that I use to scan the pictures, do some quick editing if needed, and create the photo galleries. I've actually used this program for years and I can't say enough about it. I know this sounds like an ad, but if you have a lot pics that you work with, you need this program. Check it out here www.cerious.com And no, I didn't get paid to say this ; ) Just one program that I always go back to, and I've tried a lot of graphics programs. Speaking of which, any real photo editing that I need to do is done in Adobe's Photoshop 6. Stands on it's own. The scanner is a newly acquired Epson Perfection 1240U. Looks great, works better. 'Nuff said.

The site is hosted right here at home, on our Win2000 Pro box. Nothing fancy, 533mhz, 384meg ram, and a 9gig hard drive. Thanks Josh ; ) We've got a DSL connection going into the computer, from Pacbell. It's a dynamic connection, so to make everything work right, I'm setup with a dynamic DNS service from TZO.com. I registered PerrasFamily.com with Dotster for $15. And that's it. It's all done right here at home on our 1 personal computer.

I don't know how often I'll be able to work on the site or post new material. Remember, kids, plus life. For now, I've got to concentrate on getting a basic site design in place. One that is workable and easy to add to and maintain as well as pleasant to view. All right, so I'm looking for the Holy Grail. I welcome all comments good or bad and will consider all suggestions pending my abilities to implement them. As with any great new project, there are a lot of ideas, limited ability, and no time.

We hope you enjoy yourself while you're here.

Jim, Andrea, Celia, & Ilana