Background
For over 30 years, my relatives have dedicated countless hours to compiling the family tree of my ancestors. Several years ago, Dad took over the work, and since then, I have assisted in working on the website. Recently, much of the website became broken, but I’ve now begun the process to repair everything.
Archive
A large portion of the redesign aimed to better organize the archive for the user. This meant both indexing names and articles, and making a clear distinction between the Dutch and English parts of the website.
One of the major decisions concerned the index, which includes over 1000 ancestors. Currently, it was written in both Dutch and English to avoid duplicating entries. I created a new page design template, which I hope to continue working on in the future, clearly showcasing information about the different family members, and interlinking them in a way that encourages exploration by the user.
Articles & Assets
During my work, I decided to update the cover images for the articles. Some articles already displayed images, which I wanted to highlight more prominently to facilitate navigation and recognition. However, some articles were purely text-based, and in those cases, I had to find a solution.
After some research, I found out that beeldbank Groningen allows people to use some of the assets in its archive, as long as they are properly sourced. These images really helped bring the articles and the website as a whole to life.
Dutch & English
I opted to create two separate header and footer navigation designs to allow users to switch between Dutch and English. Additionally, I ensured that all the articles, which had primarily been in Dutch, also had an English text version for the English part of the website.
I hoped this would create more content for English users and make the website feel more accessible. By providing access to the other language version through various different links, I aimed to clearly facilitate users of different languages, regardless of where they accessed the website from.
Reflections
Working on the ancestry website has been such a joy and a source of inspiration. It allowed me to work on a variety of different tasks, expand my capabilities, and feel inspired. Creating the navigation really tested my organizational skills, finding new assets was incredibly inspiring, and reading about my rich family history has been incredible.
