After a long period of neglect, The Longstreet Chronicles is finally getting a facelift. In addition, I will be adding new content and updating sections of the site that are currently out-dated. The reasons the site has remained dormant for so long are complicated and probably not of interest to most people, so I won't dwell on it. Suffice to say circumstances largely beyond my control have kept me away for far too long.
I would like to take a few moments to let vistors know what I am doing in the immediate future and what my long-term plans are. I will also give you a little insight into my ever-changing philosophy for this site as well as explan some of the technical details that are affected. I will be seeking feedback from interested parties on these changes.
On that note, as some of you may have noticed, I currently do not have an open e-mail address published on the site allowing visitors to contact me. The address listed on this site either sends your e-mail to nowhere or bounces it back to you. The reason for this was the massive amount of SPAM that flooded my in-box. Lack of time and sheer volume of unwanted e-mail made it next to impossible for me to wade through the trash to get to the substance. In one day, for example, the e-mail account associated with this website received over 200 individual pieces of SPAM, most of it disgustingly profane advertisements that I'd rather not ever have to see, the rest irritating ads for medical products, scams, multiple viruses, etc. For certain stretches of time, I was unable to check the account for as long as a week and had thousands of pieces of e-mail waiting for me. With the actual danger of opening some of these and my inability to determine which were genuine just by a subject line, I was forced simply to delete everything. At one point, my e-mail account was locked down because of the flood of SPAM being sent to it, preventing me from receiving mail even in my private account for a two-day period. When that happened, I decided to remove the e-mail address entirely and find some other way to manage things.
To those who have attempted to contact me and have no received a reply, I apologize sincerely. In the future, I will attempt to work out some system of SPAM filtering that lets me manage contact from vistors better.
I've gone through many stages of how I approach the construction and maintenance of this site. Originally, I had intended nothing more than a small collection of documents with little formatting. During the period of fund raising for the Longstreet Memorial Fund, I was much more hands-on in my approach to the site, updated frequently, added a lot in the way of style, and kept visitors informed about recent developments. At one time students, all the way from junior high through graduate school, regularly contacted me requesting help, and I concentrated a lot of effort toward doing so and recognizing their efforts when appropriate. (I hope Brittany and Ryan are doing well in their lives.) However, over the years, interest in the General has waned, and with the emergence of commercial websites devoted to history, one of which tried to steal some of my personal writing for itself without contacted me or crediting me with the effort, I get fewer visitors seeking this kind of help and am less certain how to maintain the relevance of this site. I'm working through this, but it's an on-going and sometimes frustrating effort.
In any case, my initial philosophy was to take a minimalist approach in the site's construction with nothing in the way of HTML coding that would prevent even the oldest or worst written of web browsing software from being able to view it properly. I've tinkered with different methods of presentation over the years but was hampered in my efforts because of my desire to maintain compliance both with basic HTML standards and those browsers, particularly Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE), that do not themselves adhere to those standards. In practical terms, what that means is that I could only use HTML coding that is now nearly 10 years old, ancient in terms of the web's history.
I am officially abandoning that philosophy. From this point forward I will adhere only to official HTML standards. In order to accomidate those forced to use browsers a few years old and those who must use IE because of its use by a library or business that gives them their Internet access, I will not be using the newest version of HTML, but I am no longer going to limit myself just to those standards that Microsoft has chosen to implement correctly. I am also moving to the use of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) in order to make updates of a site that now has hundreds of individual HTML documents much simpler. This will cause older version of Netscape (4.x and earlier) and versions of IE prior to 5.0 unable to display certain aspects of the site properly. The text will still be there, but it may look funny to you if you use one of these older browsers.
With this in mind, I would like to encourage everyone to consider using OpenSource software for their personal computers and encouraging administrators at your work or school to do so as well. The Mozilla Suite and FireFox browser are excellent web browing tools, and both implement the latest official versions of HTML and CSS standards correctly. They will make your browsing experience, not just to this site but to most, much more enjoyable. Some sites unfortunately require the use of IE, and FireFox has an answer to this as well via a free "extension" that allows one to open one of these pages in IE upon command. These browsers have the added advantage of being free for personal use and are cross-platform programs. There are currently version for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. The latest version of Netscape is almost as good, but it is buggier and less open to customization.
Beyond this, I am seeking to expand my collection of documents, particularly focusing on subjects other than Gettysburg. Interpretation of battles and Civil War controversies has long been my major focus, but I am moving away from that into more arcane subjects that have not been covered as completely. I will also be writing a few essays on various subjects, and if I work my motivation up to a particularly strong point, I will solicit essays from others who might have something to contribute. My long-range goal is to provide information about Longstreet's life after the Civil War, a subject that is given far too little attention in the official biographies of the General, and at some point provide an expansive section on the war in East Tennesee. Any advice, information, or assistance in the way of providing me access to materials will be appreciated.
I've touched on most of this already. For the moment, the only thing prior visitors will notice is an update to the formatting and corrections of some major and minor errors. This will take time, and in the immediate future some things will look strange and disorganized with different formatting on different pages, odd colors, fonts that don't look just right, big blank spaces, etc. I'm working on it, but it's a process, and I want to do it in stages on the site itself so I can see how everything works in the real world and not just on my computer. (My first changes, for example, worked fine locally, but when I uploaded them to the server, I had to change a few things so that the pages appeared properly to others. It would have been quite annoying to have completed all the changes, uploaded them, and then had to do all the tweaking to all those pages at once.) The next project on my list is to update the Reading List into a far more comprehensive annotated bibliography. This may not seem like much, but it will take me some time to complete due to the number of individual pages that need changes. It's a tedious process I am attempting to streamline so that such efforts do not take as much time in the future.
After I get this accomplished, I will start with my future projects, determining a list of specific goals and a timeline at some future date.
I am also seeking to form some more intimate associations with other groups with similar interests. The purpose of this is to coordinate efforts and share resources and to maintain the relevance of free, not-for-profit sites such as this one on the modern web. Commercial sites, in my view, are hurting individuals' efforts to provide access to information, and I would like to work out a way to counter their influence and keep information as accessible as possible to a wide array of people. If you or any group with which you are associated would be interested in discussing this matter, I would love to hear from you.
That's all for now. I should get back to work.
Brian D Hampton
Webmaster, The Longstreet Chronicles
July 26, 2004 7:05pm