I am pleased to announce that the new website for my newsletter is now online. It is also installed on a new web hosting service in the cloud. The new site at http://eogn.com replaces both the old website at the same address AND the former Plus Edition website at http://eognplus.com.

That's right. There is now one new web site for everyone. You can access it whether you have a Plus Edition subscription, a Standard Edition subscription, or no subscription at all. Visitors (without subscriptions) will be able to read Standard articles, but only subscribers can post comments. As always, Plus Edition subscribers can also read articles written especially for them.

Note: Anyone who visits the new site but is not yet subscribed is now called a “visitor.” You may remain in “visitor” status forever, if you wish. Visitors (without either free or paid subscriptions) will be able to read Standard articles and read messages in the new Discussion Forum, but will not be able to post comments or new messages. Only subscribers can post comments or new Discussion Forum messages. As always, Plus Edition subscribers can also read and comment on articles written especially for them.

The new website features:

1. An all new look-and-feel that should be easier to navigate.

2. No more PayPal. Instead, the new website accepts VISA, MasterCard, and Discover credit cards. The credit card companies all guarantee protection of your payment against fraud. (They also guaranteed PayPal payments in the old web site, but lots of people didn't know that.)

3. If you don’t want to pay online by credit card, you can ask for an invoice (a billing statement) that you can then pay by check or some other means. However, the subscription will not begin until your full payment by credit card, check, cash, waterfront property, or other method has been received at EOGN.COM’s "corporate headquarters" (which is really a corner of a bedroom in my home).

4. You can choose to get either a daily email summary of all articles published since the last email summary. If you don’t want to get any email summaries at all, you can opt out of the mailings at any time. For those who use RSS newsreaders, RSS format files are also available. With this new process, all emails from EOGN.COM will be sent to you more reliably than ever before. You and I can both bid farewell to those third-party (and sometimes erratic) companies that used to do the mailings for me.

You will also be able to change the email address on your account all by yourself, and it will take effect immediately.

NOTE: This email message was sent to you by the new email sending capability built into EOGN.COM.

4. A new Discussion Forum is built into the new website. This is a place for you to post questions or comments about any genealogy-related topic, ask for assistance, compare notes with other genealogists, and more. I suspect this will become a very popular service.

5. Cloud-based! The entire EOGN.COM website now runs in the cloud. No, it won't be running on a PC in my living room, in a single sever in a data center on the other side of the world, or anything similar. EOGN.COM now uses cloud services just like Netflix, Gmail, Microsoft Office 365, Amazon, eBay, and many other popular web sites. By running in the cloud, all these web sites achieve 99.99% or better uptime.

At any moment, you will be accessing the newsletter's multiple servers in California, New Jersey, Dublin, Tokyo, Beijing, Singapore, or elsewhere; you won't know—and most likely you won't care! All you will know is, "It just works!"

6. No viruses! The cloud servers are monitored 24 hours a day by system professionals using all the latest anti-virus and anti-malware techniques.

Note: Actually, the old newsletter web site never had a virus either; but it depended upon me to monitor everything. I feel a lot better with cloud services gurus monitoring and protecting everything 24 hours a day. I can sleep better now.

6. Hardware agnostic and mobile friendly! You will be able to access all functions on the new EOGN.COM whether you are using Windows, Macintosh, Chromebook, Linux, iPad, or Android devices. You even can use your "smartphone." The new website automatically adjusts its appearance to display on your device's screen (although using a very small screen size may not be an optimum user experience).

7. A new smartphone app will soon be available. You will be able to access everything in the newsletter’s web site with customized apps designed for that purpose. These iPhone, iPad, and Android apps are already available to me, but I need to customize them for use with EOGN.COM. I have been rather busy building the website in the cloud. With that new website up and running properly, configuring the new smartphone and tablet client is next on my to-do list.

8. Lots of disk space is available now, and I can always pay for more space, if needed. The maximum available size in the cloud is "infinite" although I am not prepared to pay for quite that much space. As one insurance company advertises, "Only pay for what you use."

Downsides

1. If you expect the all-new web site to be perfect in every way the instant it becomes available, you may be disappointed. This first release will be version 0.9. Like most software, you can expect later versions to squash bugs, correct typo errors, and provide new functions based on user suggestions. In short, I expect this to be a "work in progress" for a while.

2. You will have to create a new password. Modern security techniques require that user passwords never be visible to anyone other than the user, not even to me as your system administrator. As a result, when I moved your existing customer record to the new EOGN.COM website, complete with email address and subscription level, your old password did not move to the new website. Instead, I created a temporary password for you. Now, the first time you log on, you will be asked to change this temporary password to one of your own choosing. You can re-enter your old password, if you wish, or create a brand-new password. Your choice.

I could go on and on... But probably the best advice I can offer is, "Check out the new EOGN newsletter for yourself at https://eogn.com.

I'll "see" you online!

- Dick Eastman