What's New
What's New on Histopolis - Q4 2010
We are actively improving and expanding the site. Here are some of the recent changes:
20 December 2010
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The Histopolis Grave Center. Previously, your could only access grave information by navigating to the specific cemetery and browsing by surname. The new Histopolis Grave Center allows you to search the Grave Index by specifying any combination of the following: the individual's first, middle and/or last name, date of birth and date of death. You can also search the entire database or limit the search to a specific country, state and/or county.
The Histopolis Grave Center provides easy access to the more than 2.1 million entries in the Grave Index.
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The Histopolis Surname Center. The new Histopolis Surname Center lists information on over 300,000 surnames. Each surname may have some or all of the following information:
- its rank in the Census Bureau's list of most frequent surnames for 1990 and 2000 and its relative frequency,
- the number off occurrences of the surname in the Histopolis Grave Index, and
- links to other sites with information about that surname,
- links to similar surnames including other surname with the same Soundex code
Surnames are visible in the Surname Center if they satisfy at least one of the following criteria:
- a grave with the surname exists in the Histopolis Grave Index,
- the surname is listed in the US Census Bureau's lists of most frequent surnames for 1990 and/or 2000,
- Histopolis has links to at least two other sites which list the surname, or
- the surname has been added by an Histopolis contributor.
The Surname Center currently contains 175,000 links to other sites with surname-specific pages. We invite you to add additional links to pages focused on a specific surname to the Histopolis Surname Center. If the page contains information on only a few individuals with that surname it may be more appropriate to add the individuals to the Grave Index instead of the Surname Index (or do both!).
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Site Navigation Menu. Previously, Histopolis was focused nearly exclusively on places and could be navigated using the place navigation bar at the top of the page together with links to related or nearby places on each place page. We have now introduced a menu bar at the top of each page below the place navigation bar to make it easier to learn about and access the site's expanded focus and capabilities.
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Grave Index. The Histopolis Grave Index now contains over 2.1 million entries.
10 December 2010
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Edit Details for Unincorporated Populated Places. In addition to cemeteries, you can now edit the details of unincorporated populated places.
7 December 2010
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ASP.NET 4.0. Upgraded the site's technology to ASP.NET 4. This upgrade will better support some new capabilities under development. Please send a message to the webmaster if you encounter any problems with the site.
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Grave Index. The Histopolis Grave Index now contains 2 million entries.
23 November 2010
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Performance Improvements. Implemented a number of performance database and program improvements focused on improving responsiveness of the web site under increased load.
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Position Updates for Unincorporated Populated Places. In addition to cemeteries, you can now correct the map position of unincorporated populated places.
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Place-of-the-Day. Added a link to the Histopolis Place-of-the-Day in the page footer, replacing "In the News".
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Grave Index. The Histopolis Grave Index now contains 1.9 million entries.
20 November 2010
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Headstone Photos. You can now upload a headstone photo when you add a grave. The photo is scaled and displayed on the grave detail page.
You must have rights to the photo to upload it. You have rights to the photo if you took it; even if you have uploaded the photo to another site. Please DO NOT take photos from other sites and upload them to Histopolis.
There is currently no specific requirement on the size or resolution of the photo. We prefer the original photo, not cropped, scaled down or compressed if it is available. If your camera has the ability to embed the GPS coordinates in the image file, please enable it. The recent generation of "Smart Phones" such as the Apple iPhone and phones based the Google Android operating system typically include this capability but it may need to be enabled. If available, Histopolis will use the photo's GPS information to locate the grave within the cemetery (coming soon).
If you want to add a photo to an existing grave listing, click on the Add (Photo) button on the Grave Detail page for the grave.
Update 25 Nov 2010: The size of the photo cannot exceed 4MB.
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Add Grave. "Add Grave" buttons were added to the Surname-specific page for a cemetery and the Grave Detail page for an individual grave.
14 November 2010
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Grave Details. Added a separate field for the headstone inscription. You can now indicate that a grave shares the same headstone with another grave. The grave detail now indicates other graves that share the same headstone.
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Add Grave. Added the capability to add a grave and remain on the add form to add another grave.
When adding a grave you can now indicate that this individual shares a headstone with the previous grave added. When adding a husband/wife or other shared headstone situation, add the first headstone as normal and click the "Save & Add Another" button. Now enter the information for the second grave and check the "Same stone as name of first individual" checkbox (within the Location box).
13 November 2010
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User Contributed Grave Information Histopolis now supports users contributing information about individual graves (tombstone transcription). These contributions will appear in the Histopolis Grave Index and Grave Details (see below).
To contribute grave information, navigate to the corresponding cemetery page and scroll down to the Grave Index section. Click on the "Add" button at the bottom of the Grave Index section and you will be taken to the "Add Grave" form.
The ability to include a headstone photo or to bulk upload grave information is not supported in this initial release.
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Grave Details. Graves can now contain addition information beyond the basic information provided in the grave index. If a grave contains additional details, you can view these details by clicking on the Given Name in the Grave Index entry for that grave.
In addition to the information already provided by the grave index, the grave details can contain the burial date, a description of the location within the cemetery, general notes about the individual, grave and/or headstone and attribution of sources referenced for the grave information.
Many of the 1.8 million graves currently in the Histopolis Grave Index already contain additional details. Grave information contributed by users (see above) can include this additional information.
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Attribution of Grave Contributions. Any graves that you contribute to Histopolis will give credit to you as the contributor. Currently the attribution is of the form "Histopolis Contributor: 123456". If you would like your use your name or an alias, such as "Cemetery Joe", instead of your randomly assigned Histopolis user number, just drop a note to the webmaster with your logon name and the name you would like to use for attribution. In the future, you will be able to set or change this name on the website yourself.
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Several miscellaneous functional and performance improvements.
10 November 2010
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Upgraded Site Hosting. Histopolis.com is now hosted on a dedicated server which should make the much site quicker. Please send your comments on the new site hosting to the webmaster.
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Login Remembered. Previously there were situations where you had to login again even though you checked the "Remember Me" checkbox when you logged in. Now if you check the "Remember Me" box you should not have to log in again on the same computer until you explicitly logout or clear your browser cookies.
You will need to login again (one last time?) and check the "Remember Me" box on the login form for this change to take effect.
1 November 2010
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Place-of-the-Day. If a place has been featured as a Histopolis Place-of-the-Day the place page now indicates the date it was featured and contains a link to the corresponding Place-of-the-Day entry.
23 October 2010
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Established and Condition Fields. Two new fields were created for the date (year) a cemetery was established (or the first burial) and the condition of the cemetery, such as well maintained, overgrown, abandoned, etc. These fields can be included when adding a new cemetery or can be edited for existing cemeteries using the new Edit Cemetery Details form.
Use the Note field as a catch-all for any information that does not have a field of its own.
19 October 2010
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Edit Cemetery Details. You can now edit cemetery details to make corrections, additions or otherwise improve information such as the location description, note, survey area and alternate names. Please improve the site for everyone by correcting any error and adding additional information. You can also use this capability to provide feedback to the webmaster about a cemetery. (free registration is required)
Changes take effect immediately. All edits are reviewed, usually within 48 hours.
To Edit cemetery information, click the "Edit" button at the bottom of the "Details for xxx Cemetery" section on the cemetery place page and you will be taken to an edit page for that place. It is quick and simple, try it!
The procedure to change the cemetery coordinates has not changed. Simply drag the marker to the correct position or enter the coordinates on the map and click submit (free registration is required and you must be logged on to enable this capability)
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Grave Index. The Histopolis Grave Index now contains 1.7 million entries.
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Several miscellaneous improvements.