The Current State of the Brouwer Genealogy Database Website

 The Brouwer Genealogy Database (BGD) was first launched in 2008 and was last updated in late 2015/early 2016. This post also covers the current state of the other databases that I had placed online, namely Brewer of New England, Brewer-Lanier Database, Descendants of Alice Freeman Thompson Parke, Drake Genealogy Database, and Drake in Devonshire, the links for which can be found in the right hand column of this website.What is said below with regards to the BGD applies to these five databases as well.

If you will travel over to the BGD you will note the new banner headline altering us to the fact that "Hosted websites will become read only beginning in early 2024." In effect this means that RootsWeb, which has been owned by Ancestry.com for some years now, will no longer provide the authors and publishers of websites hosted by RootsWeb with the ability to update or in any way add to or alter their sites. The websites will remain "static" in their words. This, in actuality, is not new to the BGD. It has been "static" since April 6, 2016. I have not updated the BGD since then, and I have no intention of doing so in the future. Since then I have used this website, Brouwer Genealogy, to add new information and to correct errors in the existing BGD. Please note: RootsWeb has not stated in its notice that they will be removing the websites that they host. What they do state is that they are removing the ability for authors to edit or otherwise amend their websites. Having said that, there is a significant problem left behind after RootsWeb posted their banner alert.

You will note that the original introduction to the database that appeared on the Main Page has been severely truncated. It's in effect, gone. In addition, and this greatly effects the functionality and ease of use of the site, the indexes (Surname Index and Master Index) are empty. Users no longer have the ability to locate any particular or specific individual within the 744 pages that contain the individual profiles. There is nothing that I can do about this. Unless RootsWeb/Ancestry.com corrects this themselves, the Indexes are lost. In an email to their Support staff I have asked if they could address and fix this. While I have received acknowledgement that my inquiry has been received and have been given a "Case number," I have not yet received a reply. As of this writing it is still possible to access some individual profiles through the Charts, Progenitors, Unplaced, and DNA Analysis pages found in the space below the title. All and all, the BGD is very inefficient without the Indexes. However...

There is a Work Around

A work around to this problem is to use an internet search engine like Google or Bing to locate an individual within the BGD's pages. I first tried this with Google using a rather uncommon Brewer name, Elazerus Brewer. I entered Elazerus Brewer, Brouwer Genealogy Database on Google Search. The results were useless. Among them was the Brouwer Genealogy Databases' main page, but that doesn't help me get to Elazerus himself. I then tried "Elazerus Brewer" and "Brouwer Genealogy Database," both in quotation marks and separated by the word, and. The third suggestion down was Brouwer Genealogy Database - Person Page 101. That takes me to page 101 of the BGD and then I scrolled through the page for Elazerus. As I recall, I think that I had this set up for 100 profiles per page. This more precise search request did bring me to Person Page 101, and scrolling down, or using your browser's "Find in page" tool (I'm using a Fire Fox browser here) this work around does work. Using Bing, I pretty much had the same result. You need to be specific and use perimeters like quotation marks to narrow down your search. Keep in mind, with this test I did use an uncommon given name, Elazerus. Try this with say, John Brewer, Brouwer Genealogy Database, and you will have far more search results to consider. Here I would suggest adding more info to the search, such as a birth or death date, or by searching using the spouse's name (if known). This is all I can suggest with regards to finding an individual on the BGD. Should RootsWeb fix the index problem - great. Should they not - oh well, users will just have to trudge on without it.

The Bigger Issue

As mentioned, the BGD was first created and uploaded in 2008 and was frequently updated through the end of 2015. This was for me, a lot of work. The technical aspects of what was involved in creating the website and the reason why I created it were summed up back in 2008/09 in "About the Brouwer Genealogy Database." In 2017 RootsWeb was hacked and all of their hosted websites and forums were taken down. They were offline for, as I recall, ten months or so. See the post of June 9, 2018. Soon thereafter, by July 20, 2018, the BGD was restored by RootsWeb, although some stand alone pages that were linked to by this website, Brouwer Genealogy, remained lost. Also lost was my ability to manage the many files needed to create the BGD. That is to say, I lost the ability to replace incorrect information with replacement information or add new information to the pages already online. RootsWeb had taken away their free and easy to use upload tool. This meant that site publishers had to find and use a third party alternative, i.e. some FTP client software. I was not interested in doing this and simply decided that it was a good time to stop working on the BGD. As a result, the website you now find online is the same as it was back in late 2015/early 2016. It is in RootsWeb's words, "static," and has been for the past eight years. This final condition of the BGD includes the errors within the database and does not include all of the additional information that has been discovered and learned over the past seven to eight years since it went "static". Since early 2016  I have been using this website, Brouwer Genealogy, to point out errors, to correct profiles (see the recent post of April 6, 2023 for an example) and to add new names and info. This isn't how I envisioned this turning out way back in 2008 when I created the site. But, it is what it is. Unforeseen events often alter initial plans. It is the way things will remain with the BGD from here on out into the future.

There are other issues with the "static" BGD that I have but I will not go into them in detail now or here. In short, the flaws in it irritate me to the point that I would just as soon see the entire site taken offline once and for all and for good, and the time and effort required to maintain and update the BGD in the format in which it stands, is time and effort that I would prefer to spend elsewhere. I did, however, receive an email from Richard Brewer, the previous administrator of the Brewer DNA Project, in which he described the BGD, not as "static," but as "an Archive." This is perhaps a better way to think about the condition of the BGD. Think about it as an archive of the work done on numerous Brouwer/Brower/Brewer, etc., and associated families between the years of 2000 and 2016. In that light, I can live with it remaining online in it's present, and final form, errors, omissions, warts and all, for as long as RootsWeb is willing to host it. And for those who are persistent and willing to do a little extra work, the BGD can still be a useful tool. Looking at the BGD as an archive is the thing which stops me from taking RootsWeb's advise to use a FTP client tool to download my files from the RootsWeb server which would in turn remove the site in its entirety from the internet. If I did or do remove the files I would not reconstitute it online using another hosting provider. Having now said that the BGD is to a degree outdated, please keep that in mind when using it. The strength of this website is its numerous sited sources. Use them to check the work for yourself and please don't re-post any images or screenshots of profiles or pages elsewhere online, like in your Ancestry.com Tree, without first validating the content within said image or screenshot. So, to be clear...

RootsWeb tells us that, "website owners wishing to maintain their sites must migrate to a different hosting provider before 2024." That will not happen with the archival BGD. It will not be migrated to a new hosting platform, nor will it be altered from it's present, that is to say, "static" or "archived" form. I have contacted RootsWeb support and asked whether or not they intended to continue hosting websites, whether or not the websites would be migrated to Ancestry.com (as they did with World Connect Trees), and if so, would the pages have new URLs. My inquiry was acknowledged and I was given a case number, but I have yet to receive a reply. If I do not hear back we'll just have to wait until 2024 to see just how Ancestry.com handles the RootsWeb hosted websites that have not migrated to a different hosting provider. Perhaps when that is completed, or perhaps sooner as per my request, the banner notices on the BGD's site will be removed and the indexes will be restored. If they aren't, as I've said, users will have to get along without them.

BGB 751