Record of Changes to the Website

In order to keep the message on the index page short and relevant, the "Welcome and What's New" messages will be archived here.  Changes to the website previous to this version (version 4.0) are not archived.  A visual look at how the website has evolved over time, and the software programs used to create and maintain it can be found here. 

3 Mar 2010

Now that all chapters of the Sefer Vladimirets are online, I have turned my attention back to the family tree.  At this point, all updates that have been sent to me are now in the database and uploaded.  If you sent me something and don't see it in there, please resend it. I often get information from several different sources and sometimes in trying to reconcile information, I think I have entered it but have not.  Many apologies. Please see the Family Tree page for the latest version of the database.

Somehow, the GoDaddy server managed to lose photos out of some of the photo albums in the web gallery.  I am out of town next week, but when I return, I will be focusing on updating and fixing all photo albums.  If you have photos you would like added to the albums, please submit them as soon as possible. 

Our new Facebook group for Vladimiretser descendants was announced a couple of weeks ago and is growing quickly. While the website is a great place to get info out, it doesn't allow for all of us cousins to connect, reconnect, or just get to know each other.

By default, anyone who wants to join our Facebook group must have a Facebook account. While we do not promote registering to any online social networking group per se, since Facebook is free, easy to manage, and quite fun to maintain, we encourage all our extended family to join our Facebook group, to tell others, especially the younger generation, about it and to help us create a more interactive and socially engaging connection. 

A lot of family is already on Facebook and interested in the current day connections between Vladimirets descendants – Please join us!

 http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/group.php?gid=267466705727

30 Jan 2010

All chapters of the Sefer Vladimirets are now available online.  Some of the inserts are still being worked on, and the complete translation still needs to be edited for consistency and completeness, but as always, we wanted to make the information available as quickly as possible. Please see the Sefer Vladimirets Translations page.

The translation of the Sefer Vladimirets into English from Hebrew and Yiddish, with liberal doses of Polish, Russian and Ukrainian has taken over ten years.  It could not have been done without the help of the descendants of Vladimirets who either translated or paid for a translation.  Each chapter has the name of the person who did the translation and the sponsor when appropriate.  Members of JewishGen's Ukraine SIG group helped out with many a wayward translation (who knew there were people with Polish dictionaries from the 1800's!) Just saying "thank you" doesn't seem enough for this effort, but it will have to do.  Thank you.

You may notice the changes to the Sefer Vladimirets Translations index.  We are beginning to add .pdf scans of each piece of the Sefer Vladimirets, both to provide a copy of the original book contents for those who do not have access and wish to see it, and to show how contents flow from one section to another. There are many little items, not full chapters, that will now be translated and provided as well.  We figure that if it was important enough to include in the original yizkor book, it is important enough to be translated.

We have also posted 2 new items on the Stories & Writings page:  Charlie Shoock's memoir of growing up in Vladimirets, and Stan Oshinsky's tale of visiting Vladimirets & Bile.  Both are posted with permission, and are in the original .pdf form.  If you don't have Adobe Reader, there is a download link on the Stories & Writings page to get it for free from Adobe. 

Somehow, we have managed to lose photos out of some of the photo albums in the web gallery.  We are working on recreating the albums and will be uploading them soon.  If you have photos you would like added to the albums, please submit them as soon as possible. 

27 Dec 2009

We have another ten new chapters of the Sefer Vladimirets posted (all translated by Laia Ben-Dov).  The final chapters will be posted by the end of January, G-d willing. Please see the Sefer Vladimirets Translations page. The Vladimirets Surnames page has also been updated with names found in the translated chapters.  We only have a few more chapters to go before the final editing for consistency, etc., will begin.  As always, we post the chapters with minimal editing, so that everyone has access to the information as we get it. 

We have made additional updates to the database which will be uploaded within the next day or so.  If anyone has additional information to add to the database, or photographs to add to the photo albums, please send them now -- I'm on a roll, and want to get as much done as possible in one shot.

We are still working with GoDaddy regarding their banner that messes up some of the pages.  Hopefully, we will get this straightened out by the end of January.   

11 Dec 2009

Happy Chanukah everyone!  The database has been uploaded with some (not all) of the backlog of updates that everyone has sent me.  I had managed to kill off a couple of people and had to bring them back.  Added a few births (mazel tov!).  And I'm still trying to enter the rather convoluted additions to the family tree, which have become more and more complicated as the trees interconnect and I get information from multiple sources.  Please bear with me as I get everything entered. 

One of the items taking up my time these days is the translation of the Sefer Vladimirets.  We  expect the translations to be complete by the end of December or thereabouts.  Once all the chapters have been posted, we'll need to go back over them for consistency in terms and spelling, etc., but we felt it was important to get the translations out as quickly as possible. 

We have nine new chapters of the Sefer Vladimirets posted (all translated by Laia Ben-Dov).  We have six more in the backlog, and the rest will be posted by the end of January, G-d willing. Please see the Sefer Vladimirets Translations page. The Vladimirets Surnames page has also been updated with names found in the translated chapters.

Due to the ongoing problems with the rootsweb mirror site, we are looking into moving the mirror site over to JewishGen.  The main site will continue at www.vladimirets.org, so if you still have your bookmarks set for rootsweb, change them now.

1 Nov 2009

We have three more chapters of the Sefer Vladimirets posted (all translated by Laia Ben-Dov), "Back to Days Gone By" by Moshe Appelboim, "A School for Jewish Children" by Yitzchak Pinchuk, and "Impressions" by Y. Ben-Aryeh. Please see the Sefer Vladimirets Translations page. The Vladimirets Surnames page has also been updated with names found in the translated chapters.

I have started to dig through the backlog of updates that everyone has sent me.  The database updates in particular are becoming more and more complicated.  I'm working on it, I am.

Due to the ongoing problems with the rootsweb mirror site, we are looking into moving the mirror site over to JewishGen.  The main site will continue at www.vladimirets.org, so if you still have your bookmarks set for rootsweb, change them now.

25 Sep 2009

We have just found out that Rootsweb is having a problem with their mailing list server.  If you didn't get the website update via UKR-Vladimirets, you will get it through my direct email until we get this fixed. 

18 Sep 2009

L'Shana Tova!  The launch of our completely redesigned site has not gone unnoticed - along with all the glitches and problems people have sent me are wonderful emails with lots of information. 

Unfortunately, 2008/5769 was a year of upheaval for me personally, and much of this information is still not uploaded.  I apologize and ask once again for your patience.  Everything I own is in a moving trailer and unavailable.  I am currently trying to maintain the website from an outmoded laptop that just doesn't have the capability of my full-size desktop computer. 

However, one amazing piece of news cannot wait. With Yael Burko Glaser's submission of her father's chapters, I wondered whether we had reached a point where we needed to find a translator for the remaining chapters of the yizkor book. About a month ago, I received an email from Laia Ben-Dov, who explained that she had been commissioned by George Zilbergeld to translate all of the remaining chapters of the Vladimirets yizkor book from Hebrew to English.  While there have been a few glitches thanks to international mail services, we are incredibly grateful for this gift.

The two chapters written by David Burko and translated for us by Yael Burko Glaser have been posted, as well as the first drafts of the first two chapters translated by Laia Ben-Dov, "A Noble Tradition" by Sender Tscherniak and "Old & New" by Yitzchak Kamin. Please see the Sefer Vladimirets Translations page.

We still have a lot of content to upload, and we're still trying to straighten out some issues with pages not showing up correctly in all browsers, so there will be many more changes and updates coming.

30 Jul 2008

Welcome to the all new and much improved Vladimirets website!  With a new look and feel, it focuses on easy navigation and a clean modern appearance, with a lot more user-friendly functionality and added interactivity. 

The complete genealogy database is now available online, with more features coming soon.  There are more photographs than ever, organized into photo albums for easy browsing.  You can find the albums in the new Web Galleries section.  You can even set the “slideshow” feature at the top of the photo album and it will flip through the photographs for you.  We now have full multimedia capability, and we are looking forward to taking full advantage of it. We start off the new Multimedia section with some audio clips from family get-togethers in the 1960s, taped by Gene Gottlieb. 

Many of our page names have changed, so make sure you update your bookmarks accordingly.  And to make it REALLY easy to find us, you can now access our home page via www.vladimirets.org – much easier to remember than the extended Rootsweb address.  So get comfortable, explore the site and let me know what you think! 

We still have a lot of content to upload, so there will be many more changes and updates through the end of the year.