Renovations and Goals for #Lusitania Anniversary 105 #Lusitania105

Thank you for visiting and all of your support. I hope you are all staying safe and healthy during this global pandemic. These past few years have been challenging, as I’ve had to, more often than not, hustle for work. Holding down two full-time jobs has meant that I haven’t been updating this site as much as I’d like. Unfortunately, as The Lusitania Resource is a hobby and not (or meant to be) a money-making venture, I’ve had to spend most of my time on work and advancing my professional life 😓. Of course, I’m grateful that I have work to pay the bills and am not suffering from any personal economic crisis, but it would be nice to not have to trade time for money to do things I find meaningful.

At this time, I won’t be asking for donations on Patreon because I can’t guarantee my free time, which would only lead to donors demanding refunds. Even during this pandemic when we are sheltering in place, I am working online (and arguably harder than before). I need to be deliberate with my time because there just isn’t enough of it. Furthermore, scaling back at work is not an option unless the plan is to quit or get fired 😅. Alas, for now, living off Patreon and Google Ads is not a sustainable option.

I know the site has had technical issues, and I’ve finally gotten around to working on them. Now for–

The updates:

1. New template — the developer of the old template stopped supporting it long ago, and it kept breaking as WordPress advanced. The site still isn’t what I fully want it to look like yet, but hopefully, the new look is easier to read.
2. I fixed the home page — With the old template breaking all the time, the home page no longer loaded. This had very, very negative impacts on my Google and other search engine indexing. Hopefully this fix will bring the numbers back up to what they should be.
3. I reorganized the home page — the old home page was user-unfriendly, so now I have a two-column, bulleted format. Now visitors can immediately find the information they are looking for: Lusitania ship facts and passenger and crew lists.
4. The website loads faster — another factor in search engine ranking. Slow sites are penalized. The old template incurred penalties with this.

Immediate plans for the future:

1. Condense sections — Apparently, having more than 50 can cause web serves to have some kind of critical failure. I will need to condense parts to make room for future expansions.
2. Finishing and editing crew biographies — A long time ago, I met up with fellow Lusitania scholar Peter Kelly and the good folks at Liverpool’s Merseyside Maritime Museum to figure out how we were going bring the information online. It is available, it just needs to be edited and revised.
3. Revise old biographies — especially with the first biographies, where my references were books instead of passengers’ direct accounts. I want to vet them for errors and accounts of questionable accuracy.
4. Reinstall the forum — the developer of the original “Mingle Forum” hasn’t updated his plugin in 12 years (as of May 2020), and WordPress can’t support its widgets anymore. I plan to switch to the definitely supported BBPress, but old posts might be lost in the process.
5. The blog will become a bigger part of the site — starting with the Lusitania Centennial, I’ve found the blog to be a great way to reach out to you not just about Lusitania facts but also the human dimension of the story. Being able to meet with some of you in person has been a very rewarding experience. I want to be able to share those stories and any news related to Lusitania and other ocean liners here.
6. Including a comparison with Titanic — they are the most infamous ships in history, and netizens want to know the difference.

My dream/wish list:

1. Find a programmer to collaborate with — one of the most time-consuming parts of managing this site is making, checking, and updating links for big lists, such as the passenger and crew lists, the lifeboat and rescue ships lists, or the survivors and victims lists. I wish to find a programmer who can create a program that can call up tagged pages and have the lists assemble themselves. This way I won’t need to hard code innumerable individual pages myself. (I believe Encyclopedia Titanica already does this)

1. Finish the biographies — of course! But there are many, and editing the information is also time-consuming.
2. Transcribe the Prichard Letters — I have the whole set from the Imperial War Museum. Transcribing, linking to existing biographies, or creating new biographies takes time, though!
3. Create a clickable map of the Old Church Cemetery — clicking on it will take you a biography of someone buried there.
4. Fix the deck plans — when I created the deck plans, I cleaned them up too much and erased the furniture in first-class. I want to put them back in, but it will take a lot of time to draw. If anyone would like to collaborate with me to reinstate the furniture, I’d love to hear from you.
5. Make computer graphics of the interiors — so you can see Lusitania in 3-D and in color. I know an interior designer, but I’m willing to hear from anyone else interested in this project.
6. More pictures – this is a text-heavy site. Any more pictures of the Lusitania, people who traveled on board, or related ships is always welcome.
7. An editing/moderating team – As you’ve seen from the decade-plus I’ve been running this site, I can’t do it all alone and need your help. The best way to keep this site running smoothly is to have a programming, editing, and moderating team to keep things going when I cannot.

To contact me about any of the above, please email me at: <lusitania1915@gmail.com>.

I have different email addresses for different jobs, so I plan to check this account at least once a week. I will also approve comments in moderation once a week so that people can communicate with each other in a timely manner.

What I’d like from you, the readers:

1. Please keep commenting on the biographies — especially if you have information about that person or can correct an error. I may not be able to fix the biography immediately, but your contributions will help readers know the facts.
2. Please let me know if you can help with anything on the previous list — running this site is more than a one-person job, and to keep it going, I will need help. If you are able to, please do not hesitate to reach out to me.

Thank you for bearing with me through this time and through all these years that The Lusitania Resource has been online. I’m so happy that you have formed this community, and I am privileged to have met some of you in person and call you friends. My best wishes to you, and please stay safe and healthy. Thank you!