Introduction

This page is primarily intended to help people who have volunteered to help develop Saving Graves county and/or parish pages. However it may also be of interest to anyone considering helping with an area who wishes to find out more about what would be involved.

The main requirements of any volunteers are threefold:

1. Either considerable knowledge of cemeteries located within in the specific area(s) or local knowledge and contacts within the area.
2. The ability to create simple HTML pages directly, host, and maintain them (including a basic understanding of HTML, directory structure management, and FTP), unless you are a volunteer tracking down information for someone else compiling the pages.
3. Lots of enthusiasm!

It is recommended at this stage to explore some of the many other areas of Saving Graves to get a feel for the structure and sort of information contained within the various pages.

County Coordinators

The goal of each county coordinator for the Saving Graves Project is to create a collection of cemetery preservation-related links and information pertaining to your county. Each page should be simple and easy to use. A standardized interface will help users navigate your county sites easily. To help decrease page loading times, the use of graphics should be limited where possible by the use of "thumbnail images that will link to a full sized copy of the image located on a separate page. Common navigational elements should be placed on each web page. And when in doubt, keep it simple. Duties and responsibilities of the County Coordinator are as follows:

The County Website

• Maintain a County page containing the following required elements:
  The words "Saving Graves" and it's logo (The broken gravestone image found at the top of the main Saving Graves page) located at the top of or within the top 1/3 of the main page county page and all additional county pages.  The use of the logo image  will let visitors know they are still within the Saving Graves pages. After the first time it downloads it will be in cached on the user's hard drive (the user will not have to download it over the Internet again when it is used in other pages). Saving Graves will be providing a selection of several versions of the logo image in the near future.
  The following text must also be be displayed on the main county page page
  "Saving Graves is dedicated to providing leadership, education and advocacy in preserving and restoring endangered and forgotten cemeteries worldwide."
  The contents of each Saving Graves project county website will vary depending on the volunteer coordinators knowledge and understanding of the county. The following link categories are required on all project state level websites:
  County / Local Cemetery Preservation Law
  County / Local Government
  County / Local Enforcement
  Endangered Cemeteries
  County Cemetery Index*
  Cemetery locating Services*
  County / Local Preservation Groups
  *In accordance with certain partnership agreements, in several of the above categories the order of the top few links and the size of text will be determined by Saving Graves.
• Where possible postal addresses, phone numbers and internet links should be provided for cemeteries, cemetery associations, cemetery preservation groups, genealogy/historical societies, state offices, etc. that may be listed on your site.
• Each Saving Graves project site must include a return link path to the project sites that they fall under. (For example a county level page would provide the following path - Main Page - Regional - Country - State). This is required for ease of site navigation. At the same time, all pages within your site should include within the pats likes to take the visitor back to your main page.
• Pages must be maintained and updated *at least* once every one to two months to maintain currency.
• Saving Graves encourages the free expression of the webmaster in choosing appropriate themes, backgrounds and page graphics for their websites. The use of regional and ethnic cemetery photos and images are encouraged. We ask that all websites refrain from using political statements and/or images. The use of inflammatory, derogatory statements made towards any person or groups of people will result in the immediate removal of a project website and project volunteer. We will provide upon request templates that you may use to get started. Or you may use the currently existing state page as a template on your server space.
• You are encouraged to place additional pages of information on your site about cemetery preservation efforts in your county.
• Please keep the links on a Saving Graves site as relevant to the area/region as possible.
• County Coordinators are requested to answer any county-related e-mail that is sent through their Saving Graves site if the answer is not currently available on their Saving Graves site. Be courteous and respectful when answering mail. Hosts are not just representing themselves and their area/region, they're also a representative of Saving Graves. You may wish to develop a FAQ page that you can direct visitors to before they contact you.
• From time to time you may receive requests from Saving Graves to add specific items (text or links) to your page.
• Follow the Trademark and Copyright guidelines for the use of the words "Saving Graves"
• Please do not solicit cash or other such donations to support your web page. 

County Coordinators Will Also

• Review and approve requests for assistance in maintaining you site should you see the need to bring in additional people.
• Periodically review their County pages for compliance with Saving Graves specifications.
• Assist State Coordinators in promoting Saving Graves or as needed.
• Receive and review data from State Coordinators.

Finding Assistance
When thinking about developing a county it is always worth bearing in mind how other volunteers could help you, perhaps splitting the task between two or more people (perhaps on geographical or topical lines), or having a single person co-ordinate the bulk of the pages, with others offering specialist knowledge in particular geographical areas or topics of interest. If you live outside the county could you find someone on the spot to help you find out information about unusual local records and other resources? It is also a good idea to think of all the things you would like to do for a county, even if you don't personally have the time to achieve them all. Then if someone contacts you asking how they can help you with the pages will have already thought about it.

There are various ways of finding volunteers to help with pages, all of which could be tried:

• Put a note on the county page inviting volunteers to help, or have a link to another page expanding on how people can help, and maybe also sketching out long-term plans.
• Send an email message to an appropriate mailing list or newsgroup for the area concerned.
• Write an article about your pages for the relevant local media. Explain their aims, current state of development, long-term plans, and how other people can help.

All of these are likely to be more successful if you have thought quite carefully about what you would like to see done to pages and how other people could help you achieve that. Have a brain-storming session, and look at other counties within Saving Graves to get lots of ideas. Then when you send out a call for help (a page for volunteers, message to a mailing list, or an article) mention these.

Hosting your County Page

• County pages may reside on any server you choose. Due to access and security issues Saving Graves cannot provide hosting space on our server. 
• All information contained within the pages remains the sole property of the author and the right to use such information is granted to Saving Graves by the author.
• You do not have to have a stand alone site for your Saving Graves County page. It can be a page on an existing website or other project page. The only additional requirements are that the page must display the Saving Graves name and logo, and it must be the predominant logo on that page.

Other

• From time to time you may be ask to assist the State or National Coordinator with projects.
• You will be expected to submit information and links to the national site as needed.
• Media requests should be copied to the Saving Graves Webmaster.
• You will have to subscribe to the County Coordinators Discussion Forum, and keep up with news, discussions, etc posted there.
• County Coordinators are *not* expected to do any research for any inquirers from their Saving Graves page. This is a personal decision and should only be tackled if the host desires to do research for an individual. 
• Saving Graves pages *cannot* be used to generate clients and/or money outside of advertising sales where permitted by the server host. Saving Graves pages are created for visitors, to help them with cemetery preservation issues for free. If you offer products or services for sale, please promote them on a private & completely separate page. You may link to that page from your Saving Graves page, but that's it. Please take note, that it is also requested that Saving Graves County Coordinator status not be used to sell products and services. The County Coordinator title is only acceptable when working on behalf of the Saving Graves website in a free and voluntary manner.
• There may be other requirements established by the state coordinator  for the county pages. Please check with your states coordinator for details. 

At this point you most likely have a few questions that you would like to ask. Please take a few moments to read our Frequently Asked Questions page.

Still interested? Great! If you wish to volunteer as a County Coordinator, please contact the State Coordinator for your desired county. If there is currently no State Coordinator you may not volunteer at this time. If you would like additional information, please contact us.