A Steward’s Guide to Maintaining and Growing MyCousins.org
A Letter to the Reader
This site was not built to impress search engines. It was built to earn trust across generations.
Every rule you will encounter exists to protect three things:
- Accuracy
- Clarity
- Continuity
This guide explains why the system behaves as it does, so future caretakers can maintain it without fear — and grow it without breaking what matters.
Why This Exists
Most genealogy websites fail quietly.
They grow menus instead of meaning. They reward navigation over narrative. They treat absence as emptiness rather than unfinished work.
MyCousins.org was built to resist those failures.
This system was designed to make the right thing the easy thing — and the wrong thing visibly harder.
What This System Is
At a high level, the site is composed of four intentionally different page types:
Family Hubs
Entry authorities for each surname. One hub per family.
Index Pages
Curated surfacing layers that reveal what exists now.
Narrative Pages
Stories, essays, obituaries, and reflections.
Posts (Journal)
Dormant by design and no longer required for growth.
Canonical Rules
The following rules are non-negotiable. They exist to prevent drift and preserve trust.
- One surname per page
- Index pages surface existing content immediately
- Silence does not equal absence
- Missing content is described, never linked
- Enumeration is always deliberate
- No navigation-only pages
- Core WordPress blocks only
- Chronological sorting is canonical
- A “Do Not Enumerate” checklist is enforced
How Growth Happens
This system grows by adding content — not by reorganizing structure.
New pages enrich existing hubs and indexes without requiring redesign. If growth requires rewriting navigation, the system has failed.
What We Do Not Do
The following omissions are intentional:
- No empty placeholder pages
- No links added for completeness
- No auto-generated structure
- No optimization that sacrifices clarity
- No dependency on proprietary builders
Roles
Roles describe responsibility, not hierarchy.
Steward
Guards the rules and long-term intent.
Contributor
Adds stories, documents, and memories.
Curator
Decides what surfaces and when.
Editor of Record
Ensures accuracy and consistency.
A Letter Forward
You are free to evolve this system — but not to misunderstand it.
This site is not finished.
It is finished enough to be trusted.
Status
This document is canonical.
Changes require deliberate review.
Silence means intact.