behind AotW

a companion to Antietam on the Web

Category: building AotW

  • Interactive Orders of Battle for Antietam

    I’ve added a new tool on AotW: an interactive tree diagram display for the Orders of Battle (OOB) of each of the main armies in Maryland. You can click any “node” (dot) on the diagram to drill down further into an Army Corps/Wing, Division, or Brigade at Sharpsburg. Each of the unit names is also a link to a page with more information about it.

    I hope this new way of looking at the command organizations will be useful. I find the trees are a lot of fun to play with, too. Here’s a sample of what they look like:

    Give ’em a try and let me know what you think! Start at the main OOB page and look for the tree symbol.

  • Site Redesign Complete

    Antietam on the Web was a bit overdue for an overhaul: some of the PHP code had been deprecated (gone obsolete), much of the HTML was clumsy and likewise obsolete, and the site navigation didn’t make it easy to find the information on the site. Most of the navigation dated from 2005, and even the newest PHP and HTML code was last updated in 2010.

    So I re-wrote and re-organized the whole thing.

    The content is now gathered into big clusters for people (soldiers & units), places (maps), events (narrative), and features (special projects). I hope you’ll find it easier and more intuitive to use. It’ll certainly run more efficiently and be easier for me to maintain.

    Here’s a quick visual comparison, new vs. previous home page design.

    I’d love to hear how it works for you.

  • Front page imagery

    Antietam Battlefield's Burnside Bridge, Sharpsburg, Maryland
    Antietam Battlefield’s Burnside Bridge (between 1980-2006, by Carol Highsmith, Library of Congress)

    The home page of Antietam on the Web is really just a simple table of contents decorated by a photograph taken on the battlefield. Since I did a major redesign/simplification of the site in 2010, I’ve used about half a dozen pictures to represent the place and the history of Antietam. Here are their stories. (more…)

  • The Antietam Roster

    The number of people present on the Maryland Campaign of 1862 cannot be precisely known, but it must have been large. Ezra Carman estimated troops actually engaged on September 17th at about 85,000 (51,536 Union, 32,851 Confederate), with thousands in reserve and in support roles nearby. The armies’ mustering strengths in the first week of September were as great as 85,000 and 65,000, respectively. Adding in the Federal garrisons at Martinsburg and Harpers Ferry, along with local and detached units along the railroad and Potomac River, I think there were something like 160,000 soldiers on the Campaign.

    I’d like to know all their names, and get them listed on Antietam on the Web (AotW) so their families, researchers, and other interested people can find them. I can’t possibly get them all, I know. No one could, but I’m working on it. (more…)

  • So long, GeoCities

    The end of an era.

    GeoCities announce logo

    Yahoo! GeoCities, our free web site building service and community,
    is closing on October 26, 2009.

    Your GeoCities site will no longer appear on the Web

    After years of playing with Antietam battle information and biography on paper, then in spreadsheets and text files, I started putting it online in 1992. I had an email account with a community organization and a little FTP space on their server. The Gopher service was my friend.

    When I learned about web browsing and hypertext, I saw before me the holy grail. Finally – an effective way to tie all the people and event threads together. I did a little poking about and found GeoCities’ free hosting. The price was attractive, so I opened Antietam on the Web there in November 1996…

    (more…)