Need help navigating De Ruyver Family Web?

De Ruyver Family Web is divided up into 5 main areas: 

• Histories: Historical accounts of De Ruyver ancestors and contemporary members of the De Ruyver Family.  These histories are divided into three areas: Pre-Modern Belgium (roughly 1540 - 1850); Modern Belgium (roughly 1850 - present); and the American Experience (roughly 1880 - present).
• Family Trees: Mapping out De Ruyver lineages back to 1540.  Currently, all trees connect back to Adriaen De Ruyver (1540 - 1596), our earliest known ancestor.  If you have a tree you'd like to submit, but you don't know how it connects to the bigger tree, that's fine!  We'll create a separate tree until the connections are discovered.


• Documents: Selected documents that were unearthed while researching De Ruyver Family Histories.


• Tour of Flanders: This section of the site contains information, in English, of the area of Belgium from whence our ancestors came. There are dozens of photos of this region as well as links to Web sites-- especially Dutch language sites-- pertaining to Belgium. 


• Portrait Gallery: Photos of members of the De Ruyver Family, past and present.  

Links to these five areas, as well as the De Ruyver Family Web Home Page, and this navigational help page, are available from most pages in the Web.  These links are located at the top of each page at the bottom of each De Ruyver Family Web logo:

Within each of these five areas, additional navigation aids are available either on the left hand side of the page or at the bottom of the page.

• Within Histories, users will find links on the left hand side (if your browser supports background colors in tables, these links will be in the colored area on the left). These links provide quick cross-references to other areas of the site and suggestions for where one should travel next.  Icons are used to help distinguish these links however, the icons are not links themselves.  The underlined link next to the icon must be clicked. 

DOCUMENT ICON signals that online documents are available that support the story being told.

TREE ICON signals that the user can see this person's place on the family tree.


NEXT ICON signals the most likely path the user should follow. Usually, this indicates a link to the next chronological ancestor for which De Ruyver Family Web has a history.

BACK ICON usually indicates the most likely path that the user came from. Typically, this will be the previous chronological ancestor.

GLOBE ICON cross-references user to a page within A Tour of Flanders describing where this family member lived/lives.

PHOTO ICON indicates that additional photographs of the relative are available.

• Within Family Trees additional navigational links are available at the bottom of the page and within the tree itself .  Links at the bottom of the page employ the "NEXT ICON" and "BACK ICON" to indicate the previous or next tree, chronologically.   Links within the tree provide quick cross-reference to other areas of the site.  In addition to the icons listed above, one additional icon is employed:

HISTORY ICON cross-references the user to the family history that has been written about this ancestor.

• Within Documents, additional navigational links are available on the left hand side of the page.  These links cross-reference the user to the history which was based on the documents being surveyed.  Additionally, each document presented in a thumbnail format will have a textual link below it to a full size image.  

 

• Within Tour of Flanders, additional navigational links are available on the left hand side of the page.  These links are textual and generally direct the user to any additional pages related to that particular geographical locale.  Additionally, each document presented in a thumbnail format will have a textual link below it to a full size image.  Sometimes, more than one Web page is needed to cover a particular locale within Flanders.   When this occurs, links to the previous page (if any) and/or next page (if any) are provided at the bottom of the page.

   

•  Within the Portrait Gallery, additional navigational links are provided which cross-reference the information with other areas of the site.  The icons listed above are used.  Additionally, the "Next Icon" and "Back Icon" are used to indicate the previous and next "wall" of the gallery.

If you need help with some other aspect of the site, please contact Debra DeRuyver, the site designer and administrator, at [email protected]

Updated December 26, 1999