The Family Portaldlutek.com

The dlutek.com website is a humble home-made project, whose main purpose is to serve as a link between me, my family and my friends in Poland, Germany, Sweden, Canada, USA and in other parts of the world. The value of the website for people from outside of this circle is very limited because there is only 5 pages available for them, besides the 'home' page. Those pages are all accessible from the 'home' page (links in the footer), they share the dark blue layout and they do not require logging in. To get to the main FAMILY section and its subsections, one must have an active account and be logged in.

For the above reasons, our site is designed in such a way that it is almost invisible to search engines – which is a desirable effect, taking into account the nature of the family portal (unless you convince me otherwise).

Before you go any further, I recommend that you read detailed instructions on how to best use this website. See instructions on USER GUIDE  page. You can access that page from the top navigation menu, under the LOGIN item.

This project is an on-going experiment,

therefore, it will most likely never be fully completed. I will be trying out new ways to present the content in as cohesive way as possible and to make browsing experience as logical and efficient as possible. If you have any good suggestions, please, send me an email.

Our family portal consists of two basic sections:

• General section — for all viewers — no login necessary: PORTAL, USER GUIDE, PRIVACY, WHAT'S NEW?, SECURITY NEWS and LOGIN. Before creating an account on the dlutek.com website, it is possible to view pages in this section only.
• Section available exclusively for logged-in account holders: FAMILY (with several subsections).

The FAMILY section  –  the main part of our portal

which includes the sub-sections DOCUMENTS, SAGAS & HISTORIES, FAMILY TREE, LIFE BALANCE, FAMILY ALBUM, SNAPSHOTS and ABSTRACTIONS — is available to logged-in account holders only.

To be able to enter the section intended for account holders, you must be logged in. If you try to use "bookmarks" or direct links to pages residing inside the FAMILY section before you log in, you will be automatically sent to the login page.

Additionally, it should be noted that the subsections DOCUMENTS, FAMILY TREE and FAMILY ALBUM are only available to members of the family. Friends of the family do not get access to these subsections, even if they have an account and are logged in.

Family members who would like to open an account in the FAMILY section for themselves or on behalf of trusted friends, should send me an e-mail with their first and last name and the valid e-mail address. After this action, they may receive an invitation from me that will initiate the account opening process.

Recommended browsers

For best results, always use the latest version of a browser. For the highest compatibility use Apple Safari. For best privacy use Brave or Firefox. I can not recommend Google Chrome as it is a risky business from the privacy point of view. All other browsers should be avoided.

To assure full functionality of this website, I use JavaScript extensively, so, please, keep JavaScript enabled in Preferences settings of your browser (not to be confused with Java, which should be disabled – as an anti-hacker measure).

As you probably know,

incompatibilities between different operating systems, screens and web browsers make it difficult to construct web pages that work and look the same to all users, while being attractive to the eye and easy to use.

In cases where I have had to compromise when creating this portal, I have always opted for compliance with internet standards and privacy rather than compliance with some specific browser features. This means that, unfortunately, most viewers who use Windows system may experience some inaccuracies in the functioning or appearance of this portal, as Windows and MS Internet Explorer (version 10 and earlier) try to create their own standards, rather than adopting those that are generally used.

Because this web site

presents a wealth of photographic content, it is best viewed on large computer displays. Images are presented here for the optimal viewing on calibrated monitors set to at least thousands of colors. That's a bare minimum for a decent reproduction of continuous-tone images such as photographs. However, I strongly recommend setting your display to millions of colors for the maximum quality.

Perhaps the most important element of monitor calibration is its 'gamma' setting. It controls tonal gradation of the monitor.

To help you determine how close or far is your 'gamma' setting to the optimal one, I placed the black-and-white wedge at the bottom of this paragraph. If you can not discern each and every one of the 20 tonal values present in the wedge, it is time for you to get serious about your monitor calibration.

Some of the good places you could visit

to learn why and how to adjust your monitor for viewing continuous-tone images (like photos):

The Outdoor Photographer 

WikiHow 

On the one hand,

the dlutek.com portal has an intellectual value. On the other hand, its added value is based on the large amount of time devoted to its creation and maintenance. It requires many months of continuous work from me: research, gathering of all materials, editing texts, correcting photos, building pages, making constant improvements, uploading them to the server (which I had to pay for with my own money). Not to mention purchasing equipment and software – all of the above without any form of financial compensation. In my situation (I am a retiree) all of this had created a substantial financial burden for me.

Therefore, no wonder that the materials contained within the portal (logo, texts, graphics and photos) are protected by copyrights.

All members of our clan may view photos and articles through Internet and even download them to their computers (low-resolution versions). Higher-resolution versions are obtainable only on special orders and they are not free.

To create and publish

my web site, I have used a Mac Pro computer and several software programs from different vendors. While certain programs I've used have proven themselves to be absolutely essential, others—unfortunately—have not passed all tests of functionality, ease of the workflow, reliability, etc. They were discarded and therefore they are not mentioned here.

The amount of money paid was not necessarily an indicator of how important they turned out to be in the creation process. Also, the fact that I actually use certain hardware or software, does not mean automatically that I endorse this product in any way or for any purpose.

Until the year 2004, I have always used traditional film cameras (35mm or larger) and then I scanned pictures with a film scanner. My scanner wasn't of the highest quality, but still, this procedure gave me (in the past) much better quality of reproduction than I could dream of if I was using an output of a digital camera.

However, that has changed in time. Starting in the Spring of 2004, I switched completely to digital equipment. Finally, the quality was already there. Now, it even surpasses in every respect the quality of film, and it costs much less. Even phone-cameras produce images of quite decent quality.

Here's what I've actually used to create and bring this website to you:

Personal credits

When it comes to programming or coding, I'm a complete self-taught. Over the months and years of developing this web site, I have encountered numerous difficulties and stumbling blocks. On my own, I would probably be stuck forever trying to overcome those barriers. Luckily, I've had a great support from the RapidWeaver Community and some of developers of RapidWeaver add-ons.

I am especially grateful for the wonderful help and support from Doug Bennett (member of RapidWeaver Community, known as "teefers") and from developers listed below. Without their help, our site would likely be much more limited.

(in alphabetical order):