Strengthening the Tree

Lately I have moved my focus from attending genealogy events to working on my tree. While I love learning from and connecting with fellow genies I realise that my research has suffered. I want to leave behind a full and well-sourced tree for future generations so I am concentrating on my research.

 
Since the advent of DNA I have recognised the value of building trees that not only go back in time but trees that go sideways and down to current generations. To assist in identifying matches one needs a robust DNA friendly tree. My hope is that I will eventually be able to solve many mysteries from my treeless DNA matches.

While I had a lot of distant cousins in my tree I had little information apart from their names. Recently I've been killing off and burying relatives and concentrating on finding sources for these events. In the past week I have found death and burial details from a range of sources for over 300 relatives. Of course there are some pesky people that just don't want to die. If I can't kill them off I make notes on their profiles indicating where I have searched. 

My main database is housed on an instance of Family Historian software on my laptop. From time to time, but not as often as I should, I export a gedcom to my website that uses TNG software and is hosted by Simply Hosting . I was shocked to find this evening that it is a year since I uploaded an update potentially missing out on being found by distant cousins.

Earlier today I tried to do the update and found that I was unable to log in to my web host. In a very short time Simply Hosting came to my rescue and I now my website is up to date. 

I realise that it needs a design overhaul but, as it is a workhorse not a show pony, I would rather concentrate on content. 

You can visit my website here: https://www.geniaus.net/

Housework time at Geniaus.net

I remember somewhere, sometime saying that I intended to update my website GeniAus Family Site every month or so. It seems that my good intentions flew out the window. I just checked to see when I had last updated the site and it was back in February.

GeniAus Family Site

Ever since we went into our latest Covid lockdown a website update has been on my gunna list but I keep saying I'll do it tomorrow. During the lockdown I have been hatching, matching, and dispatching many ancestors.  I hadn't looked at some of my research from last century since last century and, in that period, many new records have come online and several elderly cousins have left this mortal earth. 

When I did my early research I was grateful to find one source for each event but I have learnt that is not enough. Events need to be corroborated by multiple sources of quality. Lockdown has given me time to go back, update records and seek new sources.

Each day I think I'll update the website now but then I say "I'll just check a few more records and upload tomorrow."  I could have gone on like this until Christmas. When I wanted to share a link to the record of a family member who had recently passed away I realised that I needed to upload a gedcom containing the death date of that person to make the record appear on the GeniAus Family website.  (Records of living people are not in the public domain on my site.) All of a sudden I had a pressing need for an immediate upload.

So today, 7 months since my last update, I have spent a few minutes exporting a gedcom from my Family Historian software and uploading it to my website ( TNG software hosted by Simply Hosting). If I had remembered where I had saved my login details for the site this should only take around five minutes! Sadly it took me much longer to retrieve those details. Once I was at the host's site I also made a full backup of my website that I will store on an external hard drive. 

A few statistics from the GeniAus Family site today.

I am constantly making edits and additions to my Family Historian database so I will try to remember a monthly website upload (reminder now in calendar). I wonder if I will manage.

Geniaus Website - Reflections

Today I had a query from another Australian Genealogist asking me about the web-hosting service I use for my family site http://www.geniaus.net.

I realise that it is now nearly four months since I uploaded my first Gedcom to the site. I am pleased to report that I am still delighted with the software I chose for the site, TNG (The Next Generation of Genealogy Software) and the hosting company they recommended, Simply Hosting. I outlined the reasons for my choices in an earlier blog post.

I wondered whether I should make the site private or should I open it up to the world and share the fruits of my labour. I opted for the sharing path and am pleased to have done so. By publishing my work I have had contact from a number of distant cousins who have happened across the site as they searched the internet for their ancestors. These people have been able to add details to my tree and act as editors for my site.

Sharing my data has made me realise that some of my referencing in the early days left a lot to be desired so the web presence has embarrassed me into going over my data and seeking and tidying up my sources. Although my database of around 7,000 has not grown substantially the amount of referencing and checking I have done in the past four months has hopefully improved the quality of my data.

The collaborative nature of the TNG platform has enabed me to give varying levels of access to those kin who have contacted me. I can allow downloads of gedcom files, editing of data and access to details of living relatives.

It takes less than five minutes to reload a new gedcom to the site so I am able to update it painlessly whenever I have made changes. Maintenance is a breeze. Uploading of photos and documents is easy, the face tagging feature for photos is fantastic.

A basic knowledge of html is useful to personalise the templates provided by TNG but patience and perseverance are the major traits needed to accomplish this task. Although I would like to make formatting changes to the whole site I am hastening slowly.

I am thrilled by my choice of software and would recommend it to any family historians who want a presence on the web where they can easily collaborate with cousins.

Geniaus.net ....... a new family site

After years of procrastinating I have taken the plunge and registered a Domain name, bought some new software and organised some web hosting.

The genealogy I had on the internet was in the form of static pages. I wanted a tool with Web 2.0 capabilities that would apply varying levels of security, enable others to access and edit information on my site and be easy to manage. Initially I tried to use MyHeritage but I found this rather inflexible and the recent increase in costs forced me to look around. I wanted a tool that I could control.

In the course of my research this week I found The Castellorizo Genealogy Pages: A Greek Island Family History Website which seemed to be using the type of application I was wanting. I found a link to the software developer on the site and went exploring. The Next Generation of Genealogy Sitebuilding ©, written by Darrin Lythgoe was powering the site. After some time spending a couple of hours exploring sites produced using this tool my mind was made up - the $US29.99 price tag made the gamble affordable (it cost me $AUD38).

Their site claims "The Next Generation of Genealogy Sitebuilding^© ("TNG") is a powerful way to manage and display your genealogy data on the Internet, all without generating a single page of HTML. Instead, your information is stored in MySQL database tables and dynamically displayed in attractive fashion with PHP (a scripting language)."


Hosting was the next issue. Once again I took a gamble and went with one of the hosting services suggested by TNG. Within less than half an hour my domain geniaus.net was registered and I was able to access my site. Simply Hosting host a number of TNG sites and offer to install and set up TNG as part of their service. The price was right so I signed up. I requested that Simply Hosting set up my site and was informed by their efficient online ticketing service that it would be done within 24 hours and it was.


It took me less than an hour to complete the setup process last night, upload my Gedcom file and start to personalise the site. I've lots of tweaking to do and lots of learning ahead but I've made a start at www.geniaus.net.


I will continue to use The Master Genealogist to maintain my database but TNG is providing a new public face for my data.