Introduction
to the Internet
... for Family Historians
BerksFHS Home page
by Eddie Spackman
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Introduction
to the Internet
|
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| return to: BerksFHS Home page |
by Eddie Spackman |
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| Get Website Address (URL)
lists e.g. for GenUKI, www.genuki.org.uk, a site for Genealogy UK and Ireland. |
from: friends, Discussion Groups, Handouts, Magazines, Books, ... |
| Use hyper-links (or Hotlinks) | often underlined blue text or from: your ISP ‘home’ page a Directory such as Cyndi's List or Yahoo a Gateway such as GenUKI other Web-sites |
| Use a Search Engine | e.g. AltaVista, Northern Light |
| Use a Meta-search Engine | e.g. DogPile, AskJeeves |
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The address of a web-page is called a URL or Uniform Resource Locator. The address of the contents page for the Berkshire FHS is:
http://www.berksfhs.org.uk/sitemap.htm
| PROTOCOL | how the electronic signals are to be interpreted |
| DOMAIN NAME | the ‘name’ of the
computer. The 'internal' representation' is an IP address sometimes seen as a number e.g. 123.45.67.89 |
| DIRECTORY | contains a collection of files |
| FILE | contains text which an Internet Browser (e.g. Netscape, Micrsoft Internet Explorer, Opera etc) converts to an on-screen display. The text is in HTML (HyperText Markup Language) |
Email addresses are like
(this one will mail the Webmaster of the
Berkshire Family Historian)
Messages are transmitted using 'protocols' (usually TCP/IP)
Notes:
The 'Domain name' is case insensitive BUT the directory and file should always be treated as case sensitive.
On many servers the 'default' file name is 'index.htm' or 'index.html'. This text is therefore usually omitted.
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This is not easy but one can start by noting the following conventions:
.com an international commercial organisation .co.uk a company in the UK .org an international organisation .org.uk an organisation in the UK .gov.uk a government department in the UK .ac.uk an academic institiution in the UK .net a network provider (?)
Additionl domains are being introduced in 2001.
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Search Engines are very clever indexes/searchable data-bases. They report indexed web-pages containing specified text.
AltaVista (gPa of all search engines) gave the following reference counts on 20 Jan 2000:
| Search Text | Web-page hits |
Spackman |
3,736 |
| +Spackman -Nigel | 3,373 |
| Edward Spackman | 981,966 |
| +Edward +Spackman | 563 |
| "Edward Spackman" | 4 |
| genealogy | 5,431,427 |
| +"family history" -medicine -medical | 265,427 |
so ... a good way to start searching for known ‘family names’
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There are many search engines:
e.g. AltaVista, Google, Yahoo, YahooUK, Lycos, HotBot, Northern Light, Ancestry.Lycos, ...
There are also meta-search engines which search other search engines. Examples are:
Altavista is at www.altavista.com
Yahoo is at www.yahoo.com or www.yahoo.co.uk
etc
Notes:
Entries are collected by '(ro)bots', 'spiders' or ‘crawlers', as they are known.
To learn more about search engines have a look at www.searchenginewatch.com
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It is often *how* you search that makes the difference (e.g. using the - and + and quotes). Some people take a while to realise this and they wish they had known it earlier!
Use meta-engines first (e.g. DogPile, AskJeeves, ...)
Try, if the engine permits it, asking 'questions' first (e.g. "Where can I find out about genealogy")
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Worth spending time on evaluating software
'Tips and Advice Internet'. This helps on all
aspects of finding what you want on the web. Unlike the normal PC
magazines, you do not have several hundred adverts to plough
through - 12 pages of good advice each issue and it has a web
site which as a subscriber you can access all the past
information. It is reasonable in cost - about £100 pa (reports
one member) and information can be had from www.indicator.com/BIT/
or ezine@indicator.co.uk.
If you don't fancy spending that much yourselves
- persuade your local library of its merits and it will soon be
on their list of most regularly stolen magzines.
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1. Searches with capitals are case sensitive so a search for: tony blair will get some different results to Tony Blair.
2. If you are looking for several words (e.g. IT Training) which do not neccessarily need to be together, use the and or + symbol. i.e. computer + training.
3. If you are looking for words that must be found together i.e. Alton Towers, typing it normally will split the words and the search will be for Alton and for Towers - therefore you could end up with a website on Blackpool Tower. To force two words to appear together you need to use speach marks (including for people's names.) i.e. search for "Alton Towers" or "Tony Blair"
4. If you are looking for a website on EITHER England or Wales (i.e. one or the other not necessarily both) you must use the word or or the symbol / i.e. England or Wales
5. If you are interested in looking for the History of England or the History of Wales typing; History + England or Wales will only give you the History of England or websites about Wales (but nothing to do with it's history). To see the history of both you must use brackets i.e. History + (England or Wales)
6. If you are interested in how Clouds are formed, but every time you search for clouds you get websites about the weather (probably not the best example) then you must use not or - to exclude websites with a specific word in it i.e. search on clouds not weather.
(I am grateful to Rod Fry for this section.)
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prepared by |
wrtten
2nd February 2000 |