Whatever your motives for researching Family
History - whether it is for personal reasons, for the
benefit of your children or for other reasons - you
will want to make the results widely known and
available. This will not only satisfy your own ego
but also extend the chances of contacting relatives
and others with the same interests. In the past it
was rarely possible to publish your results other
than by producing paper copies. Today anyone with a
computer and a telephone line can use the technology
of the Internet to put their research onto a personal
website which can be seen by anyone world-wide.
Most Internet Service Providers (ISPs) - and there
are now many of them - provide 'web-space' for their
subscribers. This is usually about 10mb for each
account and more than enough for most family
historians, unless you want to show many images,
video or sound clips, or if you wish to record
information for thousands of individuals.
Many of us have been hesitant to publish on the
web because of our reluctance to learn the language
of the Internet - HTML (Hyper-text Mark-Up Language).
Today, it is no longer necessary to learn HTML to
create web-pages; you can use a word processor, web-authoring
software or even a family history program.
The sort of information put on the Internet will
vary from individual to individual but is likely to
range from genealogical narratives of ancestors to
pictures of grandparents and from lists of
individuals to biographies. You may also want to
include local histories of the areas where your
ancestors lived. The information will need to be
attractively laid out with links that will encourage
the reader to move economically and swiftly around
the site. The content must also implicitly invite
them to read the information, and to respond (for
this you will need to include an email contact
address), rather than move elsewhere. Tables 1 is an
example of the top of a page from a site I created
using FrontPage Express; it contains some details of
my great-great-grandfather Edward, a policeman in
Hertfordshire, his wife Sarah Brown and their
children and grandchildren.
The process of getting your family history onto
the net can be described in four stages. Decide what
you want to put there, then design and create a site
on your own computer, next upload it to your personal
web-space and finally, so that others stand a chance
of finding the site, ensure that it is indexed by
several search engines. Each stage is described in
more detail below. There are references to various
items of software. General computer software can be
obtained from several sources: enquire at your local
computer shop or look for advertisements in computer
magazines. Family history programs are generally
obtained by mail order from advertisements in
magazines such as Family Tree Magazine or at family
history fairs.
Table 1
Designing your site
The first, and most important, step is to decide
what to put on your site and how to lay it out.
Everyone has their own individual interests. You may
want to give the ancestry of individual members of
your family, or provide information on the families
you are researching. Alternatively, if you are making
a one-name study, you may wish to list all the names
you have found together with references to their
baptisms, marriages, and burials. You will need to
consider who your target audience is, choose an
appropriate presentation and make it attractive to
the reader.
There are several limitations to bear in mind.
Perhaps the most important is the fact that download
speeds over the existing telephone network are
generally limited at most to 56 Kbps (about 8,000
characters or one very modest sized picture per
second) so that a page with many pictures or lots of
text and hyper-links should be avoided. If a page
does not download within about 15 seconds many
surfers will move away to look at another site. You
should ensure that the files you create are stored in
a folder (or directory) structure that is easy to
maintain. It is a good idea to have a folder for the
site and sub-folders for each of your topics. You
should also use the default file - usually 'index.htm'-
in each folder to prevent others seeing what files
you have put in your online folders.
The website
A website consists of files written in HTML and
may include pictures, sound, or even video clips in
other files. The HTML is decoded by Internet browsers
such as Microsoft Internet Explorer, Netscape
Navigator, Opera etc. to display screens of
information provided by the creator. However the
formats, fonts and layout seen by the viewer depend
on the settings of the browser.
There are several ways to create the site. You can
write HTML with a text editor, use a web-authoring
package, create a formatted document with a word
processor and save it as HTML or automatically
generate a site using a family history program.
Writing HTML
HTML can be written with a Text Editor such as
Notepad. It is claimed that HTML is easy to write but
'easy' is a relative term and why write HTML when
there are packages that will do it for you? It is
true that if you have the necessary skills to write
HTML you have precise control over how your pages
look and feel. You will also be able to write good
code that is efficient and economic.
Web-authoring packages
Many people nowadays create their pages with what
is called 'web-authoring' software. There are two
types. The first is referred to as WYSIWYG (What You
See Is What You Get). It works like a word processor
so that as you compose a page on screen it appears in
much the same way as it will ultimately be seen when
viewed from your web-site by a web-browser such as
Internet Explorer. An example is MS FrontPage. There
is also a cut down version called FrontPage Express
which comes free as a component of Internet Explorer
or may be downloaded from the Microsoft web-site.
Netscape has an equivalent called Netscape Composer.
More sophisticated applications are available. An
example is Dreamweaver which is claimed to be the
application of choice. It has many features but with
a price tag of nearly £300 it is clearly a product
for the professional. Potential users should expect
to endure a steep learning curve when first using it.
The other type of software is designed to work
directly with HTML tags to ease the coding process.
An example is HotMetal. During the process of
creating a page for the web a composite of HTML tags
and the user's text is shown on screen in a
representation of the final product.
Using a word processor
Building your site using a word processor (such as
MS Word, WordPerfect, Star Office etc.) will satisfy
many family historians, especially if it is their
first venture onto the net, and the site does not
have many pages. However, you may find that the
output is not always interpreted correctly by a web
browser. Also, your word processor may not include
the latest HTML features or correctly implement the
latest HTML standards.
HTML generated by web-authoring software or by
word processors can be improved by using a text
editor to make the code more efficient - especially
by removal of redundant code and to make the site
look precisely as you want it to.
Uploading to the web
Usually web pages are first created on your own
computer before being uploaded to a 'server', often
on your own ISP, on the Internet. Files are uploaded
using File Transfer Protocol (FTP). FTP can be run
manually but nowadays it is usual to employ an FTP
program. Examples are CuteFTP, WSFTP, FTP Explorer,
and the MS Web Publishing Wizard. Many of these
enable you to move files to and from the web in a way
similar to moving files with Windows Explorer. Many
web-authoring packages (including FrontPage - but not
Front Page Express - and Dreamweaver) have built-in
FTP facilities.
Search engines
It is little use having a site on the web unless
others can find it. Search Engines, like Yahoo and
Altavista, are used to find sites. You should submit
your site URL address to several of these engines and
there is usually a link on their home page to do this.
There are also sites on the Internet which enable you
to submit your URL to several engines at once. You
should include META tags in your HTML. They provide
keywords and other information on the content of your
site which are used by search engines as part of the
process of indexing your site. It is also worth
searching the web to find recommended techniques for
the construction and content of pages to maximise the
chances of your site appearing high on the listings
from expected common queries.
HTML converters and family
history software
Always consider using software written
specifically for genealogists. There are GEDCOM
converters which take files in GEDCOM (Genealogy Data
COMmunication) format to create web-sites. GEDCOM
files can be produced from most family history
programs. Also, web sites can be generated
automatically by most of the leading family history
programs. This only takes a few seconds on modern
machines. Generally the site will be created on your
own PC for subsequent uploading to your personal web
space. However, FTM (Family Tree Maker) can only
generate a site on-line at the FTM web-site and your
information may then be included in the CDs which
they sell.
Webpages produced by family history programs could
be amended by using a web authoring tool but this
would defeat the object of being able to instantly
regenerate a site every time a change is made to the
database. Table 2 is an example of a page produced by
the Family History program PAF (Personal Ancestral
File). It shows an 'indented text narrative 'for the
same family as Tables 1. The superscript numbers
provide links to source information for each
individual. This site is at website.lineone.net/~famspack/spackman-essex
. PAF generates pages for selected individuals or for
the ancestors or descendants of a specified
individual. You could include everyone in your
database but if you have thousands of individuals
this will result in a large site taking up several
Mbytes. PAF generates a site with a home page giving
links to a Surname List and Name Index as well as a
link to either a list of individuals, ancestors or
descendants. Indented text narratives are provided
for every person selected.
Table 2
Charts such as Drop-line Trees cannot generally be
produced. Drop-line Trees with only a few generations
are often very wide and this makes it difficult to
create a design that will fit onto a PC monitor
especially as most still have only 14 or 15 inch
screens. It would be possible to create a chart as an
image and insert that into the HTML. The image could
be produced in several ways including scanning but it
would probably be very difficult to get a
satisfactory result.
Listings of family history programs and some
convertors can be found in the March and June issues
for both 1999 and 2000 of Computers in Genealogy
published by the Society of Genealogists.
What now?
This is only an introductory article but maybe it
will encourage more readers to think about putting
their own family history onto the web. The guiding
rule to a novice is to keep your site simple. You
might look at a simple well designed site which has
no frills and view the HTML code from your browser.
With Internet Explorer use 'View' from the menu bar
and select 'Source' to show the HTML code in Notepad.
You could then edit the HTML to use your names and
information and save it. A word of warning - be wary
of breaching copyright and would you like to see
someone copying your design?
Further information
If you have any problems in forming your website
you will be able to discuss them with others at the
new Research Centre. We are planning to hold
Computing Workshops and one of these, 'Building A Web-site',
is being planned for early in 2001. You can post your
problems on the Discussion Group and hopefully
someone else may be able to help. If you want further
information have a look in computer magazines
appropriate to your standard of expertise or look for
a text book on HTML or web authoring. "Web
Publishing for Genealogy" by Peter Christian (published
by David Hawgood) is a beginner's guide with plenty
of help and guidance. Useful articles directly
relating to genealogy can sometimes be found in
Computers in Genealogy - a Society of Genealogists'
publication. A final word of caution. Do not include
details of any living individual otherwise you will
have to abide by the requirements of the Data
Protection Act 1998.
