Family history website

[RobinC]

I am toying with the idea of setting up a family history website to put everything I've found out during my research but I have no experience of websites or which programmes would be best to use.

Has anyone set up a website and if so, what programmes do you recommend?

[Jan1954]

Hello Robin,

Have a peruse of the pages here to see if there is anything that might help you to decide what to do and how to do it.

Meanwhile, I will move your query across to that forum, so that those who have investigated this area may see your question.

[Peter Goodey]

what programmes do you recommend?

To some extent it depends what family history program you currently use to record all your data. For example, some have some web site facilities built in or there may be third party software with the ability to read your database directly.

[AnjaliUK]

Someone on the 'Writing up your family history' forum posted a link to their site which looked fantastic, I think they said they used i-Web, which I think is for Mac.

I use Adobe Dreamweaver, which you can use professionally, but I actually just use mine to make a very basic site to store my own notes and make them easy to navigate.

If you have a PC, it may already have Microsoft FrontPage on there, which is a good first time program for web design because it's really easy to use.

[RobinC]

Someone on the 'Writing up your family history' forum posted a link to their site which looked fantastic, I think they said they used i-Web, which I think is for Mac.

I use Adobe Dreamweaver, which you can use professionally, but I actually just use mine to make a very basic site to store my own notes and make them easy to navigate.

If you have a PC, it may already have Microsoft FrontPage on there, which is a good first time program for web design because it's really easy to use.

I've got a Toshiba laptop with Windows Vista and have just searched it and it seems that I haven't got Microsoft Frontpage. I just looked for a download online but I can't seem to find one.

[AnjaliUK]

I couldn't find it either when I looked, my old PC just had it on there when I bought it. Hopefully someone can recommend something downloadable, there's a few free ones.

[Neil Wilson]

FrontPage has been re-branded, but I can't remember the name.

There are a number of freeware web editors, but they all but a footer on every page saying 'This page created using xyz'

I won't recommend anything as what is one person's cup of tea is not another's.

This may sound weird but most Word Processors have the capability to save as a web page, OK it is not prefect due to the amount of extra code they insert, but the advantage is what you produced is what appears on the screen (called WYSIWYG). I started out using Word, created menus and loads of pages.

Some word processors even have the FTP option required to upload your work, but this can also be done from the hosts homepage.

Next thing to watch out for is how free is free when it comes to hosting the site, there are a number (I won't mention on here) for this purpose, then you could buy your own domain name and have it hosted on a cheap site (PM me if you want the host I use).

Know the crunch time, get cracking, use paper and pen to decide how the site will look, first impressions etc.

Oh I forgot, I have progress from Word to writing in Code and uses a FTP program to control what I publish to the sites I maintain.

Good luck

[Barbara Wilkinson]

FrontPage has been re-branded, but I can't remember the name.

Expressions Web (or something similar!) - aimed now at the professional market apparently.

[alliejaye]

what a fantastic idea, good luck

[MarkJ]

As Neil says, your MS Office (or OpenOffice) software will allow you to save pages as HTML (which is what websites are created in).
Use the Save As.. option, select HTML and away you go - one webpage ready to start you off.
The code created by most WYSIWYG tools (and here I am including Office, Netscape Composer, Frontpage etc etc) is generally pretty cluttered with unwanted extra bloat - however, for a simple, easy to create site, these tools are very good.

Peter mentioned the built in website tools with many genealogy programs - again, these are a simple way to create a website for family trees.

Of course, if you are really keen, you already have all you need on your PC - a simple text editor such as Notepad will allow you to create a website if you learn the basics of HTML (it is not hard and there are lots of "how to" websites which walk you through the basics). But I would go for either your FT program's website creating tool if it has one, or the Office > Save As HTML method.

You will also need some webspace (your ISP probably gives you a small amount of space) and probably a FTP program (you may have one installed already) to upload your pages to your webspace.
Other tools you may need should already be on your computer - e.g text editor (for tweaking/correcting your page) a simple basic image editing program if you want to add photos etc (keep the size and resolution right down - there is nothing worse that visiting a site which has a 3MB image which takes forever to download!).
One little tip - try to ensure the first (main) page is called index.html or index.htm - that will ensure that when someone visits your site they will land on your main page (when you type a web address into your browser, unless you specify a page, it will look for one called index.html or index.htm).

I use a variety of tools - a text editor, graphics program, FTP tools and a couple of WYSIWYG programs for quick pages (although I do strip all the crud from the pages they create). A lot of my pages are transcriptions of BMD records etc, which I receive as Excel files. I convert those to HTML (in the same way as mentioned for Office applications in general) and then strip out the excess code to leave a page which is W3C compliant. W3C are the people who create the standards for the web and you can check your code with a tool on their site to make sure it follows the rules. However, there is no requirement for anyone to do so and most people don't create standards correct code - I just like to ensure my site can be viewed by anyone - regardless of their browser or operating system.

Mark



Good luck!