RootsChat.Com
General => Technical Help => Topic started by: garydevine on Tuesday 02 August 11 21:25 BST (UK)
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I am wanting to make a website. It will have all my own family history on it and all the details of my ancestors and stuff like that, i am wanting to put up pictures and some stories about different people in my family and i will have an email address and such for people t contact me if they think they are related to any of the people in my tree, but i don't no what to do, how do i make my own site?
Gary
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My internet provider gives me free a small bandwidth for a website. But I use another provider who charges a small sum for a far larger website. There are many of them.
You will also need to buy some software to create the site. I use Dreamweaver, but that's old hat nowadays and I'm sure others will suggest something far more up to date.
I did attempt to put my tree on there, but it got very complicated and I just leave it all on Ancestry now.
Have fun!
meles
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Hi
You could take a look at these people and see if there is a template there you like and if you think you could design using it. I don't think re-designing using the templates it to make it more personal and adding your own material is too difficult (although I havn't tried it out yet). I think the basic ones are free but come with some wix advertising on them - you'll need to read up about it.
www.wix.com
Milly
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Tribalpages offer a very good free solution :) Later as your tree grows you can pay a small amount to have printable trees and more storage but I think it's a great way to get started.
http://tribalpages.com
It must be simple cos I can use it ;D
Heather
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hahahaha thanks all, i just tried wix but when i uploaded it for some reason i couldn't get onto the second page of the site,
I will try tribalpages. :D
Gary.
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Hi,
I used a company called Moonfruit for the Manchester General Cemetery Transcription Project:-
http://mgctp.moonfruit.com/
http://www.moonfruit.com/
They have lots of different templates and I have found it really easy to use having never done anything like this before.
Good luck.
Luzzu
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You could try Rootsweb free pages:
http://freepages.rootsweb.ancestry.com/
although you are not allowed to put gedcoms on there.
there are lots of helpful people on the mailing list if you get stuck :)
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Luzzu, see on moonfruit, can you create everthing by yourself like the back ground, can you add your own images to make the back ground and stuff because i have noticed with other sites they don't have a tool that lets you create you own stuff and sometimes sites have really boring templates and stuff, i was going for a modern lay out but with an old fashioned look to it.
Gary
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I went with a standard template so I am not sure. I had never done anything like this before so wanted something basic to start with. Cancan and I chose Moonfruit because we liked the name so you can see how closely we looked at all the technical aspects ::).
I would say if there is a template that appeals, register and have a go a building a page and see if there is enough on there for what you want to do. You can always delete it if you find it isn't for you. There is a 20MB size limit on the free sites which has been enough for our project.
Luzzu
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This one looks interesting.. it is called Yola and is a similar principle to Wix
http://www.appappeal.com/app/yola/
http://www.imreportcard.com/services/yola
Some Free hosting. Expensive to buy a personal domain name from them but you can get a free one that is yourname.yola.com which is fine - or buy cheap one elsewhere and still use it (i think). Supposed to be easy to use.
I am going to investigate further and may give it a try
Milly
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I used Weebly - www.weebly.com - to design my website.
It's free until you want advanced facilities!!
I also have a contact page there.
www.croquet.eu.com, for those interested! ;D
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If you are planning on designing your own website I do hope that you have a good grounding in HTML, stylesheets, etc. And even a better one in design. The reason I say this is that there are some incredibly badly designed family history websites out there done by people without a lick of design sense.
Tribal Pages gives you a basic template that is quite clean and lets you change some minor attributes. But it is also possible to use HTML to modify it. From what I have seen from people who have delved deeply into these modifications, is that they seldom have any sense of what works and create websites that make my eyeballs bleed.
Nick
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Google Sites is good and free, I used it with no prior experience whatsoever.....
I bought my domain first of course ..........
Gen in NBL England
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If you are planning on designing your own website I do hope that you have a good grounding in HTML, stylesheets, etc. And even a better one in design. The reason I say this is that there are some incredibly badly designed family history websites out there done by people without a lick of design sense.
I completely agree with that Nick...
The biggest problem that I had with my website was not so much the data input, nor the technicalities, but how to make it look good. After all no one is going to spend time on a badly designed site, thereby negating all the effort expended on it.
BTW I should say that Dreamweaver is not old hat or out dated, it is the industrial standard... :D
John
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I also agree with Nick, there are some really awful websites around, but basic HTML is easy to learn. Of course a lot depends on the type of site you want. Something like a family tree site works best if you concentrate on the content and don't try to be too clever with fancy effects. Start with simple text-based pages before experimenting with different fonts, colours, page layout, etc.
TribalPages is a good basic template but if you want to experiment with your own layouts everything you need to know is here: http://www.w3schools.com/
And when you want to dress it up a bit there are some fascinating examples here: http://www.csszengarden.com/
But beware! Web design can easily become an obsession, distracting you from the genealogy ::)
Mike.
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I think a good rule of thumb is to explore a few websites, make a note of what you don't like, then avoid those features like the plague...
Personally I dislike fancy fonts and/or pale text on dark backgrounds, because I find them very difficult to read.
If you have links to other websites then check periodically that the link still works!
And the 'music' option on Tribalpages (which otherwise I find an excellent site) is particularly grim.
Cati
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Hi
If you intend going down the more technical route and plump for html, go straight for HTML5.
It will save you time longer term and you may find a book in the library.
If you intend going even more technical (ASP,PHP,SQL,VB,C#++) then you probably don't need advice from here.
Google/Microsoft/others plus the major Hosting companies all have variant webpage creators.
Keep looking until you spot one that you think you'd like.
No such thing as free. ....
Ray
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I used Net Objects Fusion as a WYSIWYG editor to make my site - I got it off a Pc magazine cover disc. As they have just launched a new version, the previous version might soon feature on mag discs.
I use 110mb as a (free) host - http://www.110mb.com/
You might find the webspace board on here helpful http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php/board,292.0.html. There's examples of rootschatters fh websites listed there - just follow the link in my footer (below)
Good luck
JULIAN
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Thanks everyone,
I will take a look at everything yous have given me :D,
Gary
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Hello Gary :)
Here's a link to a free HTML tutorial:
http://www.html.net/tutorials/html/
Kind Regards
Morgan
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Thanks Morgan :D
Gary.
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I used Net Objects Fusion as a WYSIWYG editor to make my site - I got it off a Pc magazine cover disc. As they have just launched a new version, the previous version might soon feature on mag discs.
I use 110mb as a (free) host - http://www.110mb.com/
You might find the webspace board on here helpful http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php/board,292.0.html. There's examples of rootschatters fh websites listed there - just follow the link in my footer (below)
Good luck
JULIAN
Last time I looked version 10 was free on their website. Download the trial version and then use the same access code for the full version
https://shops.netobjects.com/cgi-bin/pages/computeractive
Milly