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General => Technical Help => Family History Programs, Tree Organisation, Presentation => Topic started by: Daiwalker on Wednesday 12 December 12 13:08 GMT (UK)
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Hi guys, I would like to create a website for my family tree for free. Can anyone suggest a suitable site.
Cheers guys.
Dai.
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Hi, One of my local history sites uses a "Free" web site but I do not know the "ins and outs" of it, the link below takes you to the web site and the company which offers the free web is at the bottom of the home page,
Good luck and best regards,
jess5athome
http://www.memories-of-bygone-moorends.com/
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There are rather a lot of variables here:
Do you want to create web pages offline (either manually or automatically with a FH program) and then upload them to webspace? If so, RootsWeb Freepages are a popular choice - though every page has an Ancestry advert.
Do you want a site that includes some kind of web design package to guide you through the process of creating pages? If so, look for "web hosting" and check out the features; this can be either free (usually with adverts) or paid for. You can also buy a domain name to go with this kind of site, and you should be able to get the whole package for under £20 a year.
Another option is the kind of site where you can upload a GEDCOM file (or enter details manually as well), and pages are created dynamically. Tribal Pages is one such site, and I've heard good reviews of it. Similar results can be had with The Next Generation and GEDMill, though I believe you need to have these installed by the web host and/or on your own computer.
If you can tell us more about what kind of site you're thinking of, maybe we can give a more specific answer.
Arthur
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Cheers guys, your answers are a great help.
Dai.
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Hi
I have a tree on Tribal Pages and it is very easy to create a website. plus upload photos etc.
Carol
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Hello Dai,
If you click on the globe below my shield on the left of this posting you will see (the beginnings of) our web site on Rootsweb. The adverts are only discreet banners at the top and bottom of each page.
If you scroll down and click on the link to the left of the christmas card you will arrive at our tree. Having said that, once the web site part is properly developed, the links to the tree will be to specific people so you can see that the possibilities are boundless. The tree and the web site all in one place so avoiding repetition.
And there is tons of space for storing photos and other files of all descriptions.
You do NOT have Php or MySql on the site so if you want the same menu to appear on all your pages without typing the same information 100 times, for example, you have to use SSI files as I have done.
I have explored several sites and this is the best for size and speed of page-opening
cheers, falcybe
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You do NOT have Php or MySql on the site so if you want the same menu to appear on all your pages without typing the same information 100 times, for example, you have to use SSI files as I have done.
I have a tree on RootsWeb Freepages as well - click the globe under my name to see it. I know RootsWeb is mainly restricted to pages in HTML, and until now I've been copying my menu into every single page, so I was intrigued by what you say about SSI files. For starters, I don't really know what they are, but also, when I inspected your page, I didn't spot anything in the code that seemed to refer to them.
Incidentally, the Cowan, Lacey and Falconer links in your menu didn't work for me; I see they include a back slash (\), and when I changed this in the address bar to a forward slash (/), they worked.
Arthur
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Hi folks !
Here's hoping some kind person can help me. I decided to give Tribal Pages a go. I've been through all the introduction etc but I just can't seem to find out exactly how to operate the system or what to do next to get the thing up and running ? I've downloaded my tree from another site but am stuck ! e.g. what do I click to add a story; what do I click to change colour; what do I click to to do most things !!! I'm sure to most that it must be easy but I'm having difficulties. I'm trying the so called ''free'section first but cannot find my way around at all ! Can some kind person suggest where to start please ?
My thanks to anyone who will help,
Sincerely
Arthur :-\
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Hi guys,
The thing is I got a reply to this question on 'yahoo answers' and someone suggested that it wouldn't be a good idea to create a family website because of identity fraud with regards to mother's maiden name. I love to know your thoughts on this.
Cheers Dai.
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Hi Dai
Point whoever said that to the GRO Birth index on FreeBMD which includes mothers maiden name for births after 1911.
I would however consider not including living people on your tree without their permission.
Andy
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Hello ArthurK,
These might help for a start:
http://www.htmlgoodies.com/beyond/webmaster/article.php/3473341/SSI-The-Include-Command.htm#can
http://www.ssi-developer.net/ssi/ssi_page_template.shtml
And this, if it prints properly in this message is my falconer index file:
menu_falconer_full.shtml - note the extension starts with an S and that I have included 3 files to create what you see on the screen.
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html lang='en' xml:lang='en' xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<html>
<head>
<title>menu_falconer_full</title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />
<meta name="revisit-after" content="20 days">
<meta name="robots" content="all">
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="..\menucss\reset.css" />
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="..\menucss\style-b.css" />
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="..\menucss\lorna.css" />
</head>
<body>
<!--#include virtual="../menu_main_links.html" -->
<!--#include virtual="../falconer/menu_falconer_body.html" -->
<!--#include virtual="../falconer/menu_falconer_links.html" -->
</body>
</html>
I'll have a look at the slashes, thanks
falcybe
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Hello ArthurK again,
I have just clicked on the site:
http://freepages.family.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~haydencowan/
and I can see only forward slashes in the 3 links: Cowan, Lacey and Falconer and they all work fine for me
Isn't computing fun.....
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I have just clicked on the site:
http://freepages.family.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~haydencowan/
and I can see only forward slashes in the 3 links: Cowan, Lacey and Falconer and they all work fine for me
Still not working for me. It's the page with the pictures and Christmas card where I'm having problems, in the menu of names at the top where only Cowan, Lacey and Falconer are active. On the Main Menu page (from link alongside) it's fine. I wonder if it might be a browser issue? I'm using Firefox, which as far as I know wouldn't mangle a link, but maybe a different browser would correct one that was wrong.
Thanks for the links to the other things - I haven't had chance to look yet, though.
Arthur
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From memory it is a browser prob. I use IE and prior to version 7 I could get away with things that FF, following the rules, didn't like. Now that IE, 9, follows the rules I thought that compatibility probs were a thing of the past. I shall investigate when I have 5 mins.
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These might help for a start:
http://www.htmlgoodies.com/beyond/webmaster/article.php/3473341/SSI-The-Include-Command.htm#can
http://www.ssi-developer.net/ssi/ssi_page_template.shtml
And this, if it prints properly in this message is my falconer index file:
menu_falconer_full.shtml - note the extension starts with an S and that I have included 3 files to create what you see on the screen.
Thanks for that - it explains why what I saw in the source of the page I viewed didn't look any different from a "normal" html document. The books and programs that I've used for learning and writing html don't go into SSI, but it seems a useful tool - maybe one day I'll give it a try.
As you may have discovered, using frames or an iframe tag at Rootsweb means that the advertising banner gets repeated at the top of each frame/iframe, so this is evidently one way round that problem.
Arthur
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I've just had a look at your site, Arthur, very nice. I can see that you would benefit from SSI files. A word of caution re putting census info on view. The info itself is not copyright but the presentation, if taken from another site, definitely is so you'll have to type it out again with your format.
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I've just had a look at your site, Arthur, very nice. I can see that you would benefit from SSI files. A word of caution re putting census info on view. The info itself is not copyright but the presentation, if taken from another site, definitely is so you'll have to type it out again with your format.
Thanks for this - I'd been thinking it would be the menus that might benefit from using SSI, but having got as far as I have (and still not completed every page with the latest redesign) it might be something to consider next time I do a major revamp, rather than straight away.
Thanks too for the census reminder - I'm aware of the copyright issue re presentation, so was intending to set it out in my own way.
Arthur
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As you may have discovered, using frames or an iframe tag at Rootsweb means that the advertising banner gets repeated at the top of each frame/iframe, so this is evidently one way round that problem.
I hadn't used frames on this site but I found that using Div's with absolute (and presumably relative) positioning created havoc with the adverts appearing in odd places. To overcome this problem I have reverted to using tables while studying other possibilities.
I have corrected the \ / error, mia culpa but IE corrects the error while FF renders it 'as is' which is why I had missed it. If you refresh my index on your computer it should now work fine, thanks.
next time I do a major revamp, rather than straight away
It may be beneficial to create a "menu" page, just the bare bones without any opening or closing headers/html/body tags and make a couple of SSI ready pages to see how it goes. Then if all is well you could complete the current redesign with SSI and even copy the "include code" over your existing code in all the finished pages.
If you wish to experiment on your pc before uploading to Rootsweb then you will need to install Xampp on your computer:
http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html
You install it to C: so it becomes C:\xampp.....
You then navigate to each page you create under the sub folder:
C:\xampp\htdocs....
as if you are going onto the WWW and you will have something like:
http://localhost/Lorna/index.html in your browser, the Lorna here being a sub-folder under htdocs.
I use HTML-Kit - http://www.chami.com/html-kit/ to edit my pages and this programme has a button to preview in the browser.
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I hadn't used frames on this site but I found that using Div's with absolute (and presumably relative) positioning created havoc with the adverts appearing in odd places. To overcome this problem I have reverted to using tables while studying other possibilities.
I use tables too. I suppose you might manage to use a div with absolute positioning if you allow space for the adverts above - but if they changed the size you might have problems.
I have corrected the \ / error, mia culpa
Working fine now :)
If you wish to experiment on your pc before uploading to Rootsweb then you will need to install Xampp on your computer:
Eek! This is getting a bit complicated for me to think about at present.
I use HTML-Kit - http://www.chami.com/html-kit/ to edit my pages and this programme has a button to preview in the browser.
I've used a few programs - my meta tags mostly refer to something produced by Namo that I got on a magazine cover disc, but I haven't used that for a few years now. I've done quite a bit with KompoZer (a free WYSIWYG program with a direct html editing option), but I've recently been looking at Alleycode (also free) - this is a code editor with an optional preview pane that you can see at the same time.
Arthur
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Hi guys,
The thing is I got a reply to this question on 'yahoo answers' and someone suggested that it wouldn't be a good idea to create a family website because of identity fraud with regards to mother's maiden name. I love to know your thoughts on this.
Cheers Dai.
I worry about this a bit too. The GRO indexes have it - but they don't then link to your full name/.married name, where in the country you live and your email address. With that info it is easy to do a search on that email address and perhaps find other places you have used it with more info on you.. I have a tribal pages site but it is password protected so no one can see it (i think!). Don't think I would put my whole tree with mother's family on an open site.
Of course - the problem is with the banks for using such a silly secret question ::) ::) ::)
Might be worth using a false mother's maiden name as a security question - that would fox the ID theives ;)
Milly