Create A Genealogy Home Page: The Genealogist's Internet Primer

PRIMER:
Overview
Netiquette
E-mail/Chat
Mailing Lists
Newsgroups
FTP File Transfer
Telnet
Gopher
Websites/Web Search
Cite Sources
Make A Bookmark Page
Create A Home Page

Genealogical Society of Washtenaw County, Michigan, Inc.
The Genealogist's Internet Primer, by Sharon L. Brevoort

Create A Genealogy Home Page

Your genealogical home page may be as simple as a surname list or Ahnentafel, or as complex as a full set of Ancestor Charts, Family Group Sheets, and a GEDCOM or Tiny Tafel file. You may create only a single page, or a small set of interlinked pages.

You can do this by generating web pages with your genealogy software program, using a web page authoring program such as AOLpress (free to AOL members), and/or you can create pages using your word processor program or a text editor such as WordPad or NotePad so long as you save the file as a text file instead of a formatted document file.

What you choose to put on your website is up to you. Take some time up front to consider how much information you want to present. If your main purpose is to find other researchers interested in the same lines, it is best to give part of the information, but not all, just enough to give your visitor the incentive to contact you and get the conversation rolling. You should always remove information about living relatives out of respect for their privacy unless you have their permission. Take care to comply with copyright laws and to place only correct information on the web. If the information is not common knowledge, cite your sources or link to the source website. If any information is speculative or contradictory, say so. See Cite Internet Sources for examples of citing references, both printed and online, and Dartmouth's excellent description of what constitutes plagiarism with examples.

On this page we will give you instructions for building your own genealogy web pages. You have the option to

follow these instructions and build your own page from scratch.
download a template containing one of the examples we've built here and edit it using your word processor or text editor and the instructions below.

To add some advanced features, see Finishing Touches.

Once your file has been saved, you must transfer it to a server on the Internet in order to make it available to others. Your Internet service provider should have instructions for how to do this. If you are on AOL, use the keywords "building web pages" and "FTP" to get this information and "MHM" (members helping members) to get help when you need it.

While you are developing your web page, you can access it through your browser right from your disk. In the box where you would normally type in the URL address of a website, type the location of your file instead. So, if you saved your file on the C: drive under a subdirectory named "webpage" in a file named "genealogy.html", type

c:\webpage\genealogy.html

in the URL address box and press <Enter>. Use the backslash instead of the usual forward slash here. (If you are using the AOL browser, you must first log on to AOL in order to access the browser.)

For those of you with Macintosh computers, the instructions would be similar. If anyone can tell us what the differences are, we can add them here.

Open your word processor or text editor. To open WordPad:

Click on Start in the lower left corner of your screen.
Select Programs, Accessories, then WordPad.

Create the basic file structure.

Type in the basic HTML structure and give your page a name. Most HTML formatting tags come in pairs: <HTML> matches </HTML>, <TITLE> opens the title and </TITLE> closes it, etc. The title appears in the top left corner of your screen when you view the page with your browser. Tags may be entered in upper case or lower case.

Add your category headings between the BODY tags. Make them bold with the and tags to stand out. The break tag is the carriage return at the end of a line.

<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>My Genealogy Page</TITLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
MY GENEALOGY PAGE 
 
Introduction 
 
Surname List 
 
Contact Me 
 
</BODY>
</HTML>

The end result
looks like this:

MY GENEALOGY PAGE

Introduction

Surname List

Contact Me

Save the file on your hard drive as a text file with an .htm or .html extension, such as genealogy.htm or genealogy.html. To save the file using Microsoft Word, WordPad, or NotePad:

From the menu bar, select File, then Save As.
From the Save As box, navigate to the subdirectory where you want to save the file.
Under File name, give it a filename with an .htm or .html extension.
Under Save as type, select "Text Document" or "Text Only (*.txt)".
Click on the Save button.

Add text after each column heading. The browser doesn't pay any attention to carriage returns, so you can type <Enter> anytime to make your HTML page more readable for yourself and easier to modify later.

Introduction 
 
I am researching the ancestors of John Q. TAYLOR who lived in Michigan from 1890 to 1965. (Add a full description of what's available on this website.) 
 
Surname List 
 
ADAMS, BUCHANAN, HARRISON, JACKSON, JEFFERSON, MADISON, MONROE, PIERCE, POLK, TAYLOR, TYLER, VAN BUREN, WASHINGTON 
 
Contact Me 
Jerry F. Smith, <A HREF="mailto:xxx@isp.com">xxx@isp.com</A> 
 
<CENTER>
Copyright © 1998-99 Jerry F. Smith. All rights reserved. 
Last updated 1/1/99. 
</CENTER>

Here's what the whole page looks like now:

MY GENEALOGY PAGE

Introduction

I am researching the ancestors of John Q. TAYLOR who lived in Michigan from 1890 to 1965...

Surname List

ADAMS, BUCHANAN, HARRISON, JACKSON, JEFFERSON, MADISON, MONROE, PIERCE, POLK, TAYLOR, TYLER, VAN BUREN, WASHINGTON

Contact Me
Jerry F. Smith, xxx@isp.com

Copyright © 1998-99 Jerry F. Smith. All rights reserved.
Last updated 1/1/99.

As you can see, we've turned the email address into a link.

An email link is done with an anchor tag using the format
<A HREF="mailto:emailaddress">emailaddress</A>
When linking to an email address, the link is not case sensitive. You can type the address in lower case, upper case, or a combination and you can type 'MAILTO' or 'mailto'.
The email address itself must be the full email address; AOL members must use screenname@aol.com, not just the screenname by itself. Example:
<A HREF="mailto:jqtaylor@xyz.net">jqtaylor@xyz.net</A>

Now let's add a name index and change each name in the Surname List to link to that surname on the name index page. First add the links on the homepage.

A link is done with an anchor tag using the format
<A HREF="URL">text</A>
Links to other websites are case sensitive, so here's a tip to avoid spelling errors. Keep your editor window open. Log on to the Internet and go to the site you want to link to. Select the URL address by clicking once in the Location window with your left mouse button to highlight the entire address. From your browser's menu bar, select Edit, Copy. Switch to your editor window, position your cursor in your bookmark document, and select Edit, Paste.
When linking to another page on your own website, you do not need to include the 'http://', server address, and pathname as you would for linking to a different website.
To link to a specific location on the other page, add '#xxx' after the filename. Then, on the page you've linked to, add <A NAME="#xxx"></A> to mark the place.

Add the link to your index page after the Surname List:
<A HREF="nameindex.htm">Name Index</A> 
 

Change each surname to link to the same surname on your name index page:
<A HREF="nameindex.htm#ADAMS">ADAMS</A>,
<A HREF="nameindex.htm#BUCHANAN">BUCHANAN</A>,
<A HREF="nameindex.htm#HARRISON">HARRISON</A>,
(etc.)

The page now looks like this:

MY GENEALOGY PAGE

Introduction

I am researching the ancestors of John Q. TAYLOR who lived in Michigan from 1890 to 1965...

Surname List

ADAMS, BUCHANAN, HARRISON, JACKSON, JEFFERSON, MADISON, MONROE, PIERCE, POLK, TAYLOR, TYLER, VAN BUREN, WASHINGTON

Name Index

Contact Me
Jerry F. Smith, xxx@isp.com

Copyright © 1998-99 Jerry F. Smith. All rights reserved.
Last updated 1/1/99.

Create a new page containing the name index:

<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Name Index</TITLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
NAME INDEX 
 
<A NAME="ADAMS">ADAMS</A> 
<A NAME="BUCHANAN">BUCHANAN</A> 
<A NAME="HARRISON">HARRISON</A> 
 
<CENTER>
Copyright © 1998-99 Jerry F. Smith,
<A HREF="mailto:xxx@isp.com">xxx@isp.com</A>. All rights reserved. 
Last updated 1/1/99. 
</CENTER>
</BODY>
</HTML>

Here's what the new index page looks like:

NAME INDEX

ADAMS
BUCHANAN
HARRISON

Copyright © 1998-99 Jerry F. Smith, xxx@isp.com. All rights reserved.
Last updated 1/1/99.

Add first names using an an HTML list (UL = unordered list). Replace the UL by OL to create a numbered list (OL = ordered list). For these lists, the break is not needed at the end of each line.

<UL>
<LI>First name or text
<LI>Second name or text
<LI>Third name or text
</UL>

The end result looks like this:

ADAMS

James
John
Mary

<OL>
<LI>First name or text
<LI>Second name or text
<LI>Third name or text
</OL>

The end result:

ADAMS

James J. (ca1800-1865)
John Q. (1828-1902)
Mary Lou (1850-1920?)

Add as much information here as you want: first and middle names, birth and death dates or years, place born, resided, and died, etc. Take care to place only correct information on your web page. If any information is speculative or contradictory, say so. (Note that many genealogy software programs which generate web pages will link each name in the name index to another web page containing the family group sheet.

To add a bar between sections use the <HR> tag. Examples:

<HR>

Add information from your Ancestor Charts and Family Group Sheets by downloading and modifying one of these HTML forms. Give credit to your source with a footnote at the bottom of the page. Remember to remove information about living relatives, to include only proven information or specify otherwise, and not to give away all of the details.

Sample footnotes:
Form courtesy of <A HREF="http://www.erols.com/emcrcc/">Rory's Genealogy Pages</A>.
Form courtesy of <A HREF="http://www1.jewishgen.org/">JewishGen</A>.
Form courtesy of <A HREF="http://www.ida.net/users/elaine/">Elaine Johnson</A>.

Form courtesy of Rory's Genealogy Pages.
Form courtesy of JewishGen.
Form courtesy of Elaine Johnson.

If you feel adventurous, add a few finishing touches such as nested lists, different fonts and font sizes, text colors, graphics, or a two-column table. See Finishing Touches.

10.

Download a template file.

MY GENEALOGY PAGE #1: Basic Page
MY GENEALOGY PAGE #2: Name Index (with unordered lists)

To save any of these files using Netscape,

Right click on the link above.
In AOL, select Save Target As. In Netscape, select Save Link As.
From the Save As box, navigate to the subdirectory where you want to save the file.
Under File name, change the filename to something meaningful. Keep the .htm or .html extension.
Under Save as type, leave any HTML option selected (Netscape Hypertext Document in AOL) or choose a plain text option if not available.
Click on the Save button.

Alternatively,

Left click on the link above to display that page.
From your browser's menu bar, select File, then Save As.
From the Save As box, navigate to the subdirectory where you want to save the file.
Under File name, change the filename to something meaningful. Keep the .htm or .html extension.
Under Save as type, leave any HTML option selected (Netscape Hypertext Document in AOL) or choose a plain text option if not available.
Click on the Save button.

The Genealogist's Internet Primer:
Overview | Netiquette | E-mail/Chat | Mailing Lists | Newsgroups | FTP | Telnet
Gopher | Websites | Cite Sources | Bookmark Page | Create Home Page

Copyright © 1998-2007, Sharon L. Brevoort. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Permission to print a single copy for personal use is granted.
http://www.hvcn.org/info/gswc/primer/homepage.htm
Revised 15 October 2007. Send comments or changes to Sharon at wwwgswc@aol.com.
Images © Corel Corporation.

3. GEDCOM to HTML
4. GEDCOM privacy utilities
5. Cyndi's List, Cyndi's Genealogy Home Page Construction Kit
8. advertise: mailing lists, newsgroups, compendium pgs, surname/gedcom reg., search engines
Anc. of D.E.WELLS, SurnameLst > IndexOfNames (alpha last/first) FamGrp
WellsFmSrLst,WellsFmResAss,DnGedcomFileOfThisData(121815 bytes)
Internet International Genealogical Society
Web Publishing for Genealogy: 18 GED2HTML, 25 Utilities, 29 Graphics, 41 Submit, 50 many. Take care to place only correct information on the web. If any is speculative or contradictory, label it so. Show your sources. Reciprocal links. GEDCOM to HTML, uFTi, Webified Genealogy