Monday 29 March 2010

New look website!


After several weeks of playing about with some new software, the new look FitzhenryDNA website is now up and running.

What's new?
The home page is still the same at present, but just below the page heading is a link to the new Fitz(-)henry database.

The database is the new bit.

Do tell us, why is this a good thing Jo?
  • With over 4200 people on it (ok... there's bound to be a few duplicates), this was too big a number to write individual pages for, and I was painfully aware that there was information that people were sending me that just wasn't being shared...

  • Using the The Next Generation software, everytime I update someone (or a family) in my master Family Historian database, I can do the same on the website.

  • And you can suggest updates, corrections, stories, photos - in fact anything to be added to a family or individual person. Each person's page on the database has a "Suggest" tab above that person's details. You type in your suggestions, and it automatically comes to my inbox!

  • There's a way of searching all the variants of a surname at one go, but I haven't get this bit running yet, so Fitz(-)henry is there in all its glorious variations...

What are the limitations?
  • There's no details for anyone born after 1910 - not even an acknowledgement that they exist! I may review this cut off date if it looks like it's too prohibitive, but I thought it better to have too much privacy rather than Google finding and making personal information available.

  • The casual browser (username: user, password: password) can only see the birth, marriage and death information. If you want some more flesh on the bones, you have to sign up for a user account - click here to apply for one (in the left hand column).
  • It's going to need all the photos transferring and linking separately, and a fair bit of tweaking with the layout to make it look lovely.

  • At present if I haven't entered a definite death date for someone in the database, the website still thinks the person is alive - I'm going to have to go through and sort that out too...
I'm going to leave all of the existing pages on the website for the time being, until I know that all of the information is transferred.
The DNA study part of the website will be updated in due course.

Hope you like it - let me know what you think.

And lastly, a big plug for Darrin and his "The Next Generation" software - the amount of personal support I've had from this man over the past few weeks has been amazing. Unreservedly recommended for anyone who wants to put their genealogy database on the web.


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