On Thursday 14 May 2009 10:50, Betti Cogswell ([email protected]) opined: > I understand the problems with an open page, but isnt it possible to > open a page that you can only invite family to? to allow only family on > and post the genealogy there? flickr allows for that, as does facebook, > in that you only allow certain ppl access to that page. and the owner > of the page can deny access to anyone they want cant they/ just a > thought or a personal web site that you build and put up and send only to > family members? > there has got to be a way other than any like ancestor that allows anyone > > [email protected] wrote: > >> >>In a message dated 5/13/2009 9:00:44 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, >>[email protected] writes: >> >>I use >>geocities.com, since bought by yahoo >> >> >>I went to the site and got a message that new accounts are no longer >>available. >> >> > > -- > Betti [chinmom] > home.comcast.net/~chinmom It's quite possible - I won't say easy - to host your own genealogy web-site using phpGedView (pGV) or TNG (The Next Generation) +apache+MySql. Self-hosting allows you complete control over content, for one thing, and access for another. Since all the software - with the exception of TNG, which is modestly priced share-ware - is free, the major investment is time: time to learn the software, time to set it up, time to maintain it. While I do this - and have done it for about 8 years, more or less - on a Unix-like system (not Linux!), it's perfectly possible to do so on a windows or Linux machine. Both pGV and TNG take a standard gedcom and use that to provide dynamic views of your data. As a result, what's displayed is always up-to-date, unlike statically created web-pages. Moving up the scale a bit, there are hosting providers who provide the pGV or TNG environment for a modest monthly cost, leaving it to you to maintain the genealogy data and to control access through the applications' built-in controls. Here, though, the problem is similar to that faced by current GeoCities users - what happens if/when the provider pulls the plug? Also available is GeneWeb. The major difference between it and either pGV or TNG is that it's its own webserver and database. It, too, provides a dynamic view of your data but is a bit more difficult to maintain and is much weaker WRT access controls/security. I won't sit here and claim that pGV, TNG or GeneWeb is appropriate for everybody - only you can make that determination. What I will say is that if you're willing to take the time to read and follow the instructions, each is relatively easy to set up, learn and use and MAY be the answer to your sharing problems. You can google each for further information. Dick Eastman has reviewed all three at one time or another and I encourage you to read those reviews at http://www.eogn.com Self-hosting Ol' Bob -- Robert G. Melson | Rio Grande MicroSolutions | El Paso, Texas ----- A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you have. Thomas Jefferson