Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter A Weekly Summary of Events and Topics of Interest to Online Genealogists Vol. 4 No. 23 - June 5, 1999 This newsletter is sponsored by Ancestry Publishing, a leader in providing print and electronic research information to genealogists. To learn about Ancestry's state-of-the-art online genealogy databases and other fine products, visit the Ancestry HomeTown at: http://www.ancestry.com Past issues of this Newsletter are available at: http://www.ancestry.com/columns/eastman/index.htm ========================================================== Copyright (C) 1999 by Richard W. Eastman. All rights reserved. ============================================================ ============================================================ - New Advanced Search Page at Ancestry.Com Speaking of Ancestry's Web site, the following announcement appeared this week in the company's "Ancestry Daily News", edited by Juliana Smith: Searching for Ancestors on Ancestry.com just got easier. The advanced search page on Ancestry.com has been redesigned to give users more control. Before today the advanced search allowed users to search by given name, surname, and keyword. Searches could be made more specific by setting the proximity search feature, limiting how close keywords could appear together, by specifying a geographic location, and/or by searching only a specific type of record. As the number of databases on Ancestry grows ever larger, the need for researchers to focus their searching also increases. To this end, the redesigned search page allows users to: ~ Filter searches by a date range and by Soundex coding ~ Keep track of new databases with a posted notice of features and database additions ~ Browse the available databases by State, Country, and record type ~ Browse the Internet with GenPageFinder, Ancestry's genealogy- specific search engine. You can perform advanced searches at: http://www.ancestry.com/advsearch.htm You can also click on "Advanced" just below the "Search" button on the home page, or select "Search Center" on the menu just below the Ancestry graphic at the top of the page. By the way, the Ancestry Daily News is my second favorite newsletter. (Hey! I'm biased in favor of my own.) I know the difficulties of producing a weekly newsletter; I have no idea how Juliana produces one every single business day. She does a great job. To subscribe to the Ancestry Daily News, visit http://www.ancestry.com/whatsnew.htm and type your e-mail address in the box provided, or send an e-mail message to: [email protected] with the word 'subscribe' in the subject line. ============================================================ - PAF 4.0 for Windows? The following is rumor and speculation; please treat it as such: Messages are floating around the online world about an upcoming beta test for Personal Ancestral File 4.0. The rumors say it will be a Windows program, unlike the earlier MS-DOS versions. One version of the rumor says that Personal Ancestral File 4.0 will be developed by an outside commercial company, not by the LDS Church's programming staff. Truth or fiction? I don't know, but this rumor bears watching. ============================================================ ============================================================ - Publishing Your Family History on the Internet Richard S. Wilson has published a new book entitled "Publishing Your Family History on the Internet." Mr. Wilson previously co- authored "The Internet for Genealogists: A Beginner's Guide." The earlier book described the use of the Internet for genealogy in very broad terms. The newer book, however, takes one particular topic and explores it in depth. "Publishing Your Family History on the Internet" guides the reader through the process of creating a personal genealogy web site, including how to set up the web pages, how to locate a site, and how to place your family history on the web. It also gives advice on how to advertise your site so that others will find it. The book also includes step-by-step instructions for creating web pages in a variety of genealogy programs, including Ancestral Quest, Family Origins, Family Tree Maker, Legacy, Generations, The Master Genealogist and Ultimate Family Tree. He also describes utilities that will convert GEDCOM files to HTML format, suitable for uploading to a web site. Wilson also writes about privacy concerns and the need to make sure that both the privacy laws and your relatives' rights to privacy are maintained. To help insure privacy, Wilson describes three utilities that strip improper data from GEDCOM files: GEDClean, GEDPrivy and Res Privata. The book's Table of Contents lists the following chapters: * Why Publish Your Family History on the Internet? * Easing Into the Language of Web Pages * Converting Your Genealogical Data in Minutes * Putting it all Together * Transferring Your Pages onto the Internet * Web Sites Where You Can Learn More * Advertising Your New Web Site * Advanced Topics * HTML Codes * Complete Glossary One section that interested me was a chart showing the results of converting a genealogy database to HTML using different programs. Wilson started with a GEDCOM file containing information about 218 people and 76 marriages. This file was imported into each of the genealogy programs he listed, then converted to HTML format. He also did a direct GEDCOM-to-HTML conversion using the various utilities mentioned earlier. The results varied widely: * The total number of HTML pages created by the different programs and utilities varied from 2 to 78 pages. * The total size of those web pages varied from 45 kilobytes to 1.27 megabytes. * Some programs inserted graphics into the resulting HTML pages while others did not. * Some programs automatically hid information about living individuals while others did not. * All of the regular genealogy programs included text notes, but two of the GEDCOM-to-HTML utilities did not. * Some of the programs could generate pedigree charts, family group sheets and book format reports, yet others only published the data as simple textual information. * The same is true for photographs: some programs could insert them into the web pages while others did not. Wilson depicts all of the above data and more in a simple, easy- to-read chart that compares the capabilities of each program against its competitors. I found that "Publishing Your Family History on the Internet" was well written in simple English, not in techno-babble. If you are thinking about publishing your genealogy information on the World Wide Web, you will find this 340-page paperback book to be useful. "Publishing Your Family History on the Internet" costs $19.99 plus tax (for California residents only) and shipping. The book may be ordered from the author's web site at: http://www.compuology.com/book2.htm ============================================================ ============================================================ ========================================================== COPYRIGHTS: The contents of this newsletter are copyright by Richard W. Eastman. You are hereby granted rights, unless otherwise specified, to re-distribute articles from this newsletter to other parties provided you do so strictly for non- commercial purposes. Please limit your re-distribution to one or two articles per newsletter; do not re-distribute the newsletter in its entirety. Also, please include the following words with any articles you re-distribute: The following article is from Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter and is copyright 1999 by Richard W. Eastman. It is re-published here with the permission of the author. Thank you for your cooperation. If you want to see the current issue as well as back issues of the newsletter, look on the World Wide Web at: http://www.ancestry.com/columns/eastman/index.htm Please feel free to copy this subscription information and pass it on to anyone else who you think might be interested in obtaining a free subscription. ========================================================== About the author: Dick Eastman is the forum manager of the four Genealogy Forums on CompuServe. He also is the author of "YOUR ROOTS: Total Genealogy Planning On Your Computer" published by Ziff-Davis Press. He can be reached at: [email protected]