HtmlPedigree - FAQ for users

HtmlPedigree: FAQ for users: Miscellaneous

How can I stop information on living people being included in the web pages?

For reasons of privacy, most genealogical programs include options for excluding or limiting information on living people when exporting data. You are recommended to use these options when producing the GEDCOM file for use by HtmlPedigree. For example, Personal Ancestral File offers the options of excluding all information on those likely to be living, or including only their names.
Alternatively, various specialised programs are available - some of them free - that can edit or remove information on the living in an existing GEDCOM file. For more information, see a selection on Cyndi's List.
By default, information in the GEDCOM file's submitter record is not included in the web pages. (Options to include it, or to exclude information in the header record, are available by clicking the "Edit display style" item of the "Tools" menu, and selecting the "File parameters" section.)

Can I make a link to a particular page of the site?

If you are using Microsoft Internet Explorer version 5 or later (on a Windows computer), once you have uploaded the site you can make a link simply by navigating to the page you want, adjusting what is shown in the chart pedigree if required, and then copying and pasting the URL from the browser's address bar. This will produce a link to the text shown in the left-hand frames and also (for browsers able to display it) to the chart pedigree in the right-hand frame.

Can I include a search facility?

The program offers a Search facility that allows visitors to seek individuals by specifying a combination of surname, given name, place and/or date, and by using wildcards and soundex matching if required. The index database, search page and results pages are hosted on www.htmlpedigree.com, so that no special processing by your web server is required.

Note that the search facility can be used only if your pages are on the Internet, not when they are on your hard disc or a CD.

You may also be able to include a search facility that will allow visitors to search the full text of the web pages, by using one of the free search services that are available. Typically, these provide you with some HTML which you can copy and paste into the home page to add a simple search form. Popular free search services are provided by FreeFind, PicoSearch and Atomz. (Note that all of these impose a limit on the size of the web site that can be indexed, and finance the service by displaying advertising on the pages of search results.)
If you have your own domain (for example http://www.mysite.org/) an alternative is the Google Free Site Search service. In practice this works like the other free services, but returns results for your website from Google's index, and doesn't place any limitation on the size of the site.

Will my site be indexed by search engines?

Although the web pages use frames and JavaScript to present the text and chart to modern browsers, search engines - like older browsers - should be able to follow the links to the text pages and index their content.
Some search engines, such as Google, will accept a specific request to index your site. Others find new sites by following links from pages already in their indexes, so it's good to have some links to your web pages from established sites.