Web publishing:Genealogy site or Personal web server?

[pgerrish]

Relatively new to genealogy and Using Reunion 10 as sole researcher but looking at how best to upload to the web so wider members of the family can access it in a read only format. It is unlikely they will wish to edit it. Currently I have about 400 individuals, 200 photos /scans and about 100 sources.

I have successfully uploaded a GEDCOM export to MyHeritage - the main issue here is that it is not possible to do incremental updates to the web and also photos seem to have to be upload and tagged separately. Presumably if a new version is uplaoded then all links to any photos will be lost.

I have found this post http://www.reuniontalk.com/showthrea...uploading+site from 2009 recommending GeneaNet and looked at this. It does in theory support incremental updates but the photos again would have to be uploaded and relinked but hopefully only once.

This post http://www.reuniontalk.com/showthrea...uploading+site describes the Reunion Web Tool and if I understand it correctly would upload incremental updates and also images and photos etc. However This would have to be onto a "basic type web server" which I would have to manage. This would also mean that the type of graphical tree where people can expand and contract etc.. as per My Heritage would not be available more index linking of Family Name Cards etc.

Considering the popularity of Reunion I am surprised there is no site I have found that allows you to publish a Reunion Tree (without exporting via GEDCOM) and sync it with your file on the mac. displaying the contents in a tree, associated photos images.

Ideally I am looking for a web publishing ability for Reunion (without editing facility) with following features:
1. Ability to publish incremental updates and sync with reunion family file
2. Ability to display the Tree in graphical expandable format.
3. Publishing linked photos and images (have these updated incrementally)
4. Ideally not have to run my own specific web server

If there is advice as to how close I can get to the above and is this best via a genealogy site or using my own web server and reunion Web tools?

many thanks

Paul

[theKiwi]

Re: Web publishing:Genealogy site or Personal web server?

Depends on how tech savvy you are.

There are a lot of people, including a great many Reunion users who, like me, use TNG to publish our genealogies on our own websites.

But to do this you need to be able to easily use FTP software, and pay a hosting service a monthly fee to have a domain name and some web storage space and server availability.

In my case I am my own web host, hosting about 20 different domains on the same Mac Pro I'm writing this message on. And example of one site is shown here on my great great grandfather's page

http://lisaandroger.com/genealogy/getperson.php?personID=I16&tree=Roger

I can do incremental updates, or replace the whole content at once, the media are linked up in Reunion and the links are transferred to TNG in the GEDCOM file. The places locations on the map are a mix of done in Reunion and done in TNG since I started this before Reunion supported geocoding and haven't rationalised it all to one system yet.

It's part of a WordPress blog, and there are a lot of add ons, theme possibilities etc that can allow for a lot of customisation of any TNG site.

You can find out about TNG at http://tngsitebuilding.com/

But if you have no idea what FTP means and is, and aren't that tech savvy, this this is probably not the system for you.

Roger

[pgerrish]

Re: Web publishing:Genealogy site or Personal web server?

Many thanks very helpful and gives a new direction to look at. Pretty tech savvy as did lot of IT at work before retiring.

Will look at TNG. Quick queries:
1. You say the media links are linked in Reunion and transferred to TNG in the GEDCOM but you presumably have to load the images into correct place as GECOM only contains the links or does TNG upload the actual media files?

2. As this could be part of a Wordpress site then could just add this into a hosted WordPress site without running the server etc.. (e.g. from the list at http://wordpress.org/hosting/ ) . Using WordPress as a wrapper has lots of attractions as you say.

Paul

[theKiwi]

Re: Web publishing:Genealogy site or Personal web server?

Will look at TNG. Quick queries:
1. You say the media links are linked in Reunion and transferred to TNG in the GEDCOM but you presumably have to load the images into correct place as GECOM only contains the links or does TNG upload the actual media files?

You have to upload the images to the expected folder on the TNG website using FTP software - you'd use this to keep the folders you have for Reunion synched to the folders that TNG expects to find things in. This article I wrote on the TNG Wiki explains how to have Reunion and TNG work from the same folder structure that TNG expects

http://tng.lythgoes.net/wiki/index.php?title=Media_-_Import

2. As this could be part of a Wordpress site then could just add this into a hosted WordPress site without running the server etc.. (e.g. from the list at http://wordpress.org/hosting/ ) . Using WordPress as a wrapper has lots of attractions as you say.

Yes, you could do that. I'd suggest though that you pick say SimplyHosting.net - their owner is himself a TNG user, overall they host hundreds, if not thousands of TNG sites and so are very familiar with TNG, and they'll install it for you for nothing if you sign up there for your hosting.

The TNG/WordPress integration makes use of a plugin which is quite complex, and whose author is now not actively involved, but as you saw on my site it works - I've tried to keep it at least up to date enough to keep up with TNG. There are many TNG users now using this plugin.

http://tng.lythgoes.net/wiki/index.php?title=Using_TNG_and_WordPress_with_the_tng-wordpress-plugin

is another article I wrote about getting this all up and running.

Roger

[pgerrish]

Re: Web publishing:Genealogy site or Personal web server?

Roger

Will look at the links and this has given me good direction to look at. TNG looks particlary useful. Will look at pros and cons of using the Wordpress plugin and ther issues such as using Goodsync, Chronosync etc. to sync to the expeceted web folders. Have used these before to successfully to sync across to web folders (often on scheduled basis).

Definitely feel the is a commercial opportunity for Reunion to host paid for web service e.g. On AWS that syncs with directly with Reunion

Paul

[theKiwi]

Re: Web publishing:Genealogy site or Personal web server?

Definitely feel the is a commercial opportunity for Reunion to host paid for web service e.g. On AWS that syncs with directly with Reunion

I used to feel that way too when I was handling a database of over 70,000 people and publishing that online using Reunion WebCards and Person Sheets - that was a LOT of HTML files to move from my computer to the server (running Quid Pro Quo server software) in my basement - it gave the AppleTalk network more than a little bit to think about!!!

Then Mac OS X came along and let me install PHP and MySQL on my computer and I was led to TNG - more than 10 years ago now I think - and I've never looked back.

I do not want Leister Productions using their limited resources on doing anything except adding more features and compatibility to Reunion.

Roger

[donworth]

Re: Web publishing:Genealogy site or Personal web server?

I use TNG with Reunion as well - although not self-hosted as Roger does. SimplyHosting.net offers a pretty cheap ($4.99/month) hosting service and they will install TNG on their server for you. So all you have to do is upload your GED file. And you don't even have to use FTP if your file isn't too huge. I have 8000 names in one of my GED files and can just tell TNG to suck it up off my Mac directly. The TNG author has made the software pretty simple for anyone to use with very little computer experience. Probably the hardest part is getting it installed in the first place, and, as I said, the hosting service will do that for you.

Here's the handout I used in a recent Genealogy Society meeting to show how mine is set up. I tried to make it as minimalist as possible since the audience were good genealogists but not very computer savvy.

http://www.bishir.org/misc/tng.pdf

I have considered self-hosting in the past, but I kind of like the idea of having my data in Chicago (I'm in California) as an out of state backup and I seem to lose power here upon occasion - I think SimplyHosting has a better meantime between failures than I do! :-) Also, I didn't want the extra security challenges of running a publicly accessible server behind my NAT firewall. But I do lust after Roger's media synching strategy for TNG!

[donworth]

Re: Web publishing:Genealogy site or Personal web server?

By the way, my preference has been NOT to use Reuinions media linking. I do all my linking of media to people in TNG. Mostly this is because I didn't want to use any of Reunion's media reporting capabilities. I prefer to lay out my books and charts myself in Adobe InDesign - more flexibility.

So, when I'm "synching" to TNG I simply upload the entire GED rather than attempting to merge it with what's there, overwriting what was on TNG before. (My Reunion database is my master database and the TNG database is just a mirror of it that way.) It only takes a minute or so to upload the whole file. As long as the person numbers in Reunion don't change, overwriting the database with the GED doesn't break any media links.

I add photos and other media to TNG one by one through its web interface (which slurps up the file from my Mac and stores a copy on the TNG server) and link it to all the people in the picture using the TNG interface.

Someday, maybe, I'll try to figure out how to set up Roger's file synching tho!

[theKiwi]

Re: Web publishing:Genealogy site or Personal web server?

I add photos and other media to TNG one by one through its web interface (which slurps up the file from my Mac and stores a copy on the TNG server) and link it to all the people in the picture using the TNG interface.

Someday, maybe, I'll try to figure out how to set up Roger's file synching tho!

As soon as Reunion 9 allowed the exporting of Media links in a GEDCOM file I went with that since linking Media to a person or family or Source in Reunion is infinitely easier than it is in TNG - it's simply drag and drop to get it there, and if you want to link the same media to more than one person in Reunion you can simply copy and paste it to everywhere it goes.

This is not the case in TNG which requires long sequences of clicks and browser page loads to achieve the same thing.

Roger

[donworth]

Re: Web publishing:Genealogy site or Personal web server?

Roger
One of the issues I have is that I have way too many photos. (I know... that's a GOOD thing!) But I don't want to upload them all to the web - It would overwhelm my disk quota on my Web hosting service. Maybe that's why you self-host, huh?

Do you know of a way to be selective about what goes up to TNG while still using Reunion to keep track of all the photos you have for each person?
Don

[theKiwi]

Re: Web publishing:Genealogy site or Personal web server?

Roger
One of the issues I have is that I have way too many photos. (I know... that's a GOOD thing!) But I don't want to upload them all to the web - It would overwhelm my disk quota on my Web hosting service. Maybe that's why you self-host, huh?

No it's not why I self host, but it is an advantage of it.

But do you really have enough images that it would fill the 2.5 GB of a $90 a year SimplyHosting Plan B? I don't have full sized images linked in Reunion - either of documents or photos, but instead have smaller optimised images linked in Reunion.

Do you know of a way to be selective about what goes up to TNG while still using Reunion to keep track of all the photos you have for each person?
Don

No - I guess if they're all linked in Reunion, when you create the GEDCOM file ALL media will be linked in it, and so you'll need ALL images to be on the TNG site to not have broken links.

Roger

[donworth]

Re: Web publishing:Genealogy site or Personal web server?

No it's not why I self host, but it is an advantage of it.

But do you really have enough images that it would fill the 2.5 GB of a $90 a year SimplyHosting Plan B? I don't have full sized images linked in Reunion - either of documents or photos, but instead have smaller optimised images linked in Reunion.

Thanks, Roger. Actually I have three web sites sharing the same plan. So that is a bit of an issue. But I haven't checked my disk usage since simply upped the quota. Mostly tho I have a lot of somewhat duplicative snapshots and a disproportionate number of photos for some of the people. If I were to put them all up visitors to the web site would have to scroll through a lot of thumbs to get down to the notes and sources.

I wish Reubion had some sort of "Publish This Photo" flag on media and an option to only export those photos and links in the GED.

[ttl]

Re: Web publishing:Genealogy site or Personal web server?

I wish Reubion had some sort of "Publish This Photo" flag on media and an option to only export those photos and links in the GED.

I wonder if it might be more straightforward for the developers if they could just implement the same scheme used in iPad/iPhone synching in the GEDCOM export (No Photos/Preferred only/first 5 photos/etc....). Just thinking out loud.

It occurs to me that a possible workaround for your issue is to mark the unnecessary photos in Reunion as sensitive, in which case they could then be excluded from export. This could cause more problems than it solves, though, so it would be a matter of cost vs. benefit to you. Again, just thinking out loud.

[donworth]

Re: Web publishing:Genealogy site or Personal web server?

Interesting idea. Thanks!

[pgerrish]

Re: Web publishing:Genealogy site or Personal web server?

Thanks for all the comments and it has provided lots of input for me to decide the best way to go, particularly the practical experience of media handling.

Roger. Fully understand your comment about development resources not being diverted, just in practice the expectation of many average users of products is syncing to cloud as it has been so popularise by iPad etc. Eventually Reunion may have to look at the issue , at a minimum not to be left behind by competition. They already have a basic architecture of syncing to iPad ( albeit display is likely to be native code ) so to some extent it would be maximising use of development already undertaken.

Cheers

Paul