Saturday, August 2, 2008

Thoughts About Sharing Genealogy

Photo: Mr. Dickie - Marantha

If you are thinking about sharing your genealogy on the Internet I think it is important to give thought, early on, to how you will display the information. Nowadays genealogy programs often can generate several different styles of webpages. Other add-on programs can read GEDCOM files to generate webpages. Some programs can create files in the popular PDF format.

In my opinion all of the options are not equally friendly to website visitors. Some create impressive displays of information that are nearly impossible to follow. Beware of chosing that option.

At this point my favorite way of sharing information on the web is to create a Register report, with an every name index in the PDF format. This method doesn't actually let the visitor view the information on the website. Rather, the file is downloaded to the visitor's computer and displayed or printed there. A Register report is easy to follow and the every name index helps the reader to quickly find a person of interest.

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