Guide to Publishing Your Family Information on the Web

Here you are with all this family information that you have collected for several years and you always have to dig through piles to find what you are looking for. You get a phone call or e-mail and someone has a question or your aunt wants to know who married whom. You are about to pull your hair out if you don't organize this mess so you can find what you want and send what you would like to other people. There is something that you can do to solve all this chaos and that is to publish your family tree online.

Publishing your family tree online is a wonderful way you can share your information that you have researched with family members. Family members have a tendency to contribute more if they can see the work that is being put together. Often people won't contribute because they just don't know what you are doing with all the information.

A family Web site is also a great asset for attracting other genealogy and historical researchers that are researching the same surname as you. Setting up your family Web site is easier than you think and it keeps getting easier every day; you don't have to be a technical genius. If you use a genealogy software program, send email, can upload files and pictures then you can set up a Web page.

If you do have a genealogy software program installed on you computer with all your information in it then your Web site could be as simple as uploading your GEDCOM file to the online database that you have chosen. You can also choose to go as far as creating a hand made Web site that includes all the documents, photos and your reliable sources backing up your information.

Know matter if you choose to just upload your information or create your hand made site you will need to choose the database that will fit what you are looking for and what you are willing to take the time and learn.

First you need to take some time and figure out what exactly all you want to include in your family Web site. Will this site be just on a particular person or the entire family? Do you want everyone else to be able to add information and photos to the site? How about other fellow researchers that are researching the same surname but you don't have any idea if they are related to you or not? These are very important questions that you need to answer before you go any further. Remember, if you allow other people to add information you will have no control over the space that you are allotted so you may have to fork over more money to keep the site operating.

Now that you have decided what information you want to put on your new Web site, you have to find the space for your Web site but first you need to decide how you want the layout to be. Do you want a written family history including photos and documents or do you just want the family tree of names and dates?

If you decide to just want your family tree then you can use genealogy databases like: FamilySearch Pedigree Resource File, RootsWeb World Connect, Ancestry World Tree or GenCircles. These Website databases are as far as I'm concerned are among the best. You don't have to have hardly any technical knowledge to submit your GEDCOM file and this allows the world to find your family tree.

If you want to actually set up your own Web site then you'll have to find a Web hosting service that will offer you enough space and support for all your information. There are quite a few Web hosting sites that are offered for genealogy. Some of them are even free but that can limit you on the amount of space they offer for free. Check with your own ISP server, they often offer free space for your own Web site. Go ahead and check out the ones that are not free because they do offer some excellent tools that you might not know how to do yourself with the free sites. They can help you with things like, photo uploads, separate email address to keep your genealogy contacts separate from your personal email, automatically generated reports or charts.

There is a third option for you. How about a genealogy blog? Blogs are becoming very popular and you can use it like a journal to document your family history search, photos and other information you want to include. Blogs for some people are easier than Web sites because you don't have to know HTML. Just search for blogs and check if there is any genealogy blogs and take a look at some.

Now putting you information online will depend on the hosting service you have chosen. Some will offer you templates and tools you can choose to use or if you know HTML then you can design your own. If you don't know HTML then you might have to have a program that will let you convert your information that is in your database into HTML to upload it to the Internet.