Putting the Site Together
Most genealogy programs used today for recording family history have a facility for producing webpages of some kind (although
strangely not the popular Family Tree Maker). These will be automatically formatted and linked together to give a basic, if somewhat repetitive, website.
For absolute ease of use this is a good starting point and will generate a complete set of web pages, as can be seen in
the example on the right which was produced by Legacy.
For some people this may be all that is needed.
It should be noted that many of these programs do not have the function to actually put the website onto the Internet, and a separate ftp (file transfer protocol) program such as Ipswitch or the free FileZilla needs
to be used.
Secondly, the more interesting way...
There are a number of programs available that will make the task of producing a website easier by using built-in templates. There is no need to know about
HTML coding as all the technical stuff is done within the program. One such program is Web Page Maker which has eight built in templates and others can be created and used. The screen shot on the right shows the program in use with
one of the templates being modified for a change of colour.
One technical down side to these programs is that they continuously repeat the coding within each web page rather than use external CSS (cascading style sheets), with the result that more bandwidth is needed and some file sizes may be bigger than they need to be. Given that most people
are now on broadband this is less of a problem than in the past.
In summary, this could be the best option for many people who want to be able to produce good looking websites without too much of a hassle making them.
Finally, the really interesting way...
For the more experienced it is possible to create website from the beginning by using professional programs such as Dreamweaver,
although this is perhaps beyond the expected expertise. This can be simplified by the use of free or paid-for templates such as that used on this website. The picture on the right is a typical editing screen (in design mode, code mode is also available) and shows a
page being edited a little while ago.
To help those new to the program there are many books available as well as online tutorials. One excellent website for training resources (both online and on CD-ROM/DVD) for Dreamweaver is produced by Lynda.com
This system gives the website owner total control over the way the website looks and works, and is more efficient in terms of coding as the content is in the web page and the design is in the CSS.
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