| |
HOW DO I NAVIGATE THE SITE?
We have taken great care to make this version of the site easier and more intuitive to use than ever before. So let's get down to basics. Whenever you see text in bold you're looking at a hyperlink and you can click on it. We ONLY use bold text for hyperlinks so you can't miss them! You can find an individual in our family tree in TWO ways. You can click on the A-Z by FORENAME or A-Z by SURNAME link above. This will result in a full A-Z list of our ancestors / descendants from which you can select the one you wish to view. Be warned though, it may take some time to populate the A-Z lists. Or, and this is the more popular option, you can use our SEARCH ENGINE in the top right corner. Enter ONE word (forename, surname or year of birth) and click SEARCH. Simple! When viewing biographical information for an individual, clicking on the name of their parent, sibling, spouse or child will switch your view to their biographical info. So, for example, if you're viewing my biography and click on my mother's name, the focus of the site will switch to her along with her parents, siblings etc. If a date or place of birth, marriage or death is shown in bold clicking on it will generate a pop-up giving the source of our information. This is especially useful in checking that our data is correct before adding it to your own family tree. The media bar on the left side of the biographical information pages will contain links to any media we have for an individual. Again, the available category will be a bold hyperlink. If some or all categories of media are unavailable they will appear struck through. [ TOP ]
HOW DO I SEARCH THE SITE?
In the top right corner of any FAMILY TREE page you'll find our search engine. And it's really simple to use. Just enter ONE word and click SEARCH. For example, if you were looking for me, you could type any of the following words in to the search engine and you'd find me: Kris, Kristian, Paul, Didymus or 1975. The search engine searches our database for a single word (or part of a word) and returns the results in a formatted list. Give it a try! [ TOP ]
AND WHAT ABOUT THE COLOURS AND SYMBOLS?
Ah we knew you'd ask that! In a nutshell then, if a name appears in red that individual is a blood-line relation of either myself or Sarah. And as for the K, S and B symbols you'll see alongside names in the A-Z lists and search results, these denote whose relation an individual is. So if the individual you're looking at has her name in red and a K next to her name in the search results, she's a bloodline relative of Kris. Clear? Excellent! [ TOP ]
I'VE SPOTTED A BUG OR ERROR. WHAT DO I DO?
Please tell us. Use the CONTACT US page to send us a message. If you can, give us the UNIQUE REFERENCE NUMBER (URN) of the individual on which we've made a mistake. Tell us what the mistake is and if you can, tell us how you know we're wrong. If there's a glitch in the website, again, please get in touch giving us the URN of the person you were viewing when the error occurred. The site has been painstakingly coded so it's most likely to be an error in our database. [ TOP ]
I'D LOVE TO HELP. WHAT CAN I DO?
We have no shortage of volunteers and we welcome all the help we can get! Get in touch if you'd like to help us and we'll discuss where you might slot in to this project. [ TOP ]
I'M HAVING TROUBLE VIEWING MEDIA. HELP!
No problem. This rather depends on the type of media you're trying to view. So let's do this in alphabetical order. Census Info takes the form of an Adobe PDF document. It loads in the same window as this site. Peruse it or print it and then click the BACK button provided to return to this site. If you don't have Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on your machine, you'll need to download it from the internet. And the best part is, the reader is FREE! Certificates? Okay. A little more tricky but still simple enough. Again, they're in Adobe PDF format. Click on the CERTIFICATES hyperlink and just below it a small white box with a black border will appear. The available BMD (Birth, Marriage & Death) certificates for the indivual will be numbered 1 to 4. Hover over a number to see a description of the certificate (this is limited to whether it's a Birth, Marriage or Death document) and click on the number to view the certificate. You need a username and password to view our collection of BMD Certificates. If you haven't got these details, get in touch with us. Once we're satisfied that you have a genuine reason for requiring access, we'll send you a username and password. Once you've viewed your chosen certificate, click the BACK button provided to return to this site. Photographs. Again, no problem. We use FloatBox (a nifty gallery javascript) to display our collection of photographs and this script will load and run automatically when you click on the PHOTOGRAPHS link. If it doesn't or you get a the warning symbol in the bottom left of your browser window, you'll need to check your browser settings as it's probably blocking the script from running. And the same goes for the SCRAP BOOK. If you get problems with this, it's down to your browser settings. [ TOP ]
WHY CREATE THIS WEBSITE?
My gorgeous wife has spent the last three years tirelessly researching our family tree. It started as a way to occupy her days during her maternity leave before our youngest daughter was born. And it snowballed from there. I never really got that good at the research bit. I can do it but it takes me 4-5 times as long. Her enthusiasm, knowledge and immense effort was going to waste. Sure, we'd created a family tree on Genes Reunited but only select people have an account with them and even fewer can peruse our family tree. So I decided a long time ago to publish our tree. Give Sarah the credit she was due for all of her hard work. Give the world a chance to see just what she'd achieved in such a short time. And the site was born. And initially it was really basic. All written in HTML and very, very laborious to create and update. So I bought a book. PHP & MySQL FOR DUMMIES by Janet Valade. I used the book to teach myself how to write PHP code and operate a database. And there have been several incarnations of the site since then. And now I've used another excellent book, HTML, XHTML & CSS by Elizabeth Castro to refine the site, make it look great and ensure that it conforms to the strict protocols required by modern browsers. So, above and beyond all else, this site is a token of love for the woman who has made my life complete. But it's also a personal challenge. An enjoyable departure from my day job which allows me to exercise my creative side and publish something meaningful (and hopefully useful) to the world! [ TOP ]
WHAT'S WITH THE CONTACT FORM? HOW DOES THAT WORK?
I make no apologies for the way the Contact Form works. It's all deliberate. Let me explain. There are these nasty little programs called SPAMBOTS. They spend their time searching websites and harvesting e-mail addresses. And then the owners of these SPAMBOTS sell the e-mail addresses to unscrupulous individuals (and sometimes use them themselves) to send out millions upon millions of spam messages (usually advertising pornography, black market viagra and the like) to innocent web users. But they can't harvest my e-mail address. Because in order to GET my e-mail address you have to be human. I test to see if you're human by getting you to copy seven characters (a random combination of numbers and letters) from a small picture that a computer cannot read in to a box. The site then checks to see if you got the answer right. No? Oh dear. You'll be given as many goes as it takes to get it right. So take your time, look at the picture carefully and enter the characters you see from left to right. And don't worry about it being upper or lower-case. The test isn't case-specific. [ TOP ]
I OBJECT TO MY DETAILS BEING ON YOUR SITE
In the UK we are all bound by the Data Protection Act and various articles of the Human Rights Act. And we comply with them all. We censor the details of living relatives and we have a policy of immediate removal for anyone unhappy with being on our on-line tree. But before we go all the way to record deletion, can we ask that you take a moment to think about EXACTLY what it is you're unhappy about? We are quite happy to remove (or censor) specific information about an individual and this usually requires less work. Get in touch, tell us you're unhappy and work with us to resolve your issue. [ TOP ]
DO YOU HAVE A PRIVACY STATEMENT
Yes. Of course. And we'll be happy to send it to you by e-mail if you want to peruse it all at your leisure. But let's just cut to the chase shall we? If you send us an e-mail we'll reply. We'll communicate with you using that e-mail address (and any other form of communication you suggest) until such time business is concluded or you ask us to stop contacting you. And then you won't hear from us again. And as for your e-mail addresses, postal addresses, telephone numbers and any other data we may hold, it stays with us. We don't pass it on to anybody else (unless you give us your written authority to do so) and we keep your details secure at all times. We will never betray your trust. [ TOP ]
I HAVE SOME DOCUMENTS TO SEND YOU. HOW DO I GO ABOUT IT?
If it's a photograph, BMD certificate or document up to A4 (letter) size then please scan the document and send it to us in a JPEG (.JPG) format. To do this, click on the CONTACT US link above and fill out the form (remembering of course to fill out the CAPTCHA test). Click SUBMIT. The CAPTCHA test will disappear if you've entered the code correctly. And on this page, above the SUBMIT / RESET buttons you'll see a line which reads If you'd prefer to contact us using your own e-mail client, click HERE. Clicking on the word HERE starts your own e-mail program (i.e. Outlook Express, Outlook, Eudora etc.) and you can then attach the document/s to the message before sending. Alternatively, as long as you passed the CAPTCHA test, our e-mail address will be shown on this page and you can copy and paste it in to your web-based e-mail client. Of course, if you would like to share the document with the world you can also post it on our forum. To do this you will need to register (very quick, easy and FREE to do) and as an added bonus, you can use the forum to communicate with others researching our combined genealogy. [ TOP ]
HMM. YOU HAVE A FORUM. WHAT IS ALL THAT ABOUT?
The forum was started in February 2010 as is growing slowly but steadily. The idea behind it is to give everyone with an interest in our family tree somewhere to meet up and exchange information and documents. It costs nothing to join, takes just a few minutes to sign up and once registered you can post your findings and requests for information to our growing community. But it was never intended to be solely about our genealogy and we encourage users to chat freely about pretty much anything they like. [ TOP ]
|
|
.org.uk