Leland Meitzler posted a press announcement on his blog yesterday about FamilyInHistory, a new collaborative platform that allows members to import, publish, host, and share their family histories online.
Unlike free hosting services like Ancestry, FamilySearch, Genealogy.com, and RootsWeb, FamilyInHistory provides each subscribing member with a full-blown content management system that houses personal history pages for each ancestor or relative.
The CMS includes cool features like Ajax-based timelines and family trees, a photo album, and a family blog. Feeds of the latest blog entries, histories added, and photos added are displayed on the home page. Subscribers can import their existing genealogical data through a GEDCOM file, and can allow allow other researchers and family members to contribute data through a front-end registration module while setting permission levels for each user through a back-end administration module.
Always looking for tools to help manage my own family history web site, I immediately wanted to take advantage of their free 30-day trial to test-drive this CMS, however, since monthly subscriptions start at $8.49, I opted to stay with my home-grown genealogy CMS or look for an open-source platform that can provide me with functionality similar to what FamilyInHistory offers. They do refer interested subscribers to a nice cleanly-developed site run by the Jared Pratt Family Association.
Aside from the subscription requirement, my only real issue with FamilyInHistory is that it does not allow users to create or edit their history files through the web interface or an FTP client; updates need to be made on traditional genealogy software, then re-imported to FamilyInHistory. They are, however, planning to include a web-editing feature.
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I have used Ancestry.com off and on over the years. I araeldy have so much on my family and have published it on the web, plus other branches not named Goode. Ancesry.com is OK if you can connect with folks which I have and share privately. I just use the lowest cheapest grade: I araeldy knew a great deal about the process of researching. Ancestry.com has allowed me to add lots of people, but in the main, its quite a crowd and in the end it’s almost info. than I need to know! If used keeping a budget in mind, and for quietly gathering info for your own site that’s one good use.Another is the number of census documents & other things scanned into the files that are very helpful: for example, my father’s mother, born before 1900, did not have a conventional birth certificate (family bible) & for some reason a search of state archives, no death certificate could be found. I was going to have trouble joining Colonial Dames, until I found I could attach census material “proving” my grandmother had lived nd thus solve the problem. I am also trying and have tried to come up with lists of Georgia marriages, 1850–1860, or Kentucky marriages 1870-1880, and add them by hand when possible: coming from local genealogy books.Such information is helpful. It also assists African Americans in the south and other groups who did not always record births/deaths with county/city authorities. Ancestry.com is one of many tools out there and you can probably get your money’s worth by doing the trial an going for a one month deal (yes even though you”save” by doing more months, it might be best to move and try another service.)There’s one that I tried for 7 days with lots of newspaper stuff, but not a darn thing on my family even though we’d lived in the area 100 years, they’d been lawyers, and were connected in some prominent cases. So I tried for 7 days and bailed. You just have to sample around. And just google up names you’re interested in: there are a LOT of family run free sites out there (I put mine up in 1998: the only problem is that my “netscape” email address is obviously gone, and I can’t get into the site and fix the old emails to let people kow where to write. I’ll just make a new site.. tripod and Lycos still do freebies.