Thousands of genealogist have discovered that designing and creating a useful, interesting and appealing family tree website can be difficult! Some common goals of a family tree website include 1) to share genealogy information and display it with family tree charts, 2) to collaborate with family members to share family photographs, stories, sources and documents about our ancestors, 3) to communicate and network with family members, and 4) to provide a gathering place for the family.
Share genealogical information and display it with family tree charts
Though genealogy programs have made great progress over the last few years, very few genealogy programs produce clean, well-designed family tree charts--pedigree, descendants, family group sheets--for family tree websites. Most family organizations and individual genealogists do not have an effective and visually appealing way to display their genealogy, whether it’s 500 or 50,000 names on their family tree websites.
What if there was an easy program that could produce these family tree charts for your family tree website?
Collaborate with family members to share family photographs and documents
There is often one person (or a handful of people) in each family who gather, collect and publish photographs, articles, obituaries, sources, biographical sketches and other documents about their ancestors on a family tree website. But it can often be too much for one person to try to manage and update a large or small family tree website. For example, if a family member wants to add a story to the website, it would have to first be mailed or emailed to the webmaster, then put in the right format, and updated on the website.
What if family members all over the world could collaborate and add these photographs and stories to your family tree website themselves instead of being funneled through one "webmaster"? How much more family history could be added for your family members to enjoy?
Communicate and network with family members
Most family tree websites provide little interaction between family members and typically there are few ways for family members to connect and contact each other. As a result, the webmaster is often swamped with e-mails, many of which the questions answers would be helpful to many other family members. People might typically ask if there were people researching the genealogy on a certain line--a question that might be difficult to answer for a large family tree.
What if family members could "comment" easily on most pages of your family tree website? What if family members could be involved in a community blog? What if family members could easily find others researching the exact same line to collaborate with?
Gathering place for the family
An effective gathering place is one where family members can share, collaborate, plan together, etc. The vast majority of family tree websites are a one-way information flow—there is no way to respond, there is no way to collaborate, and there is no way to effectively share.
What if your family tree website encouraged collaboration, research and discussion, rather than simply publishing information?
The solution
If you want your family tree website to accomplish more of the goals above than it presently does, it’s time to build a dynamic family website at FamilyPulse where all of the ideas above have been incorporated to make your genealogy a family affair!
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