This page updated 14 Nov 2008
Version note: Applies to TMG 6 & 7, and Second Site 2
As described in my article on Sharing, I like to use what I call a "Minimalist" style for the "in progress" family history information I post on my public website. This article describes the methods I use to produce that style. Other articles in this group cover related topics.
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Topics Included in this Article |
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| An overview of the intent and methods used | |
| Creating the bullet style listing of parents and events | |
| Using bibliography style source notes | |
| Adding a note to every person on the site | |
| Options I used to get my site "my way" | |
| Modifying the list of children | |
| Adding page titles and links to the index pages | |
| Only if you really want it exactly your way | |
| Some considerations when using the side-by-side layout | |
My whole objective is to encourage correspondence with other researchers. To that end I only provide basic facts about each person: name, parents, birth, baptism, marriage, death, and children. For each event, I show only date and place, with no other details. I show only basic source information. I invite readers to correspond with me to obtain further details.
I have previously omitted source information altogether, on the theory that I wanted to encourage those who care about sources to contact me. But I've been convinced that complete absence of sources may discourage some serious researchers from initiating contact because they assume the work is unsupported. So I now provide limited source information, using the bibliography format. This format eliminates the citation details, so when the same source is cited for several events for a person, only a single source note is produced even if the citation details differ. This method of displaying sources produces less cluttered pages, and leaves more detail to be provided to those readers who make contact.
While I really like Second Site's standard Narrative format, which is designed to produce full narrative text in the style of TMG's Journal reports, for "finished" pages to share with family, I don't think it works all that well for this purpose. The briefer layout of the Gird, Column, and Bullet formats come a bit closer to what I'm seeking. But the standard options still don't quite do what I want. For example, I find the use of normal sentence structures produce overly wordy output. But the "raw data" option uses only the tag labels to identify output from each tag, obscuring my first, second, and third marriage information.
The new Bullets Unlabeled format in Second Site 2 is just what I needed. It produces no labels for the event tags, allowing the Sentence to control the way each tag appears. I didn't want regular sentences, so I created a custom Language in TMG, with custom Sentence Structures, to produce exactly the type of bullet labels I wanted for each tag type.
The resulting output was very close to what I wanted. But being very fussy, and liking to fiddle with such things, I made a custom version of the standard format to tweak a few minor items. I modified the Family sections in the standard Format to make it become more a Journal style list of children instead of a Family Group Sheet style "family" section. I also created some custom scripts to get the menus to appear exactly as I wanted them.
I used the new "Extra Person" content feature in Second Site 2 to add the note box after every person urging readers to contact me for more information.
You can view the result in my Outline Family History pages.
All these steps are described in the following sections. You can achieve much of what I did with standard options in TMG and Second Site. But a few of my changes do require dealing with more esoteric subjects like XSLT coding and script languages. If you like my approach, you can apply as many of these ideas as you find appealing, worthwhile, and within your comfort zone.
The most significant feature of my Minimalist style pages is listing the events in a simple bullet list. Most of this could be achieved by choosing the Bullet Format. Many users will find this Format and the available options provide entirely satisfactory results. But it uses the Label text from the Tag Type Definitions in TMG as the label for each bullet item, which I didn't like, and makes it difficult to get a neatly labeled display of first, second, and third marriages.
The new Bullets Unlabeled format lets me fix that. The Format is selected on the Pages > Format screen.
Since this format does not label the tags, I can use the tag Sentences to provide the labels. I used a custom language in TMG to create just the labels I wanted. See my article on Creating a Custom Language for details of how to do that. Since my "Minimalist" style uses only a few Tag Types, creating custom sentences for them was simple task.
The Tag Type to be included are specified in the Data > Database section, in the Tags window. I include only the following types of tags:
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Standard Tag Types |
Custom Tag Types |
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Tag Type |
Use |
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For the same couple married a second time |
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To record my Finnish ancestors' "farm names" | |
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To record adoption of a surname by persons who did not use them at birth | |
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To document questionable data about a person | |
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I wanted to include sources, but not in great detail, and I didn't want the long list of citations I'd get if I used traditional source notes. Because I use extensive entries in the Citation Details, most often the same source cited for several tags would produce a separate source citation for each tag. I dealt with these concerns by using the Bibliography format for citations. In the Data > Sources section of Second Site, I checked Show Citations, selected Bibliography for the Citation Sentence, and unchecked Show Sources.
Since the Bibliography output template in TMG doesn't use the [CD] source element, no citation details appear in my webpages. Since every citation to a given source is then identical, each source appears only once for each person. Readers who would like to see the citation details are invited by a note to contact me.
Some of my bibliography entries included either e-mail or regular mail addresses of correspondents, which I didn't want to display on public webpages. I reviewed all the bibliography outputs and modified the Output Templates to remove these elements. The List of Sources report in TMG, set to bibliography output and sorted by source number, was helpful in making this review.
I used a new option in Second Site 2 on the Data > Sources screen which allows you to omit TMG's source numbers when the Source Page is not used. I think this makes the source notes on the Person pages much cleaner in appearance.
I include on my title page a description of the people included in my site and the types information included about them, adding that I have much more available upon inquiry. I invite interested readers to contact me for details. I think this works well for readers who enter the site through my virtual "front door." But it appears many readers find a name of interest with a search engine, and are directed to a specific person page, bypassing my introductory material. To better address them, I wanted to place abbreviated versions of that note after each person's listing. In Second Site 2 this is easily done from the Layouts > Person Pages screen. Enter the desired text in the "Extra Person Bottom" field. Like most fields intended for text entry in Second Site, pressing F7 opens a larger screen for easy entry of a larger amount of text.
A number of other options in addition to those mentioned above contribute to the overall impression of the pages, or producing specific features of my website. I'll list here those I think are the most significant, by the section in which they appear in Second Site:
Data > People – assuming you will not want to include everyone in your Data Set, Click the "Set Flag Filter" and choose the Flag you are using to control who will appear. See my article Managing WorldConnect Files for tips on using a flag to control which people appear on your web site. Also, uncheck all the "Show Excluded..." boxes. If you are excluding people, you probably don't want them mentioned at all.
Data > Memo – I don't want tag most Memos to be displayed in my minimalist style pages, so I set "Add Memo to Sentence" to "Do Not Append" (I could include the <[M0]> variable in the sentences of all the tags I use instead.) I leave "Suppress Memo" unchecked so the memo of my WebNote tag will appear.
Pages > Page Size – check "Static Page Assignments." This keeps people from moving from one page to another as you update the site from time to time, which is helpful if your site is to be indexed by search engines or bookmarked by readers. Otherwise, these indexes will refer to the wrong pages for a few days, maybe longer, after you post updated pages, and user bookmarks will take them to the wrong page. I set the People per Page at 20, because I wanted each page to be short for easy loading by readers with dial-up connections. But this does result in a lot of pages.
Pages > Format – specify the desired Format. If you use the Bullets Unlabeled format, be sure to choose the "Use Sentence" option under Detail Format to create the desired labels (see Creating the Bullet Style List of Events above for details). Make sure "Add Parent Sentence" is unchecked, because the Bullet formats have parent lines built in, and you get them twice if you leave this option checked. I also checked the "Show TMG ID," and "Show Pop-Up Pedigree," and chose Ignore for "Last Edited Date," "Reference Field," and "Custom Flags," but these are strictly a matter of preference. I don't like the "Family" part of each person's section to show spouses without children, so for the new "Family Section" option I choose "For Spouses with Children" to eliminate them. With my change of the "Family" section to "Children with..." repeating the marriage information in the "Family" section makes little sense, so I set "Repeat Marriage Tags" to "Never."
Stylesheets > Style – I like the Plain theme which allows me to then design much of the appearance of the site on my own. I then customized a variety of elements as described in my article on Controlling the Details.
The approach used by the Bullets Formats for listing children is essentially that used by traditional Family Group Sheets - after the list of tags is the a section for each "Family." A family is defined as a spouse (or partner, co-parent, etc.) and any children the subject had with that person. Based on this definition, there can be "families" with a spouse and no children, as well as "families" with children only when the other parent is unknown. Many users may prefer this layout. But I prefer the layout commonly used by Journal reports (and Second Site's Narrative Format), which lists children the subject had with each spouse, and ignores spouses without children (I've already included them in the Marriage bullet items, and don't see a need to list them again.)
Specifically what I wanted to accomplish was:
Family 1: Mary Jones (3 Jan 1852 - 29 Nov 1901)
followed by a list of children
with:
Children with: Mary Jones (3 Jan 1852 - 29 Nov 1901):
followed by a list of children
Substitute "Child" for "Children" when there was only one child
This is the single significant feature I wanted that I could not obtain by use of the many options and controls available in the Second Site 2 screens. But it can be done by editing the standard Bullets Unlabeled Format. Editing formats is not for the computer-shy. But if you think you might want to try it, see the following section on Editing Formats and Scripts.
I prefer that to not have links for the indexes on the pages that appear in the right side pane of my side-by-side layout, so I leave those links unchecked on the Pages > User Items screen. But I do want links back to the Surname index at the top and bottom of the Person Index pages in the left pane. And, I want the page title - "Surname Index" or "Person Index," to appear at the top of those pages. The standard settings do not include these features. I achieved them by creating customized versions of three page scripts:
To add the page title to the Surname and Person Indexes, I created a custom Header script, which is selected in the Layouts > Surname Index and Layouts > Person Indexes screens.
Formats are written in XSLT, a computer coding language. An adventurous user with some computer programming experience and some familiarity with HTML will be able to figure out how to make minor changes to the standard formats and scripts. If this isn't your cup of tea, stay with the options available from the Second Site screens. Second Site 2 offers an amazing degree of flexibility without dabbling in custom formats and scripts.
In Second Site 2 Themes control only the colors and graphics aspects of your site, and not the layout of all number of items on the generated pages as they did before. Most users who found custom Themes useful in Second Site 1 will not find them necessary in Second Site 2. Many features previously requiring a custom Theme can now be accomplished from the Second Site screens. Those that cannot are now more likely to be accomplished by creating custom scripts. I created several custom scripts to place page titles and menu links exactly where I wanted them on my site.
The function of Formats is not significantly changed in Second Site 2. They control how the genealogy data are displayed for each person on the person pages. Added features and new formats in Second Site 2 should allow many users who created custom Formats before to avoid them now. If you find one is needed to achieve the exact results you have in mind, the process for editing them is unchanged.
Since I was creating a custom format to modify the list of children, as described in the preceding section, I edited my custom format to change the font style of the "Father:" and "Mother:" labels from Italics to bold to match the labels I wanted to use for the events.
In Second Site 2, Page Scripts, rather than Themes, control what appears in each section of the pages. As noted in the section above, I created several custom scripts to control how page titles and links appear on the index pages of my site.
If you do not feel comfortable working with the coding used in Formats and Script files, I'd suggest sticking with the labeling and links options offered within Second Site. But if you would like to give it a try, I've recorded some tips for doing so in my article on Customizing Themes and Formats.
I really like the Side-by-Side Layout offered by Second Site. It allows the index to remain accessible while the reader displays the various pages of people. But there is a downside if you are placing your pages on a public website that will be indexed by search sites. If someone finds a person of interest in your page through a search site and clicks on the link to your pages, they may see just the person page by itself, not in the side-by-side layout. My experience suggests many of my visitors find me through search sites, so this is an issue to address.
The good news it that Second Site (version 2.2 and later) offers a very good solution to this issue. On the Layouts > Default Layout screen, under the Frames drop-down where you select the side-by-side layout, is a new checkbox to Use Frame Script. When you check this box, Second Site includes in your site a special script that automatically moves the page a reader finds by a search engine into its proper side-by-side arrangement.
There are lots of ways to customize your public webpages. How much you might choose to do depends on how much time you want to spend on the project, how picky you are, and what resources you have available. Hopefully, some of the ideas offered here will be helpful in creating a set of webpages that meet your needs.
My new book, A Primer for The Master Genealogist, is now available.
Details are available here.
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