Legacy-built website

[Texas Gen]

Hi---

I am pretty new to website building, but I have tried building with Legacy
with success as far as the information, but not a lot of "style" in the
site.

Has anyone used Legacy to build? If so, could you share your website
address?

I'm building a website with Next Generations, but I'm not sure how user
friendly the site setup is going to be for some folks who are just beginning
to use the net for research. And the building is very hard (to me),
although I've got great tech support at Simply Hosting. They will set Next
Generations up for you on the site.

The pitiful beginning I have right now is http://www.buckmccreary.com. I don't
have it passworded. You could click on "Surnames" to begin looking.

And on it I still don't know how to modify it and add pages, etc. For those
who use it, do I need an extra program to do that? I've built a few
e-commerce websites (easy setup but more from scratch than eBay stores), but
not a genealogy one.

Thanks for any suggestions---

Donna

[Robert Melson]

In article <[email protected]>,
"Texas Gen" <[email protected]> writes:

Hi---

I am pretty new to website building, but I have tried building with Legacy
with success as far as the information, but not a lot of "style" in the
site.

Has anyone used Legacy to build? If so, could you share your website
address?

I'm building a website with Next Generations, but I'm not sure how user
friendly the site setup is going to be for some folks who are just beginning
to use the net for research. And the building is very hard (to me),
although I've got great tech support at Simply Hosting. They will set Next
Generations up for you on the site.

The pitiful beginning I have right now is http://www.buckmccreary.com. I don't
have it passworded. You could click on "Surnames" to begin looking.

And on it I still don't know how to modify it and add pages, etc. For those
who use it, do I need an extra program to do that? I've built a few
e-commerce websites (easy setup but more from scratch than eBay stores), but
not a genealogy one.

Thanks for any suggestions---

Donna


Donna,

You're mixing apples and bananas here. If you're using TNG to
build your site, you DON'T NEED to create pages with Legacy.
TNG, just like phpGedView, uses the information in your gedcom
to dynamically create "views" of individual and family data.
Any special "look" is created by editing or creating a new
theme, which takes a bit of programming savvy but isn't quite
rocket science if you're able to follow instructions and have
a clear vision of what it is you want to do, what effect you
want to achieve.

Bob

--
Robert G. Melson | Rio Grande MicroSolutions | El Paso, Texas
-----
Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is the probable
reason so few engage in it. -- Henry Ford

[Texas Gen]

Bob wrote:

If you're using TNG to
build your site, you DON'T NEED to create pages with Legacy.

Thanks for your comments.

However, I wasn't thinking about building a site with both. I was just
weighing whether I wanted to ditch the TNG site and just do one with Legacy
instead, which I think might be easier for a beginning researcher/visitor to
navigate the site and perhaps get some use from the information.

Donna

[Robert Melson]

In article <[email protected]>,
"Texas Gen" <[email protected]> writes:

Bob wrote:
If you're using TNG to
build your site, you DON'T NEED to create pages with Legacy.

Thanks for your comments.

However, I wasn't thinking about building a site with both. I was just
weighing whether I wanted to ditch the TNG site and just do one with Legacy
instead, which I think might be easier for a beginning researcher/visitor to
navigate the site and perhaps get some use from the information.

Donna

Donna,

That wasn't clear from your post.

I think it all depends on what you want to do with your
information. If you just want to display it, then the
choice IS between Legacy/static pages and TNG/dynamic
pages, whereas if you want to encourage active collaboration
the choice is pretty much confined to TNG and its ilk.

If you choose to go with Legacy (or TNG or whichever), you will
be creating static pages that you will have to upload to your
server. Every time there's a change to your "database" you'll
be faced with changing those pages - the actual changed pages
or the whole collection of them. This is done on your local
machine and eats up local resources: CPU time, disk space,
etc., plus the need to ship the changed files to your server
over whatever kind of connection you might have. Because your
database remains on your local machine, only you can work on
it, leaving potential collaborators out in the cold, so to
speak.

With TNG or phpGedView (pGV), you don't do that at all. Once set
up, your information and the database reside on the web-server. As
you update your information, make changes, corrections, additions,
deletions in that database, those changes are immediately available
to anybody visiting your site (or collaborating in your research).
Pages are dynamic, not static, and are created on the fly, with
new information available to all users at once. You still "own"
the information and can determine who can see what and what they
can do with it.

I've used pGV for several years and have a couple of dozen
relatives and other researchers who regularly contribute to our
common research interests. It's amazing what this ability to
share information has turned up and how we've all benefited
from it.

Do a google search for "Eastman On-Line Genealogy Newsletter" and
look in the archives for Eastman's reviews of TNG and pGV for
a far better explanation of the benefits of "collaborative
genealogy" than I can hope to give. I think that'll help make
your mind up.

Bob


--
Robert G. Melson | Rio Grande MicroSolutions | El Paso, Texas
-----
Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is the probable
reason so few engage in it. -- Henry Ford