How do you manage your trees? Myself, I use webtrees. The interface may be a bit “old” and the handling of media in particular could have been better, but it’s an online solution (so I have my tree available all the time), it’s open source, it’s 100% standards compliant, and the community is wonderful, so … What is your favourite programme?
I use Gramps, I needed some software and as a Linux user the options were limited. People mostly suggested Gramps so I went ahead with it, actually I never tried anything else when I think about it. I use my NAS to synchronize the save files so I’m sort of “mobile” but for years I missed the option to share family tree with my family. That Webtrees looks great for this! I definitely need to give it a try.
Regarding Gramps options - it really has everything, even more than what I’d probably need. I certainly wouldn’t call it user friendly but when you get used to it it’s great. Some features I really like are backups on each program close, filters and exports are really robust, the amount of info you can set for every person is really amazing (although I guess that’s the case for every gedcom-compliant software).
What I don’t like are Places/Locations handling which feels not robust enough - like to this day I haven’t figured out how to handle split of Austria-Hungary there and I tried multiple times. And also family tree export to pdf is sometimes wild - putting persons at random and the only way to correct it is to manually play with Graphviz
I even thought of doing some pull requests in their git but I’m not sure since … well I’ll just be honest - I’m scared of joining OpenSource projects, they always sound so hostile. But maybe it’s time to give it a try
I always have Gramps installed on my laptop, and occasionally I import my ged-file, either just to see how Gramps has evolved, or because of some specific task that it does better than webtrees – mostly exports, coming to think of it.
Locations is a gedcom-inherent problem. It is partly solved in webtrees through a plugin which allows one to have a geolocation with several different names, countries, etc. Works quite well, I think.
I even thought of doing some pull requests in their git but I’m not sure since … well I’ll just be honest - I’m scared of joining OpenSource projects, they always sound so hostile. But maybe it’s time to give it a try
Could be the case (the attitude/response I hate the most is when one points out a serious flaw or shortcoming, and some dev responds: “why don’t you do this instead?”), but on average I think most of them are nice. Go ahead and try!
I’ve jumped around between a few different platforms. Started on ancestry.com, but didn’t want to pay for the subscription. Then self-hosted for a long time using webtrees. I tried Wikitree.
Now I’m on FamilySearch, for a few main reasons:
- They have MANY sources indexed and searchable
- I really like how easy it is to link sources to individuals. That was something that was cumbersome in Wikitree and Webtrees.
- Probably most importantly, all the data is shared between everyone. So everyone is working on the same big tree. That way, if I work my way up to my g-g-g-g-grandparent, and a distant cousin of mine has already done the work of researching that person, I just need to link to them. That said, this is a double-edged sword. I get to benefit from their research, but if they did it wrong, I might have a bunch of cleanup to do.
I also use 23andme to cross-check and find new relatives via DNA.
I agree that the source linking in familysearch is excellent. I’m a bit weary about using it as my main tree though: the lack of control, over the data and the architeture, the latter-day saints connection, and who knows when they will start charging? Etc. All the reasons why open source and open standards are always to be preferred. But I do admit to having a tree there … :)
Yeah, fair enough. I’m pretty skeptical of the LDS connection too.
If you’re looking for an open source, self-hosted alternative, I’d recommend Webtrees. It worked well for me for years. I just got tired of self-hosting, and I really like the collaborative tree model.
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Gramps.
My gateway drug was MyHeritage. But I soon learned that they make money off all the data people enter for free, so I was looking for something else. I started adding my tree to WikiTree - as I like the idea of “one global tree”. Because, why should several people maintain all the same records at various levels of detail?
But as this takes the “wiki” part in the name pretty seriously and only provides few fields for the data, I soon began using Gramps to turn my growing collection of data into a database. I also dabbled a bit with webtrees - which is also not too bad.
However, soon after switching from Linux to MacOS, I found MacFamilyTree and it’s mobile counterpart (which has all the same features as the desktop version). And that’s what I’m using for the past few years now. Especially the seamless FamilySearch integration is great to find new details or even new relatives.
I’m used to Ancestry and they haven’t pissed me off, yet, so that is my main database for my trees. I used to have whatever the software was that interacts with Ancestry, but I abandoned it years ago and just use the web interface. I am on Wikitree and Family Search as well, of course.
I also love things about Family Search and when I want to send someone a link to, say, a census page, I find the page there and use that link, since not everyone uses Ancestry. My main complaint, for myself, is that on Family Search I have encountered people with bad data who ignore the good data and if I make a change, they change it back. This is going on on two of my lines and it’s so frustrating. On one of the lines the person who keeps making changes is herself Mormon, and rather than fight with her, I’ve decided to let her have Family Search, so long as she doesn’t take down my document explaining why I’m right. So far, so good.
That’s exactly why I’m wary of Family Search. In principle, I love the “open source” character of it, but that also means that one is not in control of one’s own tree.
What do you think of WikiTree? Similar crowdsourced setup, but from what I’ve seen they require supporting documentation and actual conversation and concensus before anything is changed.
I’ve used Family Tree Maker and Legacy. I mostly prefer FTM. I have an account on Ancestry with accompanying tree for the hint capability as well.
Am not impressed with the corresponding mobile apps for FTM and Ancestry.com though.
I use webtrees.
Good choice!
I’ve switched between Legacy and RootsMagic. Both work with FamilySearch. I had to export a gedcom to import into Family Tree DNA because neither work directly with their database.
