I Want to Make a Family Tree on My Computer With the Jewish Dates for Birthday

Once you've built a family tree, it makes sense that you lot would desire to share information technology with other family members online. There are a lot of good reasons to share your family unit tree online, including showing information technology to family members scattered across the world, which can help y'all to get updates on your information from those aforementioned relatives.

The idea of making your family tree public on the Internet scares a lot of people, however, and for proficient reason. There are a lot of privacy issues with sharing data on family members online, including legal bug in some countries with sharing whatsoever personal data of living persons.

There are also many different ways to share family trees online. You can output a static web site from your desktop genealogy program, yous tin can upload a GEDCOM file to one of the online family tree sites, or yous can build one from scratch online. There are advantages and disadvantages to all of these approaches.

The biggest family unit tree hosting sites are Beginnings.com, MyHeritage.com, and Geni.com. All of them let some grade of costless family trees, and all offer subscription services on top of those free options. At that place are likewise other sites, like AppleTree.com and WikiTree.com.

I want to start building a chart to compare these sites, from the perspective of hosting a family tree only. Practise yous utilize ane of the above sites? Exercise you use another family tree hosting site? Do you lot build your own site using desktop software? Post in the comments what you lot like and don't similar about the sites yous've used for putting upwards your family unit tree online.

Based on the input people requite in the comments, I will construct a chart showing the features as perceived by users of each site.

I'll start here by saying what I like and don't like about the sites I've tried.

Geni.com

Geni.com probably has the slickest interface of all the sites. Information technology's flash-based and works fairly well. You can start from scratch and build a tree fairly chop-chop. Y'all can as well upload a GEDCOM file, although I haven't done that on Geni myself. You tin can too download a GEDCOM of your tree (although I believe this is a Pro characteristic). There is no desktop software that can connect to Geni.com, but they have created an API to allow such connections, so perhaps in the future there will be support for connecting via desktop software.

Upside or downside depending on your perspective, Geni is really trying to be one large tree. That means it's not really possible to have a private tree that but yous and your family unit members tin can use. On the other hand, since everyone can discover anybody, you tin can connect to distant cousins very easily. One time you notice your cousin, y'all can merge your trees, but you can never un-merge your trees so you need to be careful. In my experience, I've found more afar cousins using Geni.com than on any other site. Geni.com also has some interesting features like Surnames and Projects, which let researchers work together on common topics.

Geni.com supports uploading photos and organizing them in albums. Y'all can tag who is in each photo, and select the faces of each person so someone looking at the photo can encounter who is who. I don't recollect there is any kind of limit on how many photos you can upload which is really nice.

Geni.com is big on the social-networking aspect of their site, where you other family members run across what you're doing on the site and can post comments on photos and ship 'virtual gifts' on birthdays and anniversaries which sounds kind of corny but is actually nice. Of course, in a world where we've gone from sending real cards to people by postal service to sending e-cards online, this might be an fifty-fifty further turn down to sending 'virtual gifts' instead. I don't know, but I go virtual gifts from relatives that never sent me a card, existent or electronic, so I guess there's something to say for that…

One thing which I really do think sets apart Geni.com is their support. I've had very good experiences with their customer back up, and they've been able to fix various problems I've had in building my tree at that place adequately quickly.

Geni.com'southward Pro paid business relationship, gets you the following features:

– Tree matches (i.eastward. while viewing your tree a small-scale icon will appear in the corner of a person's box showing at that place is a match with other people on the site)
– Advanced search
– Forest GEDCOM exports (i.e. exporting a GEDCOM of your extended family tree including those people who you did not add yourself)
– No banner ads
– Priority support
– Unlimited virtual gifts

For pricing it seems their Pro account is currently $12.95 per month, $99.95 per yr or $149.95 for two years. Geni.com used to offer a lifetime subscription for $299 simply I don't see it now. Perhaps at present that they accept enough income they don't demand to offer that anymore.

A sample Geni.com family unit tree

MyHeritage.com

MyHeritage.com works a chip differently than Geni.com. At that place is a concept of split trees. People sometimes upload multiple GEDCOMs to the site making carve up trees in one account. While this can be good, in practise there seems to be a lot of duplicate trees on the site. MyHeritage.com has a feature they phone call Smart Matching which looks for matches between the people in your tree(s) and other trees on their site. It then gives you a list of trees with matching people, and shows you lot how many matches there are. Recently they added a way to confirm matches between trees, although I'm not certain what that does because the trees stay separate anyways. I guess it just lets others know that the people are the same.

MyHeritage.com supports many languages, although in my experience, if you lot alive in a state that speaks a different linguistic communication than yourself, this can be problematic as the site will always attempt to utilise the language of the country you're in (which information technology auto-detects). That'due south more of a nuisance than a existent problem, merely a nuisance nonetheless.

MyHeritage.com also supports image uploading, although it is limited on free accounts to 250MB. They have one characteristic that seems to exist unique among all the family tree sites – they tin can automatically friction match people in photos to people in your tree using face up recognition. Pretty slap-up.

Speaking of limits on free accounts, however, I forgot to mention the biggest trouble with MyHeritage.com's free accounts – y'all are limited to 250 people in your tree. You lot might be able to upload a GEDCOM that has more than 250 people and go it accepted, but then you automatically lock out your account so that you cannot add new people to it. You lot can, still, get smart matches on the people in your tree. Note that fifty-fifty if you sign upward for a Premium business relationship, you are still limited to 2500 people in your tree. You demand to sign up for the Premium Plus business relationship to get unlimited people in your trees.

MyHeritage.com too has a free desktop app (Windows only) chosen Family Tree Builder. At that place is no limit to how many people yous can add to their desktop software. It can also do face recognition on photos, etc. and it tin sync a tree to the MyHeritage.com site. I haven't done this so I don't know how well it works, and if information technology is a two-way process. If you accept used this, I'd love to hear about it.

MyHeritage.com recently added the power to print out charts, and added a Retentiveness Game that uses photos of your relatives in the game.

A Premium business relationship adds the following features:

– Tree size up to 2500 people (instead of 250 on costless accounts)
– Storage 500MB (instead of 250MB on free accounts)
– Enhanced Smart Matching (not sure what the real divergence is between regular Smart Matching)
– Priority Support
– Advertisement-Free
– Ability feature: Timeline

Their Premium Plus business relationship is the same as the Premium account, except y'all get unlimited tree size, unlimited storage and another 'power feature' called Timebook.

On the pricing side, MyHeritage offers their Premium business relationship for $75 per yr (or $120 for 2 years or $225 for five years) and their Premium Plus account for $119.40 per year (or $191.04 for 2 years or $358.20 for five years).

Overall I would say MyHeritage has more features than Geni.com, just they are less polished.

A sample MyHeritage.com family tree

Beginnings.com

Ancestry.com is more than anything else a site for doing record research. They literally take billions of records on their site, and if y'all're researching family members in the United States, information technology is a must-use site. Of course, they offer many other features – everything from family tree building to chart printing to Deoxyribonucleic acid testing, etc. I'm going to focus, however, just on the family tree building attribute of the site.

Of course, one of the best features of Ancestry.com'south family trees are the tight integration with its research features. When you build a tree in Ancestry.com, it volition show you lot if information technology thinks at that place are records for people in the tree by placing a small leaf icon next to their names. Moreover, you tin can apply the profiles of people in your trees when doing records searching, automatically filling in data on birth and location, etc. to help narrow downward searches quickly. These are squeamish features to exist sure, but not something that tin can be compared to other sites very well.

Beginnings lets you set upward unlimited numbers of trees, each with unlike permissions, so you could take some trees public and some private, etc. You tin can invite family members to your copse, and give them unlike permissions on editing the tree.

I don't host my whole family unit tree on Ancestry.com myself, simply what I do employ information technology for is creating small copse for enquiry purposes. For example, if I discover a family that I think is related, but I haven't found the link yet, then I create their tree to the best of my knowledge and arrive public on Beginnings.com hoping someone else volition find it in a search and say they are related and then I can find the link. I can't do that in Geni.com, since yous only have one tree and I don't yet know how they are related.

Beginnings.com also has a desktop application that tin can transfer data to their web site, Family Tree Maker. On Windows, where is has been around for a long time, they come up out with new version annually, the current version being Family Tree Maker 2011. On the Mac, they just released a new version later on more than than a decade out of the market, simply chosen Family Tree Maker for Mac. It is based on their previous windows release (2010). I don't believe information technology is possible to sync information in two directions betwixt the desktop app and the web site, so this functionality is limited. You lot can, all the same, see hints on documents that might be relevant to a specific person in the tree from inside the awarding, which is nice.

For pricing, I find the comparison a bit awkward since Ancestry.com is non primarily a family tree site. It'due south virtually like their gratuitous family tree building is a loss-leader to get people to sign up for the rest of the site. I'm not sure what family-tree specific features y'all gain by subscribing to Ancestry.com, except the obvious which is access to their records. For some level of comparing, however, I'll list their subscription pricing. The Us Deluxe Membership is $19.95 per calendar month, or $155.xl per twelvemonth. The Earth Palatial Membership, which adds access to Canadian, UK, Ireland and other international records, as well as quicker access to new records, is $29.95 per month, or $299.twoscore per year.

Interestingly Ancestry.com has been beta-testing a new site called Mundia.com which seems to be intended as a directly competitor to Geni.com and MyHeritage.com. As it's nonetheless in beta there is no pricing prepare up yet, but they practise have access to the trees on Beginnings.com, so it volition not get-go out without anyone to friction match to when they launch. Perhaps when this comes out of beta, it will be easier to compare to Geni.com and MyHeritage.com.

A sample Beginnings.com family tree (annotation the leaves indicating record matches)

Other Sites

Every bit mentioned, at that place are many other sites out there for edifice family trees online, including AppleTree.com and WikiTree.com, both of which look promising. AppleTree.com seems to be going subsequently the Geni.com model of one big tree, while WikiTree.com is free and very focused on privacy concerns. I oasis't used either of these sites extensively so I won't comment on them at present, but if yous've used them please comment on them.

So go ahead and tell me the best and worst of all the family tree sites y'all've used. What categories practice you think are fair to compare confronting all of them? What is truly unique well-nigh whatever of the sites you lot've used? Experience gratis to champion the site you utilize.

If y'all work for 1 of the above mentioned sites, I welcome your input as well. Did I brand a mistake in describing your site? Are in that location features I've left out? Let me know in the comments.

reavesextouralke.blogspot.com

Source: https://bloodandfrogs.com/2011/02/whats-your-favorite-online-family-tree.html

Share this post