Terry Dearborn has given me permission to forward his WorldConnect How to
Instructions
... you are welcome to use this text as long as you keep my signature at
the bottom. ... It is amazing how quickly you can return, through the
password screen, make changes, and then check out the new appearance.
1. Go to
http://worldconnect.genealogy.rootsweb.com/
OR
http://wc.rootsweb.com/
2. Click on the middle green box which has FAQs about the preparing your
gedcom for privacy as well as the actual mechanics of submitting the
GEDCOM. You shouldn't use my check list until you have read "Getting Ready
To Submit Your GEDCOM File " as well as "Submitting Your GEDCOM File ".
3. Back out of the green FAQs box and you should now be at the home
screen. Click on the first option called "Search The GEDCOM Data Currently
Online". Now type in a surname/given name and press enter. When the
results appear, notice the words in the right-most column. These were
INVENTED by the person who sent in the GEDCOM FILE. ROOTS will be asking
you to create a "User Code" which will appear in the right hand
column. The "sign-up" system accepted my given name because it was
unused. If you have a common name you could attach a number. Or use your
surname with a number or....anything.
You are still exploring other people's work. Click on any entry in the
Name column. Notice that immediately below the "RootsWeb's WorldConnect
Project" is the title that the gedcom owner has given to his data
base. ROOTSWEB will be asking you what _you_ want to use for a name. There
is no "correct answer" Look at what other people have done as a start. If
you can decide before you enter the site it will be less stressful.
4. NOW we start: Go back to home screen and click on "Submit Your GEDCOM
Files To WorldConnect" Now you are looking at the "User Setup/Edit
screen. The "User Code" window is where you type in your database code
that you have decided upon. If its been taken already, I'm sure ROOTS will
tell you so. Now type your password. You can use one that you are familiar
with. It's purpose is to allow YOU to change your GEDCOM but keep anyone
else from messing with it. Press "Submit"
5. OWNER OPTIONS: type your name and Email address. Clicking "Yes" for
Post-em's gets you messages from people wanting to make comments to you or
to others that see your family page.
6. DISPLAY OPTIONS: type in the TITLE that you have decided upon. If you
like uppercase surnames, mark Yes. Select the default pedigree style. I
like Table.Max Pedigree Depth and Max descendancy are things that are easy
to change after you have uploaded so just accept whatever number is
already appearing. Next are some questions about links to your
homepage. If you already have a HomePage then you probably don't need this
"helper sheet. Next are two extremely useful features which you can
activate later on.
PAGE HEADING provides a box at the top of each page in which you can put a
message. I have used it to explain that my citation numbers, which appear
after the word NOTES: fit into the empty [ ] that appear scattered through
the NOTES paragraph. You could also use it as a disclaimer to the accuracy
of the data. PAGE FOOTER is another message box that goes at the bottom of
the screen. This is a good place to invite persons to contact you if they
want information about families that you have marked as "Private". This is
an appropriate place to put this message because it is just below the
button bar where the DOWNLOAD gedcom button would appear.
7. GEDCOM DOWNLOAD OPTIONS: Allow User Gedcom Download? Yes or No? Your
choice. "Yes" means that other persons may take your entire gedcom and
merge it into their database. Marking "No" means that they cannot take
your gedcom file in the form that can be automatically merged with their
own work. If they like what they see then they will have to make a copy,
by file or print, and later transcribe, one character at a time, the "good
parts" into their data base. Max Download Depth is 6 generations, which I
have no problem with. You can skip the "Messages for Individuals" if you
are rushed. All the options can be changed AFTER your file is uploaded.
8. UPLOAD OPTIONS. ROOTSWEB needs to know the name of your Gedcom file. If
you are running Windoze, type in the path (what ever that means). You MAC
people have probably put your file on the desktop so press the
"Browse" button and when your file is highlighted, its name will appear in
the Upload Options window.
9. Now comes a string of options all of which relate to privacy of data
for living people. First decide on what you want to do:
A. do nothing (that's the easiest)
B. hide the dates/locations but leave living persons with their surname
and initials.
C. don't even upload the living.
If you want to do B.), I think it easier to mark the living persons in
your database before you create the Gedcom. If you direct WorldConnect to
"clean" your data, it will leave untouched any persons with a death date
or persons with a birth date BEFORE the cutoff year. Persons without both
a b.and d. date are assumed to be living and will be "cleaned"....even
though you know they have died. WorldConnect suggests that you create a
fake birth date either inside or outside the cutoff date. I avoid this
labor by asking my software to list my relatives according to their
relationship to me. Then I select, as a block, the parents, aunts, uncles,
1st and 2nd cousins, children, nieces, nephews. When these people are
marked, I instruct the Gedcom file to tag them as "PRIVATE". I also mark
the grandparents that are alive and any others in that same generation. It
didn't take long and doesn't leave your data base with phony b. dates that
you have to leave notes about.
There are some valid reasons for letting _some viewers_ see your data
for living persons. You can LEAVE A MESSAGE directing the curious to
contact you by Email.
10. REMOVING NOTES option. At this point you may be lost because the
option screens don't have numbers for each decision. Here you can ask that
notes and sources be hidden. Since this is the first data base that I've
seen that ALLOWS you do have notes and sources, I personally chose to
leave them there... mainly because bio. sketches add some interest to the
characters on the page. Showing the sources tells the reader whether I'm
passing on data from other researchers, getting it from secondary books
or, rarely, quoting from primary documents.
11. TAGS. Several more decisions relating to how certain tags should be
treated. I chose to ignore these issues because I don't want to invest
enough time to understand the issue.
12 MESSAGE window for the living: Perhaps this is a place where you can
invite the surfer to contact you directly if they want your living data.
13. UPLOAD button. Yeah. Hit it and WorldConnect will have control of
yourcomputer and slowly extract your Gedcom file, whose name you have
already stated.
If this is too scary for you then mail the gedcom instead. The FAQs give
you the address. These instructions are not official. I do not represent
ROOTSWEB or the WorldConnect. I spent the time making these comments to
help increase the size of the data base. Bigger is better. I may even
discover a new ancestor because of my effort.
Besides having great pedigree and descendant charts do you realize that
you can examine an entire GEDCOM's list of surnames? Whatever family page
that you are on, if you go to the bottom, you will find an "INDEX" button
which takes you to an alphabet bar and finally to the number of persons
having each surname. WOW! Many is the time I have spent a half hour
downloading some gedcom and then find in the index that there is only one
SMITH!
Terry added in another email --
I have discovered that it is VERY easy to change the appearance of your
gedcom screens on WCP. I added a header box explaining how my citation
numbers relate to the [] markers in my Notes. I added a footer box to
encourage people to write me for information on persons marked "private".
All I had to do was enter my name and password and then scroll to those
two input windows. When I clicked on upload/change, the computer first
looked to see if I had a new gedcom "waiting". Finding none, it put in my
new header and footer messages.
--
Regards from Terry (Mr)
terrylau(a)pacbell.net
Lafayette, CA
20 mi E of San Francisco