“The Next Generation” of Genealogy Sitebuilding (TNG Version 9)

Published July 9, 2012 | By

I’ve been using this genealogy site builder for several months now and I absolutely love it.

Among the numerous positives, there are a few that I would rate very highly and they are listed below in order by my preference:

Ability to distinguish living individuals and set privacy settings to keep selected data private.
User friendly media sorting capabilities.
GEDCOM Import/Export.
User management including setting rights and access.
Simple and advanced searches by name, date, place, etc.
Use of image sprites to enable faster loading pages
Use of the latest Google Maps engine.
Automatic geocoding of places, including latitutde and longitude.
WYSIWYG editing of certain pages and elements.
Seamless source creation on the source citation screen.

Although the author provides a ‘TNGWiki’ and support forums, they are insufficient to provide complete support, which is a shame considering there is a very large learning curve involved. I would say that I have been able to find answers to about 40% of my queries. It is possible to contact the author directly, but I don’t like to do that if I can help it. For the most part, I’ve managed to find my own answers through trial and error.

The ‘Import GEDCOM’ Screen.

I will admit that the bulk of my queries and the areas in which I’m having the most trouble are the import/updating of a GEDCOM, as well as import/updating of images and media. In the past, every time I have done an update, I have ended up with duplicate (sometimes triplicate) media in the database and links to the wrong individuals. I have found this very frustrating and it has taken me this long and three or four updates to finally figure this all out.

So, to help all of you who may be experiencing the same issues, here is the procedure I have found works best for me. It is very important to follow this order as any other order I’ve attempted has resulted in broken links, faulty links or duplicates.

Upload new images and media (any saved on your computer
Screenshot of the interface for managing media.

after the date of the last upload) to category folders within your site on the server via FTP. It has been helpful to me to keep a ‘new updates’ folder on my computer into which I place all new files. Then when the update is actually performed, I copy the contents of this folder into my main genealogy directory on my computer, as well as by FTP to the site server. Be sure to select ‘overwrite if source newer’ to avoid duplicates and be sure only the newest version of files are used.
Then I delete all images within the administration interface ‘Media’ screen of the site (not via FTP). This seems to delete only the ‘connection’ between the images on the server and in the interface. I find this deletion step very cumbersome as only 50 files are visible on the screen at any one time for selection to delete. If there is a method of bulk deletion, I haven’t been able to find any information about it in the forum or wiki. If any of you have a method of doing, this, I would love to know how.

‘Media > Thumbnails’ screen.

At this point I delete the old GEDCOM from the server via FTP. Then I upload the updated one into the same location (see Import/Export GEDCOM screenshot above). If the links to images and sources were created in the software from which the GEDCOM originated, the links to images and media should be automatically set up during importation.
To set up thumbnails, be sure the importation is complete, then do the creation of thumbnails from within the administration interface (click on the Thumbnails tab in the Media screen).

Posted in Reviews, Software, Tips, TNG v. 9, Tools

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“The Next Generation” of Genealogy Sitebuilding (TNG Version 9)

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