How to put your family history on the web,
complete with pedigree charts
The family histories on my home page were built from GEDCOM files using
Gene Stark's conversion program.
Pedigree charts were added to these family histories using a program
that I wrote. You can download this program,
pedigree.zip. This zip file actually contains
two files: my program pedigree.exe, and a program called
tar.exe which you will find useful when and if it becomes necessary
to move your newly generated HTML files to a UNIX server.
On this page is a step by step description of the process I used to
construct my web family histories. Both Gene's conversion program, G2HWIN,
and my program, PEDIGREE, run on a PC. As time allows, I may get PEDIGREE
running under UNIX.
First you will need to get your genealogy data into a GEDCOM file.
This file can be produced by several of the currently popular
genealogy programs.
Next you should obtain Gene Starks's program. If you are using
DOS, believe me, your life will be simpler if you download his DOS "ZIP
file".
You should read Gene's instructions about converting GEDCOM to HTML. The
pedigree charts are built into the HTML files after G2HWIN generates them.
Here is a step by step list of what you must do:
- Run G2HWIN to build your HTML files from your GEDCOM file. I had better
luck with the windows program (G2HWIN), although there is a DOS program
G2HDOS. The DOS program seems to run out of memory easily. There is no
icon for the windows program; it must be executed from the windows "File
Run" menu with the command line:
[path]G2HWIN.EXE -i -- [Gedcom File]
where:
[path] specifies where you have the program, i.e. C:\GEDCOM\
-i indicates that you want an index file
[Gedcom File] is the name of your file, with the .ged extension.
- G2HWIN will create sub directories such as D0000000, D0000001, etc., and
the HTML files will be in these directories (with the extension .htm).
Back in DOS, you will run PEDIGREE to make the pedigree charts.
There are no parameters for PEDIGREE, but you must run it from the
directory that contains the Dxxxxxxx sub directories so it knows where
to find the HTML files.
After PEDIGREE executes, you will have the same HTML files that you had
before, but each one will now contain a pedigree chart.
- So now you have a .htm file for each individual in your GEDCOM file
(maybe hundreds). I am assuming your web server is a UNIX machine (most
are), so you are now faced with uploading all of these files. The easiest
way to move them to is to build a UNIX TAR file using TAR.EXE. TAR stands
for Tape Archive, but you don't have to put it on a tape. We use it
because it will take all the .htm files and put them in one file.
This single file can then be uploaded.
Run TAR with the command line:
TAR -c -f [Tar file name] -T files.lst
where:
[Tar file name] is the name you select for the resultant Tar file
"files.lst" is built by PEDIGREE and contains the names of all the
.htm files (along with their directories).
-
Use FTP (or a similar method) to upload the TAR file to your server. Make
sure to transfer the file in the binary mode. You must also upload
the file "INDEX.HTM" that was built by G2HWIN.
- Now the action moves to your UNIX server. Here you must pick a directory
for your family history database, and move the TAR file there (along with
your index.htm file). Then you UNTAR the file with the command line:
tar xvf [tarfile]
where [tarfile] is the name of your TAR file.
TAR will recreate the Dxxxxxxx directories and put your .htm files
in them just as they were on the PC. Neat!
-
At this point, you would be finished, but for one very annoying "feature"
of UNIX: UNIX is case sensitive (Why? Don't get me started...). At
any rate, G2HWIN puts references to directories Dxxxxxxx in the .htm files
with an upper case "D". Also, all file references are to files that start
with upper case "I", but have lower case ".html". When I FTPed my TAR file,
directories were created with lower case "d", even though the files.lst
file used upper case. Depending upon how you transfer your TAR file, you
may not have this problem. I created a set of upper case "D" directories
and then used the UNIX mv (move) command to move all the files. Then I
removed all the (empty) lower case "d" directories. For example:
mkdir D0000000
cd D0000000
mv ../d0000000/* .
cd ..
rmdir d0000000
-
Then I renamed the file index.htm to INDEX.html with the following command:
mv index.htm INDEX.html
-
Finally, you must change all the lower case "i's" to upper case "I's" in
the HTML file names. Also you need to change all the ".htm" extensions to
".html". This is necessary because the web browsers need .html, but DOS
can only have three letter extensions. Since this involved hundreds of
changes, I wrote a UNIX script to do this. You can download this script
called mymove. Put it in each of the Dxxxxxxx
directories and execute it. Make sure it is an executable file by using:
chmod +x mymove
If everything has worked to this point, you have your data on the web!
Contact me via guestbook or
e-mail if you would like to have a
link from my home page.
Or let me hear from you if you don't
know a UNIX from a Unicorn and none of this makes much sense.
back to Bob's "little corner"