Genealogy Web Page Creation Tutorial

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Genealogy Web Page Tutorial

Geocities

Why Yahoo!GeoCities?

Yahoo!GeoCities offers a free web page with

eleven megabytes of space for your genealogy site
a full set of web page building tools
technical support
and a sense of community in cyberspace.
At last count, Yahoo!GeoCities had 41 neighborhoods - each neighborhood a place for web pages of like interest. Most genealogy pages are in Heartland - the family neighborhood. Yahoo!GeoCities calls those who build a homepage in a Yahoo!GeoCities neighborhood a homesteader. You really are joining a community! Over two million people have already made Yahoo!GeoCities their home.
Among the tools that Yahoo!GeoCities makes available for its homesteaders are:

four different on-line editors
an EZ FTP File Uploader
forms
a page counter
a guest book.
Don't know what any of that means? At this point, it really doesn't matter. It will all become clearer as you proceed through the tutorial. It is enough to say now that Yahoo!GeoCities makes it possible for those with NO knowledge of building a web page to do so with relative ease. Everything you need to build the web page - with the exception of the genealogy software - is included.

Yahoo!GeoCities Heartland Neighborhood

The Yahoo!GeoCities neighborhood Heartland has its own sense of community. Some of its helpful features are:

Heartland Headquarters
Your one-stop homestead shop for resources in Heartland
Heartland Select
Lists Heartland web sites by category
Heartland Chat
Chat with other Heartland homesteaders
Heartland Community
Links to the community

PLUS -

The Heartland Edition is the Heartland community's own cyber-zine with news, helpful hints for your web page, awards and contests. Read The Heartland Edition, the official community newspaper, for all the news in the Heartland!.

Heartland Genealogy Society Heartland has its own Genealogy Society with over 1000 members. All members have a home in the Heartland community of Yahoo!GeoCities. The web pages of members range from the very beginner who just obtained his or her free web space to experienced web designers who have very complex and sophisticated web pages. The Heartland Genealogy Society (HGS)offers a membership list of all those with genealogy pages in Heartland, a surname registry, monthly awards that highlight Heartland genealogy homepages. and a quarterly newsletter. Membership is FREE!

WebTech University at Yahoo!GeoCities provides homesteaders with instructor assisted courses in HTML, Forms, and Tables, and much, much more. Stop by the WebTech University campus and sign up today. Tuition is Free!

Yahoo!GeoCities Technical Support

There are many resources for help if you have reached a stumbling block while putting together your home page.

Heartland angels
One-on-one help as you work on your webpage
Help Chat
Get help from other Yahoo!GeoCities homesteaders
Help Guides
Step by step help on every feature
WebTV Help
Guide for the WebTVer

HGS Help
The Heartland Genealogy Society will help with your web-building questions.

Yahoo!GeoCities Homesteading

Ready to get your own home in Yahoo!GeoCities Heartland? It's easy. Go to Yahoo!GeoCities to sign up. Follow the directions to find a Yahoo!GeoCities home page address. Look for a vacant address, select it, and fill in the application for the Free Personal Home Page Program. It is not necessary to fill in all the personal information to receive the free space.
The address you find will become part of your URL. For example, if you find a vacant address at Acres 7002, your URL or complete Yahoo!GeoCities address for your web page will be http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Acres/7002/. The address is case-sensitive. Your member name can also become part of your URL. If you sign up as member name 'genealogy', your address will be http://www.geocities.com/genealogy.
Before you can begin to edit your web page, you will have to wait for your password to be e-mailed to you. Be sure to save the welcome letter that Yahoo!GeoCities sends you. It contains your password, as well as important links. Meanwhile, if you visit your homepage, you will see something similar to the following:

Hi I'm Kathi Reid.
I signed up on 06/22/98 20:39:06, but have not moved in yet.
My interests are:
genealogy and family history
The description of my page is:
Genealogy of Pennsylvania and New Jersey families

Please come back soon and visit me.

You have approximately 2 weeks to begin to edit the page and adding content or Yahoo!GeoCities will no longer allocate the space to you. So it is best to get started right away.

Yahoo!GeoCities On-Line Editors

Yahoo!GeoCities has two different on-line editors for four different levels of web-page building expertise - from the complete beginner to the experienced HTML coder.
The two Yahoo!GeoCities Editors are:

Pagebuilder
The easiest editor for the beginner. Go to Yahoo!GeoCities Pagebuilder for a ready-to-use Family Tree template. Just fill in the blanks. More help is available at Geobuilder help.
Advanced HTML Editor
This editor is for those of you that are familiar with HTML. You can use this editor to create new .html or .htm files, and to edit any of the html or htm files you have in your directory. The advanced editor will place the code from the .html document that you chose to edit in a HTML editing window, you then can edit the code and view your changes. If you wish to create a new file, just enter it's name. I have created this web site using this editor.
All of these Yahoo!GeoCities editors may be accessed from Yahoo!GeoCities after you have entered your member name and password.

Yahoo!GeoCities E-Z Uploader

By following the instructions of the genealogy program you have chosen to create your web page (which is covered in later lessons in the tutorial), you have created the files that will become your web page on your hard drive. Make a note of the file directory where these files are stored.
If you have chosen GeoCites as your home, these can be uploaded to your Yahoo!GeoCities home at the file manager. After entering your member name and password, scroll down to the bottom of the page to the EZ Uploader. To save time, change the option to upload 20 files at a time. Usually, you will upload all the files in the noted hard drive directory, but check with the instructions of your genealogy program. Click the Yahoo!GeoCities box that says automatically convert filenames to lowercase. It will depend upon the number of names and the program chosen as to how many files you will upload. After all the files are uploaded, your surnames are now on-line. Congratulations!
An alternative to the EZUpLoader is FTP. For instructions, visit Yahoo!GeoCities FTP Guide. Although this guide applies to all servers, if you are using another server, follow the instructions supplied by them.
Take a moment to survey your web pages from the visitor's point of view to make sure all looks as you expect, and that all links work.

Yahoo!GeoCities Heartland Review

The next step is to submit your site to the Heartland Review Committee - a dedicated group of volunteers who will gently critique your web site. You will generally receive more than one review. This is an invaluable service of tips and advice to improve your web page, and it is best to find any problems before you present your pages to the whole world. At the completion of the review, you may choose an 'I survived the Heartland Review' graphic that you may display on your web page.

Yahoo!GeoCities Page Counter

Installing a counter on a Yahoo!GeoCities web page is very easy. You can install a Yahoo!GeoCities counter on any or all of your pages. The only thing you need to do is add the following code to your page:
<IMG SRC="/cgi-bin/counter">
The counter knows which page it is on and counts for just that page.
In order to make sure your counter shows the correct count for each page, it's best to put the code as <IMG SRC="/cgi-bin/counter/#">where # is a different number for each page. This will ensure the counter loads anew for every page you have it on.
In order to remove a counter from any of your pages, simply remove the coding from that page.
The Yahoo!GeoCities Counter Manager allows you to change the numbers on your counters, see the total amount of hits your pages have received, and see the average hits per page you have received. You must be logged on to your Yahoo!GeoCities account.
If you don't care to have a counter on your page, you can still keep track of hits to every one of your pages that have a Link Exchange banner. Link Exchange keeps page hit statistics.

Yahoo!GeoCities Guest Books

Yahoo!GeoCities offers an easy, 'they do all the work' way to enjoy a guestbook.

Set up the addbook (where the visitor writes his comments) and the geobook (where the comments are read) at the Guestbook Manager. Please log in first.
place the line of code given by Yahoo!GeoCities on your web page, and visitors who wish to view or enter a message are linked to your guestbook , where they leave their message. The messages are stored in the geobook.html as part of your file space, so that you are free to edit or delete any objectionable messages.

Once your guestbook has reached about 25,000 bytes in size (noted in the file manager), guests will no longer be able to leave messages. At this point, the best option is to divide your guestbook into two or more books that are linked together.

Yahoo!GeoCities Forms

Forms consist of boxes in which visitors to your page can fill out and submit information to you. A typical use of forms is a guestbook...a place for your visitors to sign their names, leave their URLs and e-mail address, and make queries.
In addition the the guestbook which Yahoo!GeoCities makes available to its homesteaders, there is also a form which can be used for other purposes. Unlike the guestbook, Yahoo!GeoCities Forms sends an e-mail to the webmaster (you!).
What can you do with Yahoo!GeoCities Forms?

Well, for starters, you could use it for surname queries. Cut and paste the queries that are sent to you onto a query page you set up at your web site. This can be done by surname or geographic area. Visitors to your page can then browse through the list of queries that have been sent to you as well as set up their own query.
Use it as a way for other family researchers to send you their name and e-mail address.
Use it as a suggestion box.
Use it to accept corrections to your pages.
Use it to accept family or geographic event information.
Use it to take a survey.
Use it accept links if you are posting links on a particular subject.

You can set the forms page to accept comments or multiple choice answers to questions. When the submit button is clicked, an e-mail will be sent to you, and the page will return to any page that you set up. The e-mail address used is the e-mail address used when you set up your home in Yahoo!GeoCities, NOT your Yahoo!GeoCities address.
Here is an example of a Yahoo!GeoCities form page. Feel free to try entering answers into the form. I have it set up to return to generic page that posts that your message has been sent. Take the Survey to see an example of the Yahoo!GeoCities form page.
This basic example of a form will send the member an E-mail with the following format:
Subject: Survey Results

Sent from Mail Form posted at:   
http://www.geocities.com/homestead/sampleform1.html

(NAME)  Yahoo!GeoCities User
{helpfulness}  somewhat
(visit)  monthly
{comments} This tutorial has helped me.
(subject)  Survey Results
(next-url)  /homestead/next_page.html
Can you have more than one form? Sure, use a different form for each of the examples above if you choose. Be sure to use a different subject title so you can keep the responses to the different forms separate.

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