User talk:Senecaladd

Welcome

Welcome to WeRelate, your virtual genealogical community. We're glad you have joined us. At WeRelate you can easily create ancestor webpages, connect with cousins and other genealogists, and find new information.

Create Webpages

The first thing to do is launch Family Tree Explorer, then select File in the Family Tree Explorer menu and give your family tree a name. You can either upload your GEDCOM or create person and family pages one at a time. To upload your GEDCOM, select File in the Family Tree Explorer menu and then click on Import and choose the GEDCOM file to import. The system will create a editable web page for each person and family in your GEDCOM. To create a page manually, select Add in the Family Tree Explorer menu and click on Add new person; enter the given (first name) and surname (last name), select Add, then fill in the blanks and save.

The Family Tree Explorer is a Flash application and will need to use some space in your computer to cache the files. That's computer talk for "If you store some ancestor page information on your computer, you will be able to view more pages faster. Otherwise, the system has to fetch each page every time you edit or look at it. This caching is not permanent and only lasts as long as you are at WeRelate each time.

Connect with other genealogists

You should always sign in when you are editing or adding pages. Use the signature button to sign your work (the swiggle, second from the right, above the edit box). That way others with similar interests can find you. If you click on the blue user name on any page, you will go to that person's home page. You can leave a message on his/her Discussion page. The Discussion page button is in the light green second level menu bar above.

Great things you can do at WeRelate

Please see the Great things you can do at WeRelate article.

Thanks for participating in your virtual community.--Kittydoc 12:23, 26 March 2007 (MDT)

How do I create a shared research page?

The easiest way to create a shared research page is to navigate to your profile, click on the Edit arrow at the top of the screen, and click on "Add Surname and/or Place". Type in the surname of the family line you are researching into the Surname box. Enter the place where you are researching this surname into the Place box. To begin, we recommend that you set the place to a state or country. (You can change the place to a smaller area if the article gets too large -- see below.)

For example, if you were researching the Daniel Phillips family in Denton County, Texas, and the Gottfried Quaas family in Germany, you would enter:

Phillips | Texas

Quaas | Germany

Once you have added lines for the families you are researching, save your profile. You will see links to your shared research pages in the upper-right-hand corner of your profile. You will also see links to the related surname page and place page. You may want to click on those links and "watch" those pages so that you'll be notified when someone adds information to them. You can watch any page by clicking on the Watch link at the top of the page.

If a shared research page for that surname and place has not yet been created by someone else, the link to your page should appear in red. This means that you have not yet entered any information onto the page. Click on the link to display the page. You can now edit the page (click on the Edit link) and add a question or any information that you want to share. This will cause the link on your profile to turn blue. Regardless of whether you want to edit the page now, you should watch it (click on the Watch link). This allows you to be notified when someone else "creates" the page by adding a question or sharing information. You will also be notified each time that someone modifies one of the pages you have selected to watch.

To see which pages have changed since you last visited them, look at your Watchlist from the MyRelate button. If you entered your email in your preferences, you will receive an email whenever someone changes a page in your watchlist.

Shared research page titles

If you title all your shared research pages with one surname and one place (without abbreviation), they will be indexed into categories properly. It will be easier for your cousins to find your pages. For instance, if you create a page for Smith in Kentucky, it will be indexed in the Smith category, the Kentucky category and the Smith in Kentucky category. The next time someone creates a page for Smith in Kentucky they will come to your page instead of creating a second page for "Smith in Kentucky". It's all about making networking with other genealogists easier.

When abbreviations are used, the system thinks that the abbreviation is a different place. It won't put "Kentucky" articles in the same category with "KY" articles. If you title your page with an abbreviation, for example "Smith in KY", and your cousin titles a page with "Smith in Kentucky", your articles will not be in the same category. Thus, it is less likely that you will connect with that cousin. The same is true if you title your page with multiple locations. For instance, if you title your page with "KY, OH and MT", it will be placed in the "KY, OH, and MT" category. A cousin searching for "Smith in Kentucky" won't see your page in the right category index.

Click on a surname category link at the bottom of a person page to see the category index list. :-D--Kittydoc 12:25, 26 March 2007 (MDT)