Bending family tree web site history

Bending family tree web sites history


The Family Tree contains over 15Mb of information on about 850 pages, and bcause of its size it is on two sites, the major part on www.jbending.demon.co.uk, and illustrations of old wills on www.jhbending.demon.co.uk. There are links between the sites. Extensive use is made of the hyperlink facility of HTML, and there are, probably, over 50,000 links of this nature, enabling movements to be made easily between indexes and family trees, source documents and family trees, family trees to source documents, and between the different forms of family trees. These linkages are shown in schematic form at the site links layout page. I first started researching my family tree over forty years ago. I was working in the East-end of London and it was possible to drive to and park at Somerset House. The 1841 and 1851 censuses (original documents) were available at Chancery Lane. I resumed my research after retirement, I had had some experience of programming a computer (a Commodore Pet) and about twenty years ago put my data on computer.The computer I selected was an Atari ST, the most powerful home computer at that time (520K). It seemed to me the basic requirements to enable family trees to be created by program were records with fields for:	.	a) surname, b) given names, c) personal identity number (pin), (d),(e), (f) dates of birth, marriage and death, (g) father's pin, (h) spouse's pin. I created a file to hold this data, and although I have changed databases and computers I have not had to re-enter this original data. I am currently using a PC operating Windows XP and Paradox 7. At present there are files for each source of data (see source page), and it is possible by putting all this information (pin, date, event) in one file and sorting by date within pin to arrive at a personal history for each person, and by using the record file mentioned in the previous paragraph to indicate fathers' and spouses' pins. Programs are written to convert the sources and tree files to HTML format for uploading to the Web. Other programs create supplementary trees, statistics, history and so on. The suite contains just over 100 programs varying from a few to hundreds of lines of code each. No doubt there is a large amount of redundancy as the system has evolved over a number of years. Once data files have been updated, it takes about one hour to create fresh web pages and upload.

The Family Tree contains over 15Mb of information on about 850 pages, and bcause of its size it is on two sites, the major part on www.jbending.demon.co.uk, and illustrations of old wills on www.jhbending.demon.co.uk. There are links between the sites.

Extensive use is made of the hyperlink facility of HTML, and there are, probably, over 50,000 links of this nature, enabling movements to be made easily between indexes and family trees, source documents and family trees, family trees to source documents, and between the different forms of family trees. These linkages are shown in schematic form at the site links layout page.

I first started researching my family tree over forty years ago. I was working in the East-end of London and it was possible to drive to and park at Somerset House. The 1841 and 1851 censuses (original documents) were available at Chancery Lane. I resumed my research after retirement, I had had some experience of programming a computer (a Commodore Pet) and about twenty years ago put my data on computer.The computer I selected was an Atari ST, the most powerful home computer at that time (520K).

It seemed to me the basic requirements to enable family trees to be created by program were records with fields for:

a) surname, b) given names, c) personal identity number (pin), (d),(e), (f) dates of birth, marriage and death, (g) father's pin, (h) spouse's pin. I created a file to hold this data, and although I have changed databases and computers I have not had to re-enter this original data. I am currently using a PC operating Windows XP and Paradox 7.

At present there are files for each source of data (see source page), and it is possible by putting all this information (pin, date, event) in one file and sorting by date within pin to arrive at a personal history for each person, and by using the record file mentioned in the previous paragraph to indicate fathers' and spouses' pins.

Programs are written to convert the sources and tree files to HTML format for uploading to the Web. Other programs create supplementary trees, statistics, history and so on. The suite contains just over 100 programs varying from a few to hundreds of lines of code each. No doubt there is a large amount of redundancy as the system has evolved over a number of years.

Once data files have been updated, it takes about one hour to create fresh web pages and upload.