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Follow
These Easy Steps to Get Started on Your Genealogy Website |
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Here is the sequence of things to do to get started
on your genealogy website. Just click on the title of
each item to be taken to the corresponding web page
to complete that item. |
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Create
an Account (Click Here) 
If you haven't done so already
then start by creating an account with us. There is
no obligation. Your information is protected and we
will never sell or abuse your e-mail address or your
account information. |
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Obtain
A domain name: the www address (Click Here)
This is the website network
name that people will use to access your website.
You might select a non-commercial domain name such
as www.yourfamily.org for your genealogy website.
Once you obtain your domain name, it's yours for life
(all you have to do is pay the nominal yearly fee.) |
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| Note
- Free with Every Domain (Click Here)
When you register your
domain name, you get many free services including
free ad-supported websites (both a regular website
and a blog website). These free versions
of the website products listed below are a great
way to get started for the small yearly fee
of a domain name!
Once you get your feet wet and
learn the basics of website technology, you
may not want to continue to have an ad-supported
genealogy website since this may not send the
message you want (after all, genealogy is a
serious, scholarly avocation). At that
point, you can easily upgrade to a regular website
by paying a small monthly fee.
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Obtain
a website (Click Here)
If you prefer to not have
an ad-supported website, you can pay a small monthly
fee for a regular website. There are two ways to go
when obtaining your website depending on how involved
you want to be with the technical implementation. For
minimum technical involvement, you can select our Website
Tonight tool®. This website product provides
a template-driven website authoring service to build
a website using friendly dialogs. Then, behind the scenes,
all the technical implementation of your website is
taken care of automatically. This is the perfect way
to get started. With this product, you can build the
structure of a professional website in a few hours and
you don't need to know anything about building websites
to use this tool. Or
you can have a standard standard
hosting plan. This is the form of website
that is typical of most websites on the internet .
You will be responsible for all technical aspects
of the website but this has the advantage that you
are in total control of your website. Our standard
hosting plans come with a lot of useful features such
as more e-mail accounts as well as much more disk
space. It's actually not that difficult to build
and maintain a website using a standard hosting plan.
In fact, you can build your site using Microsoft
Word which you probably already own and know how to
use as discussed next. |
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Obtain
a Website Authoring Application
If you choose a
standard standard
hosting plan for your website (i.e., instead
of our Website
Tonight®. websites) then you will need
to obtain a website authoring application to construct
your website. You purchase the website authoring application
separately. The author of the website uses the
website authoring application to design each web page
which is then generated into HTML by the website authoring
application. The best known website authoring applications
are Macromedia Dreamweaver, Microsoft Expression Web,
or Microsoft FrontPage (which has been replaced by
Microsoft Expression Web but is still popular). |
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- You may already have a usable
Website Authoring Application:
Microsoft
Word:
If you don't already
have a website authoring application, you can
get started with Microsoft Word. Microsoft
Word can work in HTML as an alternative to its
standard ".DOC" format. Not only is
Microsoft Word probably already installed on
your computer, but you probably already know
how to use it. This means you can put
off for the time being purchasing or obtaining
a “real” website authoring application.
Using this strategy, you would initially just
focus on the content of your genealogy, website
and use Microsoft Word to “rough”
it in. Later, once you have your feet wet, you
can obtain and learn how to use a proper website
authoring application.
Microsoft Publisher:
Another common application
to build a website which you may already have
is Microsoft Publisher. Microsoft Publisher
is an inexpensive but powerful desk top publishing
program that has a very easy-to-use website
creation capability. It is the ideal website
authoring application to create a genealogy
website and the one we recommend above all others.
Microsoft Publisher has the great advantage
of allowing you to design your website completely
in WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get). You
can place the web page content precisely.
Don't
Forget Your Genealogy Book!:
Notice that if you use either Microsoft
Word or Microsoft Publisher as your website
authoring application, you are much closer to
turning your website into a genealogy book.
That is, your website is already in the format
you would eventually use to write your book.
While converting a genealogy website into a
book would be a time consuming project, it is
straight forward since the hard part, the synthesis
of the genealogy research, has already been
completed with the website.
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These
Optional Products Make Genealogy Websites Easier & Better
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You should consider
the following products to supplement or enhance your
genealogy website. All of these are optional but they
are all great additions to a genealogy website project. |
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Get
Internet File Storage with an Online File Folder (Click
Here)
This is a great complement
to your genealogy website and is very useful on a genealogy
research trip. With an Online File Folder, you'll
be able to upload (or download) any files via a standard
web browser such as Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator
from any computer with internet access.
Using the user friendly interface,
you'll be able to easily upload files from home to have
them available when on a genealogy trip (i.e., from
the computers in a library). Or you can easily upload
files from the library (i.e., those great files available
only at that library) then download your treasures once
you're back home. AND this is also a great secure offsite
storage location for those irreplaceable family history
files and folders or your financial records. |
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Your
First Genealogy Website Could be a Quick-Blog website
(Click Here)
A
blog website is the latest in the social networking
applications in which you can exchange information with
your fellow genealogists in near real-time. If you prefer
to not have an ad-supported free blog website that comes
with your domain name (see
details) then for a small monthly fee you
can purchase one of our Quick-Blog web accounts. A blog
website, whether free or paid for, is a great starting
point for a genealogy website. It will put you instantly
online with a first version of your genealogy website
in which communications with your fellow genealogists
is critical. You can put any content such as text or
images on your blog website and at this early point
in the project, the content doesn't have to look good
or be in final form. Our Quick-Blog service, both free
and paid for, requires no web technology expertise to
setup and use. |
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Get
Listed in the Search Engines Quickly with Traffic
Blazer® (Click Here)
Your
fellow genealogists will find your website using search
engines such as Google, Yahoo, or MSN. However, you
have to conduct a campaign to get your genealogy website
listed in the search engines with the keywords and
phrases that are important to your genealogy website.
This process, which is called "search engine
optimization," is a time-consuming campaign of
refining the website so that it is in the best possible
position to gain a high search engine ranking. Our
Traffic Blazer®.makes the campaign easy to complete.
Traffic Blazer® will help you optimize the contents
of your genealogy website so your website is in tip-top
shape when the search engine spiders visit your website
to index it. Also, Traffic Blazer® submits your
website to all the major search engines and helps
you monitor your campaign. |
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These
Optional Products Protect You |
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You should consider
the following products for additional protection of
your information on the very public internet. |
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Protect
your Private information with a Private Domain Registration
: (Click Here)
Normally, domain
name registration results in your information being
recorded in a public registry. This means when you register
a domain name, your name, address, e-mail address, and
phone number are made available by the public registrar
to anyone who wants to see them (this is the point of
registering a domain name). You can protect this
information with a private domain registration. For
a small yearly fee, we will serve as your surrogate
giving our information in place of yours and you don't
have to reveal your personal information. You
still have all the benefits (and duties) of domain registration
and anytime you have to be informed of matters relating
to your domain name, we will contact you. |
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Protect
Your Work with C-Site Copyright Protection: (Click Here)
Anyone
who visits your genealogy website can download your
work and claim to be the author – and without
a federal copyright, it’s difficult to prove otherwise.
With c-Site®, we’ve made it easy for
you to protect your website contents with a federal
copyright – the indisputable legal proof you need
to claim ownership of your work. For a small one-time
charge, our experts will serve as your liaison with
the Copyright Office and we will prepare your application
as well as file it. |
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