After entering the database name—and unless you are very sure about changing them—use the defaults for both collation and the mySQL connection collation (Figure 2). By default, mySQL will use latin1_swedish_ci for the collation (West European, including english). After clicking the “Create” button, the database is created. That’s all there is to creating the database. The TNG installer will later fill in the tables.

Once the TNG files have been unzipped, browsing to the readme.html file makes installation a snap. During the installation, you are asked about what language and character set you want to use. Again, unless you are sure, use the default: the default is to use English and the ISO-8859-1 (Latin 1) character set. Figure 3 shows the language and character set selection in step 5 of the Express Installation.

Choosing the wrong character set can affect the display of data. The notes display shows this problem. Figure 4 shows notes with special characters, such as “õ” and “ü.” Figure 5 shows what happens when the correct character set is not selected: note the “?” where the character is not part of the character set.

TNG and mySQL have many language and character-set options. However, for West European genealogists (including english speakers), the mySQL and TNG defaults are good choices.

http://lythgoes.net/genealogy/software.php — The Next Generation of Genealogy Sitebuilding© (“TNG”)

http://www.wampserver.com/en/ — WampServer

http://www.w3schools.com/tags/ref_entities.asp — W3Schools HTML ISO-8859-1 Reference

1. Purge or exclude all living family connections from the online genealogy database,
2. Exclude, from the database, all living family connections born on or after a specific date,
3. Mask the names and personal details of living family connections with a "Living" placeholder,
4. Replace first names of living family connections with an initial while displaying the surname,
5. Require a login to see the personal details of living family connections, or
6. A combination of these options.

Why the concern for privacy at tivel.org? Several concerns were pointed out by Kylie H. Veale in "A DOCTORAL STUDY OF THE USE OF THE INTERNET FOR GENEALOGY":

"…concerns over information veracity and quality; fears about intrusions into privacy and even the chance for identities to be stolen…."

These concerns apply particularly to hobbyist who are not constrained by the standards or ethics of the trained and/or professional genealogist.

At tivel.org, we take the privacy of family connections very seriously—and, if there is a doubt, we err on the side of privacy. To begin with, we exclude all living family members born approximately on or after 1940. What this means is that at tivel.org, many living family connections need to know who their grandfather was to locate themselves in the genealogy; the youngest family connections depend on their parents or grand parents to help them locate their place in the genealogy. As time goes by and the older family connections pass away, a later "cutoff" date will be appropriate. Fortunately, The Next Generation of Genealogy Sitebuilding© ("TNG") used at tivel.org made implementing our privacy goals easy.

If no birth date is given for an individual in the database, the person can be flagged as either deceased or living (default is deceased). Also, if no death date is given, the default is to consider the person to be deceased if older than 110. This "cutoff" date can be changed by the TNG administrator (Figure 1).

TNG enables the administrator to tailor the database privacy options (Figure 2). The privacy options enable the administrator to

• Require a login to see anything but the home page,
• Protect living data, including hiding both data and names, and
• Define what persons can see and do when logged in.

The job of managing our database at tivel.org to insure the privacy of specific individuals turned out to be relatively easy. The creator of TNG, Darrin Lythgoe, has made finding and maintaining records in the database possible without having to know MySQL. It is easy to query the database and return reports through the administrative report utility (Figure 3a-3c). Once the report has been defined, the administrator can "run" the report(Figure 4). Figure 5 shows the results of running the "Living Family Connections" report.

The report generates the MySQL query (table prefix, xy_, is user defined):

SQL: SELECT xy_people.living, xy_people.private, lnprefix, prefix, suffix, xy_people.branch,lastname, firstname,birthdate, xy_people.personID, xy_people.gedcom, nameorder FROM (xy_people ) WHERE (xy_people.living = 1) ORDER BY lastname

Once a report has been defined and run, the records of identified individuals can then be edited or deleted to insure privacy, where appropriate. For example, the “Living” flag can be turned on or off or the record of a living family member can be deleted. More complex queries and reports can be created using operators and constants. Figure 6 shows the available features for managing "People."

At tivel.org, and using the TNG administrative features, it was easy to accomplish the privacy goals for our genealogy pages. Although we would much rather see a complete genealogy extending to the newest family connection, privacy concerns outweighed our personal preference. However, there is one great advantage to purging the database of "recent" living family connections: we can export a "safe" copy of our .ged file to family connections interested in bringing their own genealogies up-to-date. This can be done on a local PC using *no cost* software, such as PAF. As an alternative, with an easy to install server package called WampServer, it is even possible to install and run TNG on a local PC without a connection to the Internet—thus keeping the resulting genealogy private and complete, if desired, down to the youngest family connection.

http://www.historia-actual.org/Publicaciones/index.php/haol/article/viewFile/89/83 — A DOCTORAL STUDY OF THE USE OF THE INTERNET FOR GENEALOGY by Kylie H. Veale

http://www.ngsgenealogy.org/galleries/aboutngs/gssound.pdf — Standards For Sharing Information With Others Recommended by the National Genealogical Society

http://lythgoes.net/genealogy/software.php — The Next Generation of Genealogy Sitebuilding© ("TNG")

http://www.wampserver.com/en/ — WampServer

http://www.familysearch.org/eng/default.asp — PAF software for a PC can be obtained here.

For building and managing a genealogy offline on a PC, we highly recommend the *no cost* Personal Ancestral File (PAF) software from FamilySearch. PAF is all you need to build and manage your own personal genealogy. You can also import an existing genealogy into this software. You can take advantage of the LDS Family History Centers. These centers are staffed with volunteers who will guide you in building your genealogy. You can find a center near you through the FamilySearch web site.

For an online genealogy, we at tivel.org highly recommend The Next Generation of Genealogy Sitebuilding© (“TNG”). TNG can be quickly installed and has all the administrative tools needed create and manage a serious online genealogy site. TNG also includes several well thought out templates, including the one we use at tivel.org. Although TNG is not freeware, it is well worth its small cost—and the great support is included.

If you want to install TNG on a local PC, you might want to consider WampServer, a *no cost* software solution to installing a complete web server on your PC. I have installed WampServer on my local PC and use it to develop both WordPress and TNG. It’s a real advantage to be able to try out modifications to both WordPress and TNG—before uploading them to my online blog and genealogy sites.

http://www.familysearch.org/eng/default.asp — Family Search for PAF software and help with your genealogy.

http://lythgoes.net/genealogy/software.php — The Next Generation of Genealogy Sitebuilding© (“TNG”).

http://www.wampserver.com/en/ — WampServer

http://www.blog.selectdigitals.com/wampserver-a-test-bed-for-wordpress/ — Although this article describes installing WampServer as a test-bed for WordPress, the installation would be very similar for TNG.

http://bishir.org/ — Visit this site to see a quality online TNG genealogy site.

For a successful WordPress blog, careful thought must be given to the following:

1. Security,
2. Installation,
3. Theming,
4. Multimedia and Image Display,
5. Plugins, and
6. Maintenance.

In the past, some of my sites have been hacked–so I treat blog security very seriously. Blog security should be considered–even before the blog is installed. Hackers are very familiar with the basic WordPress file structure and other defaults. You can make your site more secure by changing some of the default settings as you install WordPress.

The default login user name for WordPress is “admin.” This should be changed to something more complex like, “tbyz-168.” Another setting to change is the default data-table: change the prefix from “wp_” to something else, such as “zk_.”

Passwords are another important consideration. I recommend using long, random passwords, such as qR0ZOf3CbPOD2aDs. I typically use 12-16 character passwords. There are many random-password generators available online.

A WordPress plugin to help you evaluate your blog’s security is “WP Security Scan.” This plugin will recommend changes you should make to insure blog security. This is among the first plugins I install and run on my WordPress sites. When I am done running the scan, I deactivate the plugin.

One point of hacker attack is the WordPress wp-admin directory. This directory contains the files necessary to the administration of WordPress (the dashboard). Access to these files can be protected by creating an .htaccess file. Copy and Paste the following code into a basic text editor:

AuthUserFile /dev/null
AuthGroupFile /dev/null
AuthName "Access Control"
AuthType Basic
order deny,allow
deny from all
# whitelist home IP address
allow from 192.168.1.1

Change the IP address in the code to your own IP address. Don’t know what your IP address is? Just do a Google search for, “my ip address.” There are many online services that will identify and report your specific IP address (such as 98.112.27.86). Replace the old IP in the code above with the new address. Save this file as .htaccess. The file will probably be saved as .htaccess.txt and you will need to rename the file to just .htaccess. Upload the file to the wordpress/wp-admin directory. The .htaccess file will prevent dashboard access to any IP address but yours.

Sometimes, as with my DSL service, the IP address changes; and, although your site will still be visible to visitors, you will not see the normal login screen or be able to log into the admin area. Simply change the .htaccess file to include the correct IP address and then upload the file to restore the normal login screen.

As an additional security measure for my WordPress sites, I use an antivirus plugin to scan for possible problems. The plugin can be optioned to notify me by email if a problem is detected.

WordPress requires a MySQL database, so your hosting service must allow you to create and manage a database. Today, there are many hosting choices which allow WordPress to run perfectly. For a more detailed discussion of the characteristics of a good hosting service, see the resource section. Some hosts enable Wordpess to be installed automatically from the control panel.

For a manual installation, you should be able to access to your host’s control panel in order to create the database. You should also be able to upload and unzip files through the control panel’s file manager. However, I prefer to use FileZilla, a no cost FTP manager, for transferring files to and from the host. I have included a link to instructions for manually installing WordPress in the resource section.

WordPress.org has a forum for help if you have installation difficulties and a good hosting service should also be ready and able to assist you with the installation.

The “out of the box” wordpress theme, Twenty Ten(2010), is an excellent, functional theme as is but can also can be customized for a unique look and feel. My personal preference is to stay away from excessive glitz and to create a blog that is quick to load, easy to navigate, and does not distract visitors from the content.

The best way to customize a WordPress theme is to use a “child theme.” When using a child theme, customized files are kept in a separate theme directory. WordPress uses the unchanged theme files from the original, “parent” directory, as needed. For example, this blog’s theme is based on the default 2010 theme and exists as a child theme in its own directory. The customized look of the blog is the result of modifications to a few files located in the “child” directory. Most of the necessary files for the theme are still accessed through the original 2010 directory.

The advantage of keeping the customized files in a separate directory rather than changing the original files is that the customized files will not be overwritten during an (automatic) WordPress version update: no files are changed in the child directory during a version update. This also applies to using any of the many themes available at wordpress.org or elsewhere. If you install and activate another theme, it will not be overwritten during a WordPress update.

A good theme to use as a base theme for customization is Thematic. I have customized a variant of this theme called “Acamas” and placed a link to the prototype in the resource section. The prototype demonstrates the versatility of the Acamas theme. Another link points to a thorough discussion of the Acamas theme.

An alternative to the “no cost” themes available at WordPress are third party themes. One such theme is “Thesis” from DIYthemes. The Thesis theme is a terrific theme “out of the box” and is fully SEO optimized for the Web. Although this theme does have a cost, it is well worth the price.

If you are not comfortable with WordPress theming, my advice is to work with an “out of the box” theme and develop your site’s content. You can customize your site later as you acquire the necessary knowledge and skills. Always remember that it is the content–and not the theme–that is going to bring visitors to your site.

Multimedia and image display is an important component of a genealogical site. Videos, slide shows, single image display–these can all be used to provide useful and interesting genealogical information. Fortunately, there are many WordPress plugins that can manage the display.

For image display, including slide shows, I use the NextGEN Gallery plugin. The plugin enables me to easily upload and manage images and then display them. NexGEN has many other features that you will want to check out.

If you want to display videos on your site, a good plugin choice would be Viper’s Video Quicktags. This plugin makes it particularly easy to embed videos from such services as YouTube. What’s more, the plugin generates W3C valid code on your pages.

I have already mentioned several WordPress plugins that I use. Check the resource section for a complete list of the plugins I am now using on this site.

I consider it essential to keep a copy of my WordPress sites on my local PC. I do this as a backup measure. Once the site is installed, and when I modify or create new files, I make sure that the backup reflects the changes. Of course, if I have uploaded huge numbers of images to an online folder, I would not make it a practice of downloading these during a backup: I would, however, make sure I had a copy of the images on my local PC or on CDs/DVDs. Certainly, I would want a good backup before a version upgrade of the WordPress files–just in case.

Along with backing up the core WordPress files, it is also important to backup the database. This is done from PHPMyAdmin from the control panel at your host. I have included a link to a tutorial about how to do this. As you add posts and pages to your blog, be sure to backup the database–where the post and pages are stored–from time to time.

WordPress now makes updating the core WordPress files and plugins a snap. When new versions are available, you are notified of this when you login to the WordPress dashboard. You can then choose to do your updates automatically. Be sure you have a good backup before you upgrade the core WordPress files. This is particularly important if you have modified any of the core files (such as files in the 2010 theme folder) as they will be overwritten.

If you are new to WordPress, I recommend taking your time with the intial installation. For new installations, and keeping in mind the security issues I discussed above, I follow the steps below.

1. Create an empty database at the host. WordPress will fill in the tables during installation.
2. Upload and unzip WordPress.
3. Modify the WordPress configuration file (wp-config-sample.php which you rename to wp-config.php) to tell WordPress how to access the database.
4. Run the WordPress installer.
5. Activate Akismet. This will require you to create an account at akismet.com to get an API key.
6. Upload and unzip the Bad Behavior plugin. This will require a “BL Access Key” from projecthoneypot.org and you will have to create an account there to do this.

At this point, your site should be installed and secure. You can now add other plugins and/or content to your site. This might be a good time to install and run WP Security Scan and the AntiVirus plugin. Run the plugins to check for any problems. Note that the AntiVirus plugin only flags a suspected problem; you will have to determine if it is, in fact, a problem. The AntiVirus plugin will not delete any file but will only report suspected problems.

If you want to develop your WordPress site on your local PC, I can highly recommend installing WampServer.

“WampServer is a Windows web development environment. It allows you to create web applications with Apache, PHP and the MySQL database. It also comes with PHPMyAdmin to easily manage your databases.”

The software is easy to install and I use it on my local PC to develop web pages (including WordPress). I have included a link in the resource section for a tutorial about how to use WampServer.

For help with your WordPress installation, you can go the Forums at WordPress.org.

Plugins:

• Akismet — anti-spam (now ships with WordPress).
• All in One SEO Pack — search engine optimization (SEO).
• AntiVirus — antivirus for your WordPress installation.
• Bad Behavior –
  

  “Bad Behavior complements other link spam solutions by acting as a gatekeeper, preventing spammers from ever delivering their junk, and in many cases, from ever reading your site in the first place. This keeps your site’s load down, makes your site logs cleaner, and can help prevent denial of service conditions caused by spammers.”

• Google XML Sitemaps — creates and updates a sitemap.
• NextGEN Gallery — manages and displays your images.
• Fast Secure Contact Form — provides a “secure” contact form for your site.
• Sociable for WordPress 3.0 — places social bookmarks on your pages and posts.
• Widget Logic — with this plugin, you can determine just where you want your widgets to display. For example, I use this plugin to prevent my slide show from appearing anywhere except the home page.
• WP Security Scan — analyzes your blog’s security.

Hosting:

• Characteristics of a Good Web Hosting Service For Content Providers and Online Marketers

Installing:

• Installing WordPress
• Managing Your WordPress Database
• How to Install and Style WordPress — My blog has been updated to the latest version of WordPress 3.X. Therefore, this article is a bit dated. However, if you are still using the old Kubrick theme or are interested in learning how to style a theme, the article might still be of interest to you.

FTP:

• FileZilla — My choice for an FTP client.

Theming:

• Theme Development
• Thematic
• Acamas Theme (based on Thematic)
• Child Themes

Code Validation:

• W3C Code Validator

WAMP:

• Download WAMP
• Wampserver: A Testbed For WordPress

WordPress Support:

• WordPress Support Forums

My Blog About WordPress:

• blog.selectdigitals.com — Articles, tips, and tutorials about WordPress.