WordPress genealogy plugin status update

The development of this plugin has been largely delayed by the robbery that happened to me earlier this year, so I had to start from scratch.

However, I’ve made my plan a bit more simpler, as I now plan on just adapting from a GPL-based genealogy software of my choice that’s running on PHP and MySQL. The same development concept was used when I developed the Top Commentators Widget, since I figured I shouldn’t be reinventing the wheel when there are better and more developed genealogy software.

I’m looking into adapting either phpmyfamily or GeneoTree, albeit in a smaller scale than what is offered by either one application. I’m hoping to achieve the following by the time a beta release is ready for public testing:

  • Include a simple administration page to upload GEDCOM (.ged) file
  • Provide the ability to display ancestry in a list order
  • Provide the ability to display a person’s details

And that’s it, really. I’m putting off the rest of the options because, honestly speaking, this can grow into a pretty huge application that would match its original counterparts. If I’m bogged down with too many features, I’m worried that I might not be able to complete this by the end of this year. So, better something than nothing, I say 🙂

I still need your help finalizing the official name of this plugin. FamilyPress and WP-Genealogy are currently in equal footing as of the moment of this posting. Please use the poll below and vote for the official name. I’ll be announcing its official name the moment a beta is ready for deployment.

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Posted on 18 June, 2009 under Discovering WordPress and tagged with , ,

10 comments

  1. Hi Webgrrrl, I’ve been working on a family tree in WP from a desire to publish the research I’ve been doing, and display it (reasonably) well. This makes no effort to use GEDCOM nor to integrate with any Genealogy db (which are frankly Not a delight to use unlike WP). However I realised quite quickly that one blog was not going to be enough to display in the way I designed. So I have now set up an WPMU install at http://ourillustriousfamily.com to give me the space to develop the family trees of all my grandparents. I have a sense that this may get out of hand. Let me know what you think, and despite my reservations on GEDCOM et al. Go girl! I’d be very very pleased to add your plugin to my armoury 😉 Best Charles

    1. Lorna says:

      Charles, I checked out your site, great job with it! I’m still trying to wrap my head around using WPM, though — what was your main rationale for using it? Would collaboration be it?

      1. Thanks Lorelle.

        Several reasons:

        Yes collaboration is part of it … Membership across blogs is integrated and means family members can contribute to all the family lines they have knowledge of

        Using WPMU means I can easily create new blogs for new familial lines, and then link them as you would normal blogs.

        As you’ll see from my main effort at the moment, the WP page hierarchy really only suits one line per blog, but this is also of benefit if, as like me, you want the pages to be as widely available as possible on search engines. Look at the urls — they’re full of the surname.

        And of course doing a site for each grandparent means you have four sites for SEO purposes and more likelihood of getting hits and therefore information. The D-S site has benefitted incalculably from being stumbled upon by a researcher who was looking at the family because one of my great great great uncles was vicar of Lutton.

        I am in the process of implementing BuddyPress / BBPress on this as well, which should mean the collaborative element comes to the fore, and will allow family members to discuss the tree even though they be very remote from one another.

        Lastly, as I am going to do this anyway, and the sites will remain in place ad infinitum, it seems an obvious solution to give others the opportunity of using this work via the site and pay for via Google Ads.

        Best Charles

        PS if you want to fool about with WPMU Bluehost are offering auto install of BuddyPress + WPMU via Simple Scripts.

  2. Paul says:

    I am not sure what it is that everyone else is looking for, but all I need to do is create a vertical family tree in the fashion that I was with tables at http://warneke.id.au/warnekeHelmuth.html so that I can move my entire htnl site into WordPress as per the beginnings at http://warneke.id.au/blog/

    I am happy with the magazine format but have not found a way of creating the family tree layout without falling back on tables or individual Div tags to replicate the vertical format.

    Does anyone have ideas on this?

  3. Charles says:

    Hi Paul,

    Have a look at http://ourillustriousfamily.com/dixon-spain/. The vertical family tree is enabled in the righthand column and each family member has their own page. We did have a front page like you described, but it wasn’t going to help search engine optimisation.

    Best Charles

  4. Hey! Apa Macam? Have you completed the project?

  5. Richard says:

    Any updates? rootsPersona and rootsPress are OK, but still seem to be a bit CSS-quirky. Another edition to the field that properly processed GEDCOMs would be most welcome.

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