3) Import the gedcom file(s) again.
Try the next steps one-by-one if HuMo-gen does not work properly after an update:
When you encounter other problems on your site: remove the cookies from your PC, that may help!
Following is a detailed description of all menu items in the Administration Menu.
After setting up your HuMo-gen website, you enter the Administration Menu with the link: http://your-website/admin (of course replace "your-website" with the URL address of your HuMo-gen website).
HuMo-gen -> Website
This link will move you out of the Admin menu to your main website, as is set under Control -> Settings.
Note: by default this is set to be the Dutch HuMo-gen website, so you might want to change this.
If you have a main site that links to the HuMo-gen front page, you may want to change "Website" to your main site.
If the HuMo-gen front page is also your main page, you can set "Website" to link to your HuMo-gen page.
Administration -> Main menu
This is the administration main menu, which is also the default menu that you see when you enter the administration menu.
It gives an overall status of your HuMo-gen installation, security settings and family trees.
These are the issues that appear on the status screen:
- Database:
Is indicated as OK if your mySQL database is set up and accessible.
- Database tables:
Is indicated as OK if the HuMo-gen database tables were created correctly during the install procedure.
- HuMo-gen update1:
Is indicated as OK if the first HuMo-gen update was installed (should happen automatically on first installation).
- Humo-gen update 2:
Is indicated as OK if the second HuMo-gen update was installed (should happen automatically on first installation).
- Login control:
Indicates the status of your login method. By default this is the regular PHP-mySQL login, that is much less secure than .htaccess login.
You can enhance the login security by using .htaccess login. This may be done in one of two ways.
First option:
Most webhosts (especially the paid ones) offer control panels like Cpanel, that have an option to "Password Protect Directories". With this option you should password protect the admin folder of your humogen main folder. This will automatically put the proper .htaccess file in your admin folder and saves you a lot of work.
Second option
By clicking the "INFO" button on the red box for login control, you get an explanation on how to manually make .htaccess and .htpasswd files and where to place them. Yep, a bit of a hassle, and the first option is much more elegant...
- register_globals:
Another security enhancement check, that is not necessary for HuMo-gen to work, but adds extra security.
Is indicated as OK if register_globals is set to OFF.
register_globals can set to be OFF in a php.ini file you can put in the root directory of your domain or in a php.ini file you may place in the main humo-gen folder. The php.ini file should have a line: register_globals = Off
With some (especially free) webhosts these settings are determined by the webhost outside of your domain and in that case you may have to contact them if you wish to change the settings.
- magic_quotes_gpc:
Another security enhancement check, that is not necessary for HuMo-gen to work, but adds extra security.
Is indicated as OK if magic_quotes_gpc is set to ON.
Magic_quotes_gpc can set to be ON in a php.ini file you can put in the root directory of your domain or in a php.ini file you may place in the main humo-gen folder. The php.ini file should have a line: magic_quotes_gpc = On
With some (especially free) webhosts these settings are determined by the webhost outside of your domain and in that case you may have to contact them if you wish to change the settings.
- display_errors:
Another security check. Is indicated as OK if display_errors is set to OFF in the php.ini file in the admin folder. If you downloaded HuMo-gen from this site, a php.ini file has already been placed in your admin folder with the proper settings, so you should see this indicated as OK in green. If you downloaded an older version from Cnet or elsewhere without the php.ini file - create a text file called php.ini in your admin folder and enter the following text on one line:
display_errors = Off
Save the file and that should do it.
- Trees table:
Is indicated as OK if the mySQL tables were succesfully filled with the Gedcom data. The lines under this caption mention the Family tree Gedcoms that have been read into the database tables.
If OK, these items are displayed in green. If not, they are displayed in red. On a first installation some lines will be red or orange. As you progress with installation, more lines wil turn green.
Install -> Install
This function is needed only the first time HuMo-gen is installed. It creates the tables in the mySQL database that are needed for reading in the Gedcom details.
TAKE CARE: if you press and confirm this function once HuMo-gen is already up and running, it will wipe your database and recreate the tables.
Gedcom -> Family Trees
This is one of the most important functions in the Admin menu. Here you read in your Gedcom files, name your trees and add all free text you want to appear on the web pages in any of the languages installed (4 by default).
On top of the screen you will see 5 tabs. The first ("Family Tree Administration") is pre-selected.
The other four are: "Import Gedcom file", "Family Tree Data", "Family Tree Text (per language)" and "Extra".
We will move through these tabs one by one.
Tab 1: "Family Tree Andministration" (the default tab).
This tab has several buttons and we will relate to them one by one.
On a fresh installation with no trees imported, you will first use the next tab ("Import Gedcom File"). Once a gedcom file has been imported the "family tree administration" tab will become more relevant.
The language buttons. you will notice the language buttons (4 by default). These are shown because later on you can give your family trees different names for each language as you wish them to appear on the web. These buttons allow you to show the list of trees in any of the languages. For the time being - let's leave them alone.
Add Family Tree button. Pressing this button will allow you to read in a new Gedcom file. In general -don't change the pre-entered prefix that is shown here.
Add New Line button: allows you to enter an empty line in the index of family trees on the HuMo-gen main page. This can be useful when you have many different trees and want to create a visible partition between different groups of trees.
Tab 2:
"Import Gedcom file"
The second tab is called "
Import Gedcom", so guess what it does. It brings you to a screen for reading in a Gedcom file.
[ screenshot ] This is not only necessary to read in a Gedcom in the first place, it is also were you will reload a Gedcom file after you have added data to it from new research. There are two ways you can read in the Gedcom file:
-
You can upload the Gedcom file with your own FTP program or the Control Panel of your webhost and place it in the admin folder of huMo-gen on the web. If you do it this way, you can then just pick the gedcom from the rolldown option "Select Gedcom file". This is the cleanest and most flawless way to do it.
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You can also upload the Gedcom right now from the present page by using the "Upload" option. As in most programs, click "Browse", find the Gedcom on your disk, choose it and then click "upload". This may seem more straight forward, but with large Gedcom files you may get a time-out, depending on the leniency of your webhost. That's why I prefer the first method. Anyhow, both are there in front of you to choose from. The procedure following either method is very straight forward. Just press on the next step button (there are 4) and you will be led along.
Tab 3: "Family Tree Data"
On this page you will get a form to fill out.
The form allows you to enter a few basic details you may want fill in for this tree.
The first field is the email field and owner of database field. Here you can fill out your details. If you fill your name and an email address, your name will appear on the front page of huMo-gen as a link to an email form so people can write to you. Your email address itself will be INVISIBLE to the end-user, only a Humo-gen specific form will be used for sending the email.
The next filed concerns the path to your picture folder. If your genealogy program allows for pictures to be shown with the genealogical data, you can export the Gedcom file with the details of those pictures (consult the instructions for your specific genealogy program). You should create a folder on your webhost with any name you like and upload the pictures there. Then enter the path to that folder in the form.
For example, if you called the folder "pics" and placed it in the main "humo-gen" folder (together with the "admin", "include" etc. folders), the path would be: pics/ (since it is searched for from within the main folder). If you placed the folder in the root folder where you also placed the humo-gen folder, the path would be: ../pics/
The last item is the tree privacy. Privacy relates to the issue what details about people are shown (like birthdates etc). You can choose between "standard" which will implement the filter options that you set under Users -> Users in the Admin menu (see further along) or "FILTER ALL PERSONS", which will consider all persons in the tree to be private, or "DISPLAY ALL PERSONS", which will consider all persons in the tree NOT to be private.
Hit "change" to save your settings.
Tab 4: "Family tree texts (per language)" On this page you can enter free text in any of the available languages.
[ screenshot ] The free text will appear on the main page of HuMo-gen on places as indicated (extra text in main menu, extra sources and links in main menu, the name you want to give to the family pages on your site, and the text to appear under each family page). Hit "Change" to save your texts and move to the next language. NOTE: if you enter text only in one language, end-users who choose another language will not see that text. If you are not familiar with the other languages, in my opinion it is advisable to enter English texts in the other languages so that those end-users will get your messages assuming they know some English. It's up to you.
Tab 5:
"Extra"This tab you most likely will not need. It deals with importing files from some exotic Dutch genealogy programs...
Gedcom -> EDITOR
This leads to one of HuMo-gen most exciting new features: online editing.
On top of the screen, pick the desired family tree and press "select".
You will get the editor screen with a default person pre-selected. You can choose any other person from the pulldown list of names.
You will see a row of tabs:
[ screenshot ]
- Person - the main data such as name, sex etc.
- Person data - birth, baptizing, death, burial etc. data.
- Person events - here you can enter a large number of events. Open the pulldown list at the bottom of the page, choose the event and press "add event". You will now get the screen to fill out the data. To save your data for this event, press the save icon (a disk).
- The next tab has an icon to add a new person.
- Next is the tab for marriage details
- "Marriage events" allows you to enter additional events for each marriage.
- The following tab has an icon to add a new marriage.
- The tab "Source" allows you to create master sources that can then be added to any of the source fields in the previous tabs.
- The tab "Addresses" allows you to create master adresses that can then be added to any of the address fields in the previous tabs.
Control -> Settings
This menu item alllows you to enter general settings for your HuMo-gen rendered website.
[ screenshot ]
- The first two options allow you to set the default language that is displayed for your end-users and the default language for the administator menu.
- Next are general settings for search engine options: "Stop search angines" is by default set to "NO", so your site will be indexed by search engines. If you are not interested, set the value to "YES" (i.e. DO stop search engines) which will automatically generate the line shown under the options on your HuMogen webpages. If you are familiar with Meta tags you may adjust this line if you wish.
- Next comes the options for activating "url_rewrite". This makes your site's URLs more friendly for search engine indexing and is therefore recommendable. However, the webhost's server must support the Apache "mod_rewrite" option for this to work. Before you activate this option make sure your server supports this. You can ask your webhost if you're not certain.
- The following group of options concern the front page of your HuMogen website. First there is your website's name that will be displayed on top. Next is the link that will be activated when users press the "home page" tab on your HuMo-gen website (the top leftmost tab). Many people have extensive genealogy websites of which the HuMo-gen display is just one of many items (other items may include research notes, family albums, general genealogy information etc). In that case end-users will get to the HuMogen website by pressing one of the links on the home page. In this case you can enter the URL of the home page here, so your users have an easy way of returning there after they have surfed your HuMo-gen site.
If the HuMo-gen generated website is your main website and you have no other frontportals, just enter the URL to your HuMo-gen site here.
- The last option in this group is the link to the birthday RSS. If you activate this options under "Users -> Groups" (see further on) you can add the link to the HuMo-gen website here.
- The bottom group of options allow you to set the number of generations that will be displayed (default is 4) and the number of search results given on one page (default is 30).
Some people like to limit the number of generations to be displayed, especially with large gedcom files with many generations so the report will downloaded faster. Users can always continue the report by pressing the button on the last person mentioned to generate a report from this person onwards.
Control -> Create thumbnails
Here you can create thumbnails for the pictures that will be displayed in the genealogical reports and the photo album. You can determine the size of the thumbnails.
[ screenshot ]It is advised to use this option, since when displaying thumbnaills your reports will appear more concise and neat, than with large pictures. End-users can always see the pictures in their original size by clicking them.
TIP 1: If clicking the "Create Thumbnails" button generates an error message, you most likely have entered the wrong path to the picture folder under "Gedcom -> Family Trees (explained above).
TIP 2: In order to see the photo album tab on your HuMo-gen main menu, you must activate this options under "Users -> Groups" as explained further on.
Control -> Extra Links
Here you can create direct links to specific persons from your database.
[ screenshot ] Many people use this to display an easy link to some of the "Patriarchs" in the tree (the most ancient persons in a branch).
For this to work your have to first make sure the relevant persons have a special ID in your genealogy program that creates the Gedcom file. The name of this field differs between genealogy programs, but often it is called something like "REFN" or "own code" or "ID". In this field make sure to enter a unique identifier. Export to a Gedcom and upload to your HuMo-gen folder. Now, under Control -> Extra Links enter the unique identifier in the Own Code field (instead of the default word "Code"). In the description field (instead of the default words "eigenaar database") enter any description you would like to appear next to the person's name (like "Patriarch of the Wellerman branch"), then click "Add".
The links will be automatically generated on your HuMo-gen frontpage.
Users -> Users
Here you can create the user names and passwords for login. Users can be assigned to different user groups with different authority to see items on your site.
What items will be displayed for each group is set in the menu item that will be explained next - "Users -> Groups".
Note that as you already learned on installation of HuMo-gen, the default login for the adminstrator is login-name "beheer" and password "humogen". You can change this login name here but in any case I strongly advise to change the password for the administrator here, otherwise anyone that reads this manual can log into your site as adminstrator!!
End-users that don't log in (most of your users will probably belong to this group) will get the default settings you set for the "guest" group.
Users -> Groups
This is one of the more powerful menu items in HuMo-gen, where you can set the default appearance of HuMo-gen for end-users, depending on the privileges you have set for the login groups.
[ screenshot top of page] [ screenshot bottom of page ] The menu items in "Users -> Groups" are pretty self-explanatory so I won't go in to each of them here.
For example, you can set "photo album" to YES for users of the administration and family groups, and to NO for guests. In this case guests will not see the photo album tab.
Database backup -> database backup
This option is still in experimental stage. It allows you to make a backup of your mySQL database so in case something would happen to your database, you will have a backup copy to reinstall.
If you webhost's control panel has the "PHPMyAdmin" program, we advise you to use that instead.
This menu item is primarily meant for people who don't have the PHPMyAdmin option with their webhost.
Database backup -> Gedcom export
This option is new in HuMo-gen 4.0. It allows for export of your HuMo-gen data to a downloadable Gedcom file. Since HuMo-gen now offers online editing this is an important feature. Once you have changed you data online you can create an updated Gedcom file and download it for use with another genealogy program.
Though still labeled "experimental" for lack of some more exotic gedcom tags, it already allows for exporting all commonly used gedcom items.
Logs -> Log
Here you can see the history of users that logged into your site (remember: most end-users are guests that don't log in and won't be found here. To see all unique visitors use the Statistics option below).
Logs -> Statistics
The default page "General Statistics" gives you information about the total number of unique visitors, the country where they came from (for this you need the "Origin of Visitors" Add-On for HuMo-gen - see the add-on menu item on the top of this website), the number of families that were visited and which families were most frequently visited.
By pressing the button "Statistics by date" you can get information on visited families by month.
Another button "visitors" gives more detailed information on your site's visitors.
The fourth button "Old Statistics" is only relevant for people who installed HuMo-gen before the new statistics were introduced in HuMo-gen some months ago.
Manual
