Archives for 15 April 2017

We spend so much time on our one-name studies – doing the research, gathering records and data, reconstructing families, searching for DNA connections – that we become experts about our surname as it has traveled through time and space. Have you shared that expertise with others? Have you published and preserved your work? I have a Profile at the Guild Website, I occasionally blog about my one-name study, and I maintain my research on my laptop with a backup on an external hard drive. But I had not taken that leap yet of publishing any of my work online because setting up and maintaining a website is just a bit too difficult. Thanks to the efforts of some of our fellow Guild members a little over a year ago, it just got easier!

The Members’ Websites Project (MWP) was designed “to provide a safe haven for members’ one-name study websites.” If a member has registered a surname, it is a simple matter of uploading a website and the Guild will maintain it. These are not static websites as you can continue to add research data, trees, images, histories, your working hypotheses and conclusions – you control the substance of the website. Once part of the Members’ Websites Project, your material can be viewed on a worldwide basis and is available to genealogists, family historians, and those who might find it by googling a shared surname.

There are three types of websites – free-standing HTML websites, websites using Content Management Systems like WordPress and Media Wiki, and websites where genealogy data is imported from GEDCOM files and stored in a common database using The Next Generation genealogy software (TNG). 

If you want to learn more, simply select Resources on the drop down menu at the Guild Website and then select Members’ Websites (see image below). Several examples of members’ websites are shown at the Members’ Websites Project page. This is a great way to publish and preserve all your research and share your one-name study with the world. Take advantage of the Members’ Websites Forum to ask any questions and get assistance from the coordinators of this terrific Guild resource.

I am just getting started with my Keough one-name study website using TNG – but for the small dollar investment (I purchased a licensed copy of TNG) the Guild will provide the server and be my IT administrator – it doesn’t get better than that.

So what are you waiting for? The Members’ Websites Project provides all members with another way to publish and preserve our one-name studies!