Having your family tree available online to share with
relatives is one of the major advantages of the internet for genealogy. The alternative is packaging up a bundle of
pedigree charts and paying a fortune to send them to your new-found cousin on the
other side of the world.
But just how available do you want your tree to be? Should it be public? That brings with it a lot of other questions
to consider, such as the use (or misuse) of your hard-earned research findings. So if you don’t want just anybody to have
access to your tree (as is the case with FamilySearch), and you don’t want to
pay a company to host it (like FindMyPast, Ancestry, or MyHeritage), what
options are there?
Quite a few years ago I stumbled across a website called
TribalPages which offers a free, private family tree hosting service. It allows you to upload a GEDCOM file from
any genealogy software and converts this into a tree and database for you to
view on-screen, anywhere with an internet connection. Unlike other paid-for services, there is no
limit to the size of tree you can store on TribalPages. Although the free package has a few restrictions
on things like photos, you can invite anyone to view your online tree, password-protected. The excellent privacy settings give you total
control over which elements of your tree are visible to those you share it with,
or to search engines, if you want to reach a wider audience.
As with most free sites, you’ll probably receive some
marketing communications (although, be sure to tick the “No thanks” box when
asked!) to try and get you to buy one of their other packages with more bells
and whistles, but I’m sure you’ll manage to resist. I certainly have, and having just uploaded an
up-to-date GEDCOM file to my TribalPages tree, I’ve not regretted it for a
minute.
NB There’s also a free mobile app, but I’ve not tried that
so can’t speak to its usefulness or otherwise.
Let me know if you like it or not!
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| Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay |
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