uploading your tree/research to a site for others to access

[PennyB]

I'm wondering whether to upload my dad's entire database (currently in Brother's Keeper, over 5000 individuals) to some kind of genealogical website which I believe you can do in case the contents are useful to anyone else's research? Any information about these websites, how they work and the names of any suitable ones would be gratefully accepted.
Thanks for reading

[kiterunner]

First you need to decide whether you want the tree to be open to everyone to view, open to members of that site only, or only to people who you choose to give access to. Some sites will allow whichever of these you prefer but make sure the site you choose fits with what you want to do.

Also do you want it to be free (for you, and / or for those who view the tree) or not? On some sites you will need to pay to upload your tree and on some the people who view your tree will need to be paying members to see it.

Another thing to consider before you upload the tree is whether it has details of living or recently deceased people in it and if so, whether you / they want to make sure their details are kept private. It can be upsetting to find that someone has copied information about your relatives onto their own tree and sometimes it can be hard to get them to remove the information.

A site called Tribal Pages used to be very good for uploading a tree for inviting people to view and I think you can also make your tree open to all to view if you want to, but they charge for new trees over a certain size now and I believe the size of the tree you are talking about would mean it would be too big for their free service and you would have to pay for them to host it.
http://www.tribalpages.com/

Genes Reunited will let you upload your tree without having to pay, but only paying members will be able to view it (they contact you to request access):
www.genesreunited.com

I think you can upload your tree to ancestry without having to pay, but again, only paying members would be able to view it on there:
www.ancestry.co.uk

Hopefully some of our members will have some more suggestions.

[Janet]

What do you think about mundia, Kite? I'm not sure we ever determined exactly what the story is, but it seemed as if all the public trees from Ancestry eventually were available on mundia.com.
www.mundia.com/us/

The only link I can get into has that "us" tacked onto the end, which usually means it's for the U.S. market, so I don't know if others can get in using the link I put up there. If that doesn't work, I would try just going to mundia.com and see what happens.

[kiterunner]

Yes, ancestry trees are free to view on mundia.com for people who have registered, even if they don't have a sub.

[Phoenix]

It's always worth considering whether you wish to retain ownership of your data.

This may not be a consideration at the moment, but it can be devastating to discover that hard won information, particularly for recently deceased relations, is being misappropriated.

[Mary from Italy]

I find TribalPages useful, because family members and contacts can view the tree for free, without needing a paid subscription. You can password-protect the tree if you want to.

[JBee]

Yes it can be upsetting to see your rellies bandied about on other people's public ancestors trees without a link being proved. That has happened to me a number of times and I've had to prove to them that there's no connection.

I corrected someone about OH's ggf and since then he's attached OH's ggf and ggm's rellies on that line to his tree highlighting that he didn't marry but had a liaison and his child was illigitimate which could be worked out without highlighting it. However I'm still not convinced his tree and OH's are actually connected.

[Durham Lady]

I have a private tree on Ancestry so anyone wanting further information has to request it, I found out the hard way when someone took all my family and attached it to their tree although if they'd done their research properly they'd have seen there was no connection and my g g grandfather couldn't possibly be living in 3 places with 3 different wives and families after he had died.

I also keep a private tree on Tribal Pages and I do pay now for a larger site, it's not much a year, £20 or so but I can add something like 5000 photos in albums and have as many people listed as I want.

I too would advise caution with privacy whatever you use.

[PennyB]

hello everybody
Thank you so much for your thoughts and discussion on this. Originally I had reservations about the risks of this, then thought perhaps I was being naive or over cautious, but I think it is right to be cautious. Perhaps in the future I may upload to a password protected website to share with other interested relatives, but in the meantime I can let specific family members who are interested have the Gedcom of my Dad's database (with pointers to guidance re software packages) as well as a pdf of a part of my Dad's tree which I had made into a chart for him this Christmas, so he could see the fruits (or some of them - couldn't do the whole lot because apparently it would have been 82 foot by 2 foot in size so I went for a moderate 10 foot by 2 foot!) of his labours.
It's really good to get input from people who know about these things. I'm afraid my Dad's genealogical research has diminished in the last few years due to age/health and so I think the possibilities offered by the world wide web would have passed him by.
Sincere thanks again.
Penny

[JBee]

Penny

I like tribal pages where you can have a lot of different trees for free. I have split my trees into smaller parts and only have two paid trees on there for the added features and use the password system for family to access them.

Regarding giving family the gedcom - make them aware of not making it a public tree wherever they choose to put it.

I must admit to being torn between helping or not helping fellow researchers of the same family - so many public trees are copied over without being checked properly that its the right line as it looks about right and then mistakes tend to be repeated over different trees.