Should I Develop a Website?

Building your own website to document your family history may seem daunting, but the tools and on-line help available today make this an engaging option for any genealogist - no technical knowledge is required!

Just start writing. If you're not sure if this approach is for you or if you haven't yet decided on which platform to use, start writing anyway - in MS Word or any other program you normally use. Any work you do can later be simply copied across.

Advantages of a website

Genealogy is an endless treasure hunt! As you discover more information or if you find there have been errors in your original research, you can simply update your site.

It's a creative way to tell the story around your family tree.

You choose how you want to present your story - colours, layout, fonts etc.

You can use various media: text, photos, videos, sound recordings, links to other media e.g. Youtube, Facebook etc.

It's easy to keep family members informed of updates.

Common Website Platforms

Many website development platforms provide ample functionality and flexibility in their free versions. Remember that it's about getting your family's story out there - not about flashy bells and whistles!

Google Sites is used for GSC's website. The basic version is free and widely regarded as easy to use. 

For a good example, follow this link to Carmel Gavin's family website/blog created using Google, with helpful instructions: Family Site 

Wordpress is used for over 40% of the world's websites (also sometimes referred to as blogs, but it means the same in this context). It's more sophisticated than Google Sites, but still easy to use, with vast online help resources. You do not need to have a domain name or you can pay for one for a small charge. On your account you are allocated 3GB of space.

Note: Be sure to use Wordpress.com NOT Wordpress.org

Key Website Elements

As with a book, you need to think about and plan the structure of your site. 

Do you want to use menus to break up topics, or at the other extreme, have all your information on one very long page (think about scrolling down a document)?

How would you like your page(s) to look? Browse some family history websites to see what aspects appeal to you.

Decide on a theme and try to stick to it - this means consistently using the same colour scheme, fonts etc. across your site (templates help with this - more information below). You may for example use italics for newspaper quotes and normal text for everything else.

Think about your acknowledgements and attributions - you could do them as you go or instead make them numbered footnotes on each page - or a combination of both if you like the look of it. 

Helpful Terminology

Domain - A domain name is the unique address of a website on the internet e.g. https://www.ancestry.com.au is Ancestry's Australian domain name. https://sites.google.com/site/genealogysunshinecoastinc is GSC's domain, hosted by Google Sites.

Domain names generally cost a few dollars per month. However not every website platform requires you to have a domain and you may prefer not to have one. 

Wordpress currently (Feb 2025) charge $72 per year for hosting on their Personal plan, which includes a free domain for one year. Beyond the first year, it currently costs about about $20 for a .com domain. 

Wordpress also has a free plan, where you can separately buy just a domain name.

Template/Theme - A template or theme is a preformatted page design, which enables you to have a consistent look and feel throughout your website. A simple example would be a newspaper style (i.e. columns) layout, versus one which has plain text across the page. Things to consider might be the types of media you wish to incorporate (e.g. photos, video, links to social media), whether you want to run your site as a blog and whether you want to upload GEDCOM family tree files.

If you are considering Google Sites and would like more flexibility than the basic version offers, browse on-line to see samples of both free and paid for versions.

For Wordpress there are thousands of available templates, many of them free, many others available for a price (there are programmers whose business is building and selling templates). 

One recommended FREE Wordpress template is Ryu - launched in 2013, it has a simple layout: main heading at the top, drop down menus across the top, blank page option etc., plus numerous other features which may not be needed for a family history site, but are there to be explored. It has been developed to look good on various devices – laptops, tablets, phones etc., although on a phone, all the menu items appear as a list, rather than being nested under individual headings.