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Topic: TUTORIAL: Step-by-Step Guide to building your website (Read 10010 times)
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Berlin-Bob
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Posts: 4904
by My Daughter. Chatting to find her Roots !
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With your help, this will one day be a full-scale Step-by-Step guide to building your website.
I will be including contributions from other RootsChatters and the aim is, to have something you can all understand.
Please let us know, on the Feedback: Step-by-step Guide to building your website thread If you have any problems.l
I'm following the same organisation as a parallel thread:
TOPICS: Help with building your website.
http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php/topic,70811.0.html
1. How do I apply for Rootschat Webspace?
2. Help ! - I’ve got my webspace what do I do now ?
3. Decide what you want your website to do and how you want to present it.
4. Do I need a special program?
4a) Building a website using a Family History Program
4b) Programs for creating webpages from GEDCOM files:
4c) Can I put more than one family tree on my website ?
5. Testing / Previewing your site
6. Uploading to your site
6a. Using the RootsChat File Manager FTP
6b. Using an FTP program
7. Extras
What are meta-tags ?
8. File Types
9. From Beginner to Expert ...
10. RootsChat
11. Adding a family tree to your web-site
12. Getting your website noticed
For the purposes of this tutorial, I have produced a GEDCOM with the (invented) ROOTS and CHATs families.
Any similiarities with anybody at all is pure coincidence 
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« Last Edit: Wednesday 13 September 06 19:52 BST (UK) by Berlin-Bob »
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Searching for Coleman, Moore, Kallnung in London; Margulies, Remenyi in E. Europe; Ancestors of Hessie Stevenson-Coleman-Baxter (Ireland, 1861) and, of course, any other ancestors for my web-site http://boco.rootschat.net All Census Data included in this post is Crown Copyright (see: www.nationalarchives.gov.uk) |
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Berlin-Bob
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Posts: 4904
by My Daughter. Chatting to find her Roots !
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1. How do I apply for Rootschat Webspace?
Follow Trystan’s instructions and you will soon have your own webspace:
http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php/topic,13130.msg45621.html
Just keep filling in the form, till you get to screen 4:
This will say:
Registration confirmation
To confirm your registration, please check your email box. We just sent you instruction on how to activate your account.
To activate your account you need to follow URL referred in email and enter your ID and authorization code. When the administrator has approved your account and it becomes live and you will get login information by email.
ID : mywebsite.rootschat.net (or whatever you call your site)
Authorization key:
Check your mailbox !
After applying you will then receive an e-mail almost immediately from myroots[AT]web.rootschat.net You will be given a confirmation code to "copy and paste" into the "Authorization key" above, or you can click on the link provided in the e-mail.
You have one hour to activate your account. If after one hour we still have not received confirmation, your registration will be cancelled. If this happens, please return to the RootsChat.com website and sign up again.
This e-mail does not mean that you now have web-space - this merely confirms that you have given us a valid e-mail address. The web-space still needs to be assigned to you by the System Administrator !
You will then get another e-mail saying your web-space is now active.
(This could take several days, depending on how busy Administration is,
so why not check out sections 3. and 4. while you're waiting  )
Assuming your name is Fred Smith, and your RootsChat webspace is called mywebsite, then the e-mail should look like this:
Welcome Fred Smith!
Your account is now active and you can go to: http://mywebsite.rootschat.net
Your FTP Information:
FTP Server: mywebsite.rootschat.net
FTP Login: mywebsite.rootschat.net
FTP PassWord: ******* (whatever you specified when applying)
You will be able to upload files in a few minutes
Your MySQL Database Information:
MySQL DataBase mywebsite_rootschat_net
MySQL HostName localhost
MySQL UserName mywebsite_rootschat_net
MySQL PassWord: The same as for FTP
You may enable your MySQL DataBase from account manager if it's available.
Your account manager is at
http://www.rootschat.net/cgi-bin/amanager.cgi?a=mywebsite.rootschat.net
~~~~~~~~----------
NOW you have a web-site, and you are ready for the next step 
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« Last Edit: Tuesday 02 January 07 20:22 GMT (UK) by Berlin-Bob »
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Searching for Coleman, Moore, Kallnung in London; Margulies, Remenyi in E. Europe; Ancestors of Hessie Stevenson-Coleman-Baxter (Ireland, 1861) and, of course, any other ancestors for my web-site http://boco.rootschat.net All Census Data included in this post is Crown Copyright (see: www.nationalarchives.gov.uk) |
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Berlin-Bob
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Posts: 4904
by My Daughter. Chatting to find her Roots !
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2. Help ! - I’ve got my webspace what do I do now ?
3. Decide what you want your website to do and how you want to present it.
No tutorial for this, this is simply a matter of looking at other sites, thinking of what you are trying to achieve with your website (which audience, what information) and deciding how you would like it to look .....
One useful tip is to have lots of scrap paper and draw rough sketches of all sorts of possible layouts,
till you have something you like.
Then look at the programs available (next chapter), maybe re-think your possibilities, etc, etc.
You'll find lots of ideas here:
Topic: TOPICS: Help with building your website.
3. Decide what you want your website to do and how you want to present it.
http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php/topic,70811.0.html
One important point:
Websites aren't carved in stone. Anything you put on your site, you can change later !
Sometimes it is easier to have something up and running, just so you can then decide how to change it, rather than try to design your ideal site and get totally frustrated, because the "ideal site" is often impossible !!
p.s.:
this is simply a matter of looking at other sites A good place to look for other RootsChat sites is here:
Topic: List of Rootschat Websites
http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php/topic,23896.0.html
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« Last Edit: Wednesday 29 March 06 21:21 BST (UK) by Berlin-Bob »
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Searching for Coleman, Moore, Kallnung in London; Margulies, Remenyi in E. Europe; Ancestors of Hessie Stevenson-Coleman-Baxter (Ireland, 1861) and, of course, any other ancestors for my web-site http://boco.rootschat.net All Census Data included in this post is Crown Copyright (see: www.nationalarchives.gov.uk) |
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Berlin-Bob
Global Moderator
RootsChat Marquessate
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Posts: 4904
by My Daughter. Chatting to find her Roots !
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4 a) Building a website using a Family History Program
First of all, a general description:
Many Family History programs (FHP for short) have the facility to produce webpages.
You need to find the menu-item, as the name will vary from one program to another.
This may be under 'File' or 'Tools' or 'Extras', etc.
Possible names are
- Create web pages
- Export to HTML
- Convert to HTML
etc.
Follow the FHP menu instuctions. At some point it will ask you where you want to store
your web-pages. Point it to (for instance) MyWebsite and continue following the instuctions
To test the output, open your browser (offline). Find the folder MyWebsite and look for
a file index.htm or index.html
Double-click on this, or 'drag' it to your opened browser and 'drop' it there.
You can now see how your web-pages will later look on your website.
Now some specific examples:
Using Legacy to build a website
You can download a free copy of Legacy, from http://www.legacyfamilytree.com/
Start your Legacy program. If it doesn't automatically load your data or if you have more than one set of data, load the relevant data.
You might want to just load a GEDCOM file to build your site with:
You will then get the usual pop-up windows, asking where your GEDCOM file is.
Once loaded .....
On the top menu row, click on Internet
click on Create web pages ...
You are presented with various forms to fill in.
Enter a project name (here rootschat) and click on the Location button to the right.
A window appears, where you can point to the folder where you want to store your web-site.
Use the default values for the rest for now, you can always come back to this later.
Click on Create Web Pages and wait while Legacy does the work
A pop-up will appear: Would you like to view the web pages in your browser ?
At this point you will probably want to say YES !!! so, go ahead
But, better still, say No for now and see Chapter 5, Testing / Previewing my site
You can see the tutorial example here:
http://tutorial.rootschat.net/legacy2/index.htm
You have now created a web-site, on your computer.
You can play around with this, adding more details to the data, changing the formats in the "Create web pages" forms, etc. and re-creating, change the data in the forms, etc, etc
Re-create the web-pages, and re-start it in your browser to see the effects of your changes.
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« Last Edit: Saturday 06 January 07 18:31 GMT (UK) by Berlin-Bob »
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Searching for Coleman, Moore, Kallnung in London; Margulies, Remenyi in E. Europe; Ancestors of Hessie Stevenson-Coleman-Baxter (Ireland, 1861) and, of course, any other ancestors for my web-site http://boco.rootschat.net All Census Data included in this post is Crown Copyright (see: www.nationalarchives.gov.uk) |
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Berlin-Bob
Global Moderator
RootsChat Marquessate
Offline
Posts: 4904
by My Daughter. Chatting to find her Roots !
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4 a) Building a website using a Family History Program (continued)
Here is an example from another FH program, Genopro
http://tutorial.rootschat.net/GenoPro/index.html
(this is built from a very basic GEDCOM, so there is not as much detail as there could be)
Note that Genopro also generates an index.html file, so if you have other stuff on your website, you will need to store the Genopro-output in a seperate folder on your webite, and add a link to it from your home-page.
see also reply #6 on this tutorial
4c) Can I put more than one family tree on my website ?
http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php/topic,93490.msg397242.html#msg397242
Bob
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« Last Edit: Wednesday 18 October 06 18:32 BST (UK) by Berlin-Bob »
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Searching for Coleman, Moore, Kallnung in London; Margulies, Remenyi in E. Europe; Ancestors of Hessie Stevenson-Coleman-Baxter (Ireland, 1861) and, of course, any other ancestors for my web-site http://boco.rootschat.net All Census Data included in this post is Crown Copyright (see: www.nationalarchives.gov.uk) |
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Berlin-Bob
Global Moderator
RootsChat Marquessate
Offline
Posts: 4904
by My Daughter. Chatting to find her Roots !
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4 b) Programs for creating webpages from GEDCOM files:
First things first, what is a GEDCOM ?? It is a particular format for a text file which enables you save genealogical data. You can then send this file to others, or use it to transfer your data from one program to another. As long as each program follows the "rules" for GEDCOM files, they will all be able to read them. (As usual with 'standards' there are are always some people/programs who decide to do it 'their' way and not follow the standard, but as a general rule, if your program says 'GEDCOM' it will understand most GEDCOM files.
Most Family History Programs (FHP) will read GEDCOMs as input, and export their data as GEDCOM files for others to use.
Here is an example using Legacy, but most programs will be similar:
The next screen asks "which GEDCOM format" - you want 'plain vanilla' !
It also gives you some choices, what you want in your GEDCOM
After clicking on "Select file name ...", give your GEDCOM and name and store ut somewhere where you can find it again !
Apart from Family-History programs, there are various programs available which will take a GEDCOM file as input and create HTML web-pages.
Here are a few examples:
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« Last Edit: Sunday 06 November 05 18:08 GMT (UK) by Berlin-Bob »
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Searching for Coleman, Moore, Kallnung in London; Margulies, Remenyi in E. Europe; Ancestors of Hessie Stevenson-Coleman-Baxter (Ireland, 1861) and, of course, any other ancestors for my web-site http://boco.rootschat.net All Census Data included in this post is Crown Copyright (see: www.nationalarchives.gov.uk) |
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Berlin-Bob
Global Moderator
RootsChat Marquessate
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Posts: 4904
by My Daughter. Chatting to find her Roots !
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4c) Can I put more than one family tree on my website ?
This question usually arises because sometimes the families are too big, or you prefer to keep them separate.
The answer is Yes !
All you need to do, is to create a folder on your computer for each family
e.g. assuming you are creating all your website output in a folder called my_website, then create
\my_website\smith
\my_website\jones
my_website\williams (or whatever names you wish to use.)
When your program asks you where you want to store your HTML output, then point it to the appropriate folder.
Upload to folders with the same name on your site.
You now need a new home page, which will provide links to the different families.
Here is a "bare-bones" home page:
<html> <head> <title>Give your website a name (for the search engines)</title> </head> <body> <center> <h1>Name of your Home Page </h1> <br> <br> <p>This is my website about my Evans, Davis and Jones families. <br> Originall they came from Ynysybwl and Cilfynydd, and later spread out along the Rhondda Fach and the Rhondda Fawr </p> <br> <br> <a href="./evans/index.htm"><b>The Evans Family</b></a> <br> <a href="./davis/index.htm"><b>The Davis Family</b></a> <br> <a href="./jones/index.htm"><b>The Jones Family</b></a><br> </body> </html>
Copy the code into an editor and change any of the texts to suit you.
Then upload it into the root directory of your website.
Better still, test it off-line first:
This tutorial: 5 Testing / Pre-Viewing your website
http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php/topic,93490.msg397243.html#msg397243
There is an example here: http://tutorial.rootschat.net
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« Last Edit: Wednesday 13 September 06 19:57 BST (UK) by Berlin-Bob »
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Searching for Coleman, Moore, Kallnung in London; Margulies, Remenyi in E. Europe; Ancestors of Hessie Stevenson-Coleman-Baxter (Ireland, 1861) and, of course, any other ancestors for my web-site http://boco.rootschat.net All Census Data included in this post is Crown Copyright (see: www.nationalarchives.gov.uk) |
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Berlin-Bob
Global Moderator
RootsChat Marquessate
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Posts: 4904
by My Daughter. Chatting to find her Roots !
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5 Testing / Pre-Viewing your website
It's handy to be able to check your site before you actually upload it to the internet.
Normally you will have all your website files in a folder (directory).
Open Windows Explorer and point it to your website folder
Open your browser (offline, if you are on dial-up. If you have flatrate, it doesn't matter).
In your website folder on the computer there should be a file index.htm or index.html
"Drag" this file into your browser window
and you should now see your website-to-be in your browser.
Now you can play around with it, go back to your web creation program and tinker around with various files and parameters, and keep trying it out, till it's just how you want it.
And then, you go to Chapter 6 and upload it to your website !!
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« Last Edit: Sunday 06 November 05 17:55 GMT (UK) by Berlin-Bob »
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Searching for Coleman, Moore, Kallnung in London; Margulies, Remenyi in E. Europe; Ancestors of Hessie Stevenson-Coleman-Baxter (Ireland, 1861) and, of course, any other ancestors for my web-site http://boco.rootschat.net All Census Data included in this post is Crown Copyright (see: www.nationalarchives.gov.uk) |
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Berlin-Bob
Global Moderator
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Offline
Posts: 4904
by My Daughter. Chatting to find her Roots !
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6. Uploading to your site
What is FTP ? Do I really need to know ?
FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol and describes how data is moved around the internet.
No, you don't really need to understand it, you just need to know enough to use your FTP program to put things on your website.
So if that's enough for you, then skip the next bit. If you like knowing a bit more .... read on !
Many people think of uploading data as sending a file straight from one computer (my computer) to another (the RootsChat server). It's not like that! Imagine the internet as a giant spider web of cables (if you don't like spiders, think of a giant street map !)
At each intersection is a computer. One of these is your Internet Service Provider, another of them is the RootsChat server.
Imagine your data, not as a solid block of data, but as a "book". When you send your data, each "page" will be sent seperately, from one computer to another, till it reaches it's goal. Each computer looks at the traffic around it and decides on the best route to send the next page. So the individual pages could go through different routes to get to the final destination, arriving in any order, and there they will all be put back together again, to form your "book".
The whole procedure of splitting your book into seperate pages, which route to send each page, requesting a page again, if it is unreadable, re-assembling it into a "book", security checks, etc, etc,
--- that is all part of the FTP procedure. Which you don't need to know anything about.
The main thing is, that you start the process, through your FTP program, and the rest will take care of itself.
Just a thought:
if this gives you some inkling of the complexity of the whole process, then please remember this, the next time the RootsChat server (or indeed some of the anonymous servers in the chain) get hiccups and everything slows down !
In some ways, it's a bit like the dancing bear -
the amazing thing about the dancing bear, is not how well it dances, it's the fact that it can dance at all !
Using your FTP program.
General principles
The program needs to be told where to send things.
If this is the first time, then look for a menu-item: "Create new account", "Set up new account" or something similar.
Usually you will be asked for a name to call it by, an Account name or Session name (you can have lots of different accounts)
let's call this one "mywebsite"
Next question - Host name: where do you want to send it to ?? : You want to send it to your website, so the host name is mywebsite.rootschat.net
And then, your User name : - also mywebsite.rootschat.net
Some FTP programs may now ask for a password. It's your choice whether to enter it now and have it stored in the computer, or whether you prefer to enter the password each time you log on to your FTP account.
And that is usually enough, you can use the default values in the FTP program for the rest.
The FTP programm will usually have two windows, one for your computer files, the other window for your website.
Mark the files you wish to upload in one window and "drag" them to the other.
File Types
This is the list of file types which are permitted on the Rootschat webspace:
"The following list of file types are the only file types permitted on RootsChat Webspace members sites. All other file types are not permitted:
js, swf, au, snd, ged mid, midi, ram, wav, gif, jpg, wrl, vrml, css, html, htm, rtf, png, psd, ico, doc, php, sql;
Any other files located by RootsChat Webspace will be automatically deleted.
The maximum upload file size is 1 MB.
The limit for jpegs is 1 MB, for gifs is 1 MB and for HTML or Text files is 0.5 MB."
One other point to bear in mind, is that WINDOWS is pretty "sloppy" about file names, it treats upper and lower case the same.
RootsChat uses a LINUX server, which is more fussy.
Best tip here is to keep all file names in lower-case, and avoid blanks and special characters in the names.
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« Last Edit: Monday 04 December 06 07:08 GMT (UK) by Berlin-Bob »
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Searching for Coleman, Moore, Kallnung in London; Margulies, Remenyi in E. Europe; Ancestors of Hessie Stevenson-Coleman-Baxter (Ireland, 1861) and, of course, any other ancestors for my web-site http://boco.rootschat.net All Census Data included in this post is Crown Copyright (see: www.nationalarchives.gov.uk) |
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Berlin-Bob
Global Moderator
RootsChat Marquessate
Offline
Posts: 4904
by My Daughter. Chatting to find her Roots !
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6a. Using the RootsChat File Manager FTP
You get a file manager "free" with your RootsChat webspace. This includes an FTP program.
To access this, type http://www.rootschat.net/cgi-bin/amanager.cgi in your browser address.
you will get a screen with the following log-in form:
Enter your RootsChat webspace user name and password.
Or you can type http://www.rootschat.net/cgi-bin/amanager.cgi?a=tutorial.rootschat.net in your browser address,
replacing tutorial with the name of your website.
Then the form looks like this: (2nd. image)
Just enter your RootsChat webspace password.
The next form will look like this: (3rd image)
Click on "File Manager"
(4th. Image)
Here you can upload, delete, rename files etc. Because of my german Operating system, you see Durchsuchen, where an english language system will say Browse
To upload a file or files:
- click on Browse (Durchsuchen) and find the file on your computer.
- repeat if necessary for other files
- click on upload.
This works fine for 2 or 3 files, but is a bit tedious when you have a lot to upload.
Then you need a different FTP program, see 6b !
You can also use the File Manager to change read/write permissions
Mark a file and click on Set Permissions
(5th. Image)
For Read/Write permission, set to 777 (rwyrwxrwx)
For Read Only permission, set to 644 (rw-r--r--)
(6th. Image)
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« Last Edit: Sunday 09 April 06 10:39 BST (UK) by Berlin-Bob »
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Searching for Coleman, Moore, Kallnung in London; Margulies, Remenyi in E. Europe; Ancestors of Hessie Stevenson-Coleman-Baxter (Ireland, 1861) and, of course, any other ancestors for my web-site http://boco.rootschat.net All Census Data included in this post is Crown Copyright (see: www.nationalarchives.gov.uk) |
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Berlin-Bob
Global Moderator
RootsChat Marquessate
Offline
Posts: 4904
by My Daughter. Chatting to find her Roots !
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6b Using an FTP program
As an example I am going to use CoffeeCup, which can be downloaded free, from many internet sites.
e.g http://www.tucows.com/preview/195147
(try "coffeecup ftp" in your search engine for more)
First of all, install the program
On starting the program for the first time you will need to set up the connection to your website.
You will/should see this screen:
Click on + Add
Enter a name for your connection. If you only have one site, "my web site" is fine, otherwise enter a short name.
and click on "Next >>"
Enter the name of your RootsChat website.
Leave "anonymous" blank !!!
Whether you enter and save your password is up to you.
I usually don't, as I don't like saving passwords on the computer, but it is your choice ...
Click on "Next >>"
Enter the name of your RootsChat website.
Click on "Next >>"
Click on "No I don't know what that is"
Click on "Next >>"
Click on "Close"
The next time you start CoffeeCup, you will see this screen:
Click on the bar, to remove the bottom window.
Then it will look like this:
Click on the small arrow next to the "Servers" icon, and you will get a list of your FTP connections.
Click on your website connection:
In the left hand window you now have an "explorer" window for your computer, in the right hand window, you have an "explorer" window for your website.
To move files in either direction, mark them with the cursor and drag them to where they need to go.
And that's it !! FTP at your fingertips (or mouse cursor )
And when you are done - click on Disconnect
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« Last Edit: Sunday 06 November 05 10:35 GMT (UK) by Berlin-Bob »
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Searching for Coleman, Moore, Kallnung in London; Margulies, Remenyi in E. Europe; Ancestors of Hessie Stevenson-Coleman-Baxter (Ireland, 1861) and, of course, any other ancestors for my web-site http://boco.rootschat.net All Census Data included in this post is Crown Copyright (see: www.nationalarchives.gov.uk) |
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