What software/cloud service do you use to actually manage your tree

[Skwide]

That's emphasis on "manage" not "research"...

Although a newbie at this, it's clear that during research, one finds many tenuous records. Over the course, it's possible to ascribe more certainty to some records as other records correlate and full copies of certs behind index entries are purchased.

Neither the big 2 family tree sites I'm on seem to have a good way to manage records and be able to view maintain confidence values on any given record - and indeed, if you want to be really clever, calculate an inferred confidence on an actual person.

Both sites obviously are brilliant in providing access to datasets.

So I wondered: do people actually use something else for building their tree and managing records? Given everyone speaks GEDCOM, chucking a tree around different platforms is no big deal.


Cheers - Tim

[ShaunJ]

I use Family Historian https://www.family-historian.co.uk/

[bibliotaphist]

I use two bits of desktop software to build and manage my trees:

Gramps (free as in beer and free as in speech, very powerful and flexible albeit with a somewhat steep learning curve and a less-than-intuitive UI, runs on both Ubuntu and Windows)...

...and RootsMagic (not free but so cheap it may as well be, runs natively on Windows, easier to learn and use than Gramps and has a few features that I prefer even though overall it's probably slightly less powerful/flexible.

Given everyone speaks GEDCOM, chucking a tree around different platforms is no big deal.

Would that that were true 

[youngtug]

TribalPages.

[Mart 'n' Al]

As it says in my signature, I echo comment two for Gramps, as it says in my signature. I Started looking at it , and despite having worked in IT product support all my life I found it very very complex . I tried something else for a year and decided it had too many shortcomings. I went back to gramps. I've never looked back . I can't over emphasize the fact that it is very sophisticated and fully functioned. This means it takes a long time to get used to it. On the plus side, there is a very good support network of other users, and you will get a very quick response to any problems, but you will have to reply rely on the YouTube videos to get you started.

Alternatively most of the others allow you to download and try the product before you pay for it. Just import a gedcom file.

The number one rule for choosing software is decide what you want to do and then find a product that will allow this. If you need lots of sophistication, go for a sophisticated one, if you just want basic record keeping and the family tree, go for a simpler one.

Do you want something public on the internet so that it is accessible by others, or do you just want something on your own computer? Generally, the bigger the company the worse the customer services.

Martin

[Skwide]

Bulk thank you to everyone so far

Martin - thanks for Gramps. I'm in IT too and use linux, so just popped a copy on. I like the Tools/Utilities/Verify the Data - that's spotted some weirdnesses.

That's clearly going to be a case of understanding how to maintain the record properly - Youtube time

I see a way to flag records with confidence/accuracy. Need to explore how to make use of that.

I'll go off and play and learn...

Cheers,

Tim

[Skwide]

Oh and to Martin:

Firstly, I want to build a nice tree. I think when it comes to web, I'm happy to re-upload the GEDCOM.

Obviously there are going to be issues with media, I will have to play...
(eg FindMyPast GEDCOM puts in slightly broken links to transcripts and the plugins to load media seem to have no way to authenticate, but that might be me...)

[Mart 'n' Al]

I'm a Win 10 user, but I plan to have a Linux dabble on an old netbook PC fairly soon, just for the experience. 

Martin

[Skwide]

Hi folks,

In the end I went for Family Tree Maker as it runs on a Mac (I have no Windows machines and don't like running VMs for oddball tasks) and its integration with Ancestry is useful as I can work on the web and tweak on FTM. FTM does give me a clear way to rate the facts using standard methods which are summarised as a visible star rating. So that's nice.

Gramps: I couldn't get on with that for probably the reasons mentioned by the chap above (complexity) - 

eg Source Citations appearing at the People level as well as at the Fact level. The latter makes sense - Facts have Citations - but the former, less obvious - so I became confused as to where I should be putting stuff.

Perhaps Gramps is so flexible you have to design your own workflow and it will let you? I found it hard to find good guidance for good practises for structuring the data, so as a newbie, for now, I'd probably benefit from a little less flexibility. But not totally dumbed down either - I have identified a need to review and rate my research to iron out bad links, so a fact rating scheme was a must to make that a little more manageable.

But Gramps is free and solid so it's still a perfectly good tool for probably lots of people.

I actually found I got on better with Ancestry over FindMyPast for opportunistic discovery at least in the 1850s-now range, so I think I'll keep Ancestry at the core and maintain a FindMyPast sub for side record sets that Ancestry don't hold. I'm in the UK, so the pair of them plus free resources like FreeBMD give pretty good coverage.

Thanks for the suggestions - I may well move over to Gramps later once I get more competent at record management and analysis. I work with people who deal with this type of data at work (but in a historical setting more that pure genealogy) so I should tap them for some guidance too.

Thanks for all the suggestions - none were unappreciated. FTM wasn't mentioned, and I was actually trying to go for Family Historian - but no Mac version. It actually turned up that a comparison review said that FTM scored extremely well for GEDCOM imports as did Family Historian. I decided good GEDCOM accuracy was a must too as I might chuck this data to and from different systems.

All the best, Tim