In June’s meeting, I will give an introduction to TNG (The Next Generation of Genealogy) software. I will discuss how you can add TNG to your genealogy experience. I will cover in detail what TNG is, and how it can improve your genealogy experience.  TNG is an alternative to keeping paper records and to using services such as Ancestry that has been around since 2001 and is used by over 15,000 genealogists.  As a family historian, I have used TNG  for eight years.  In the last few years, I have started to use TNG features to support evidence-based genealogy. This post is a pre-read for the June session.  Please contact me if you have questions.

Most genealogists support the need for good organization of their research. Quite often we are asked “paper or digital”; increasingly our answer is “digital” or I wish I could go “digital”. In the digital world, two options are SaaS or self-hosting. SaaS is an acronym for Software as a Service, many of the services that resemble cable TV are SaaS purchases. TNG is a self-hosting alternative. TNG software costs $33 and you can expect to pay $15 every other year or so, to upgrade to get the newest features. In the self-hosting world, you will need to pick a domain name, and pay for it (anywhere from $6 to $50 per year), additionally, you will need to pay an internet service provider (ISP) to host your site. Typically, this hosting will include several email accounts, storage space, databases, and in some cases the ability to sell items online. The charge to host a site can range from $5 to $15 per month ($60 – $180 per year).  Let’s add these things up:

You will want to prepare audio and video files to include in your site, so you may need software to do this, I use avs4you, it costs about $60.

You will need to install several free open source tools, these include:
Filezilla Client:  {to move files between your PC and your site}
VLC Media Player:  {I use this for taking snapshots from videos}
IRFANVIEW: {I use this to crop and resize photos}

Now that you’ve committed to spending $15 bucks per month and learned how to use six new software products; let’s look at the genealogy side of things.

First, why TNG. Genealogy is YOUR hobby where you research YOUR ancestors, so why give control to others?  Second, TNG software supports everything a reasonable genealogist wants to do with their research. Third, TNG has a vast network of users (>15,000) knowledgeable about both TNG and genealogy willing to help if needed.

My Site is an example of how you can organize your research and make it available to your relatives in a convenient way. Before you embark on creating your site, look at some reviews of the software, look at some sites other than mine, and investigate hosting.

Click here to read my presentation on TNG, The Next Generation of genealogy software