Technology

A Makeover for Tonia’s Roots

3 June 2010 And More

Regular visitors may have noticed that Tonia’s Roots got a new look today!  I hope you like it as much as I do. Reasons for Redesigning Although I really liked the old look, I was getting somewhat tired of it. The footnote plug-in that I use was not playing well with the old theme and [...]

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Browsing Surnames Here at Tonia’s Roots

3 January 2010 Research

The software that I use to run the genealogy portion of this website (the excellent TNG), is fairly intuitive, but sometimes it helps to have instructions.  All the genealogy data can be found by on the “Family Tree” tab and these instructions apply only to that section of the website. The most common question people [...]

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“Family Tree” Overview

10 November 2009 Research

The “Family Tree” tab (above) contains a database of all my genealogy research.  I thought it would be helpful to provide a navigational overview. The Genealogy Menu is visible in the sidebar whenever you are in the “Family Tree” section.  It contains links to: Surnames includes a list of the top 30 surnames in the [...]

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Photoshopping Headstones

7 August 2009 Technology

The fabulous Lisa Louise Cooke, of the Genealogy Gems podcast, has an article in the September 2009 edition of Family Tree Magazine about transforming gravestones with photo-editing software to bring out the unreadable details.  I admit, I was skeptical about how much improvement could really be made. However, I had a couple of photos from [...]

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Favorite Genealogy Websites

24 July 2009 Technology

These are my top ten favorite websites for genealogy research (I have not included blogs – they will be the subject of another post).   Most are big sites, whether commercial, government, or volunteer-supported, but a few are personal sites that have been particularly helpful in my own research. Ancestry.  The census records alone make the [...]

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10 Things I Love About TNG (My Genealogy Software)

18 July 2009 Technology

My main genealogy software is The Next Generation of Genealogy Sitebuilding.  This software can be used as a stand-alone product or with a desktop genealogy program.  I use Legacy for a few things, but use TNG for all my data entry and storage.  If you want to learn more about the features and benefits of [...]

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WordPress-TNG Mashup a Success

25 October 2008 Technology

Update:  I no longer use the mashup described below.  I’m now using the TNG/Wordpress plug-in available here. ______________________________________________________________________________________ Finally, the new look of the website, with WordPress and TNG integrated is unveiled! As I posted a few weeks ago, I was attempting to follow directions to integrate WordPress and TNG.  I had a few problems, [...]

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Organizing Digital Photos with Metadata

12 October 2008 Technology

As mentioned a few days ago, I recently lost all the photo links in my genealogy database; this also included losing the source data for those photos.  I’ve been uploading my photos, and since I want them to be properly cited, I’ve been searching for the source records.  To aid in future recovery projects, as [...]

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Easy Source Citations

7 October 2008 Research

I spent many years in academia, so proper source citations are important to me.  I love my database software because it automatically builds footnotes, linked to sources, based on form entries; however, I’ve been a bit frustrated because the citation form wasn’t available for photos, documents, etc. I’ve recently discovered EasyBib, which creates MLA citations [...]

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The Moral of the Story. . .

4 October 2008 Research

Since my last post, I’ve decided to completely redo both the genealogy site and the blog and now I’m left with a mess that includes not only a partially functioning database and loss of all my media links, but also a renewed determination to make this thing work like I want it to. The Backstory [...]

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