If you've been working on building your family tree and decide to post it online you'll want to build a great website with the least amount of frustration. Here's a list of the top ten things to consider when building your family tree online:
Respect the privacy of the living. Do not post the names of living relatives. Many people simply do not want their information posted online because of the threat of identity theft. Things like full name and date of birth can be very useful to an identity thief.
Do not post your full name and mother's maiden name. Again mother's maiden name is extremely useful for identity thieves so be careful. Many websites and credit card companies use mother's maiden name as an identity check so don't make it easy for it to be stolen.
Always check your spelling and follow standard grammatical rules. This will help make your website easy to understand.
If you are writing a large amount of text, be sure to break up the paragraphs into smaller units. It will make it easier for your readers. This is because they eye has difficulty tracking each line in a very large body of text.
Do not use music. Keep in mind that many people simply do not like noise on their computer. They may not share your taste in music so it's best to not chase them away with annoying music. Just because you can post music doesn't mean you should.
Avoid "dancing" graphics. They take too long to load and some people would rather move on than wait. Your goal is to get people to take the time to review your family tree so they can see if they are related to you or not. You want to do as much as you can to get them to stay.
The use of lighter colors for your background will make it easier on the eyes of your readers, especially older ones.
Be sure to have a footer that contains a way to contact you. I do not recommend using your own mailing address. (There are just too many crazies out there.) An email address is a good way for people that you do not know to contact you so use it instead of a real mailing address.
Make sure that the footer is on each page of your website. You wouldn't want someone to land on one page, think they are related but then not know how to contact you.
Don't forget to keep your contact information up to date. If you change emailproviders, be sure to update your footer contact information.
If you follow these ten tips you will enhance the likelihood that you will find some long lost relatives. There is always the chance that someone is out there from a branch of your family tree that you many not even be aware of and they may land on your website. Wouldn't it be great to connect?
Building your family tree online is an inexpensive way to share your family history with your family and open up the possibilities of connecting with long lost family members.