Frequently Asked Questions
Why don't my web pages look the same after I transfer them to my website?
If I choose to exclude living individuals, why are deceased individuals also being excluded?
Why does GED-GEN generate more than one HTML file per family?
Why don't the links I have to GED-GEN web pages point to the correct families anymore?
Why doesn't the link to my home page bring up my home web page?
Why doesn't the link to a biography page bring up the biography web page?
Can I copy my generated web pages to a folder different from the destination folder I specified?
Why do I get an error message when I try to use the View or Help commands?
Why does nothing happen when I try to use the View or Help commands?
Why do the View and Help buttons bring up my web page editor?
Why does the alignment and formatting of my web pages look terrible?
Why can't I play video or audio items in my multimedia galleries?
Why does nothing happen when I click a link to move between family pages?
1. Why don't my web pages look the same after I transfer them to my website?
When transferring your web pages to your website, remember to transfer the Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) file. GED-GEN automatically creates this file in your destination folder. It is usually named base.css, but will have the same file name prefix as the other pages (e.g., grpbase.css). If this file is missing, your family pages will appear without the colors, fonts, text positioning, and background image you specified.
Also remember to transfer all associated image files (.gif and .jpg) and your biography and narrative web pages to your website. These files must be transferred to the same relative folder paths on your website as they were to the destination folder on your own computer. If these files are missing or if they are in a different folder, the links to them will result in a "Page not found" error message.
2. Why do the surname and index pages indicate there are more families than are actually in my GEDCOM file?
Your GEDCOM file contains individuals who are not associated with any families. Since these individuals do not appear as children or as spouses on any family page, GED-GEN creates a family page for them. The only way to navigate to one of these "extra" family pages is via the individual's name on the index page.
This situation may occur when you use your favorite genealogy program and do not enter a spouse or children for an individual. It may also occur if you restrict which individuals are exported to the GEDCOM file. Suppose you have entered an individual and their spouse to form a family, and only the spouse is living. When you later export only deceased individuals to a GEDCOM file, the spouse is not included. In this case the exported individual is not associated with any family.
3. Why do the surname and index pages indicate there are fewer individuals and/or families than are actually in my GEDCOM file?
If you choose to exclude living individuals on the Features tab, then living individuals will not appear at all. In this case GED-GEN will only process, and count, deceased individuals. If all individuals in a family are living, the whole family is excluded. An individual is usually considered living if there is no date of death specified.
4. If I choose to exclude living individuals, why are deceased individuals also being excluded?
You have not entered dates in the date of death fields. GED-GEN usually considers an individual deceased if the date of death is not empty. If you do not know when an individual died, specify UNKNOWN before you export your GEDCOM file. How you do this depends on your genealogy program. Some may use the terms DEAD or DECEASED. If it is another term, you should also run GED-GEN and click the Options button. Then select the Program tab. On the Program tab, select the GEDCOM tab and enter the term your genealogy program uses in place of DEAD or DECEASED.
You can also enable a cut-off year under "Privacy Filters" on the Features tab. Individuals born in or before the cut-off year are considered deceased. This method is less accurate because such individuals may in fact still be living.
5. Why does GED-GEN generate more than one HTML file per family?
If you choose to include source citations on the Features tab, you have the option of displaying footnotes either at the bottom of the family page, or in a separate frame window at the bottom of your browser. If you choose to display them in a separate frame window, then GED-GEN generates three Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) files per family.
The first file instructs the browser to use two frame windows. The second file is the family page that is displayed in the top frame window. The third file contains the footnotes displayed in the bottom frame window. If you want to generate fewer files, then select the option for displaying footnotes at the bottom of the family page. Then only one HTML file is generated per family. It contains both the family page and the footnotes.
6. Why don't the links I have to GED-GEN web pages point to the correct families anymore?
If you include links to GED-GEN web pages on your own web pages, they may become invalid if you re-generate using a different GEDCOM file. Each time you export a GEDCOM file, your favorite genealogy program may renumber the families. This may happen if you add or delete families or you change which individuals are exported to the GEDCOM file.
GED-GEN uses a family reference number as the file name for each family page it generates. If this reference number changes, the name of the family web page file will also change. Consequently the link you define on your own web page must change too. You should always test the links in your own web pages after you re-generate web pages. Note the links in and between GED-GEN web pages will always be correct since they are re-generated each time.
7. Why doesn't the link to my home page bring up my home web page?
8. Why doesn't the link to a biography page bring up the biography web page?
Chances are you have not specified a proper relative folder path for your home page or biography pages. GED-GEN assumes relative paths for the links on the web pages it generates. Once you transfer your web pages to your website at your Internet Service Provider (ISP), an absolute folder path would probably not work. For instance if you specify your home page file as "\public_html\index.html," GED-GEN will generate a link using that path and file. However at your ISP, the "public_html" folder may really be "\users\account\yourname\public_html."
A relative folder path is always relative to the destination folder you specify on the Files tab in GED-GEN. Thus if your destination folder is "C:\public_html\groups" and your home page is in "C:\public_html," the proper relative path is "..\index.html." The link on a web page in "\public_html\groups" would move up one folder to find "index.html." This link will work on your computer and also after you transfer your web pages to your ISP.
The easiest way to specify a relative path is to click next to the input field where you specify a folder or file name. This assumes you have already specified a destination folder.
9. Why aren't my image files visible?
10. Why isn't my web page background image visible?
Chances are you have not specified a proper relative folder path for your image files or the background image file. See the answer to the preceding question. Verify that the image file exists in the relative folder path you specified. Also remember your image files when you transfer your GED-GEN pages to your website at your Internet Service Provider (ISP).
11. Can I copy my generated web pages to a folder different from the destination folder I specified?
Probably not, but you can specify a different destination folder and then re-generate your web pages. GED-GEN uses relative folder paths when it generates the links between your family web pages. If you were to copy the generated files to another folder, chances are the relative paths would be different and the links would be invalid.
12. Why do I get an error message when I try to use the View or Help commands?
When you click the View or Help buttons, GED-GEN attempts to launch your Internet browser to display a web page. An Internet browser is a program like Microsoft Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox. You may see the message: "This file either does not exist, it is not accessible, or there is no Internet browser associated with files of this type."
First, the web page it is trying to display may not exist. If you click View before you have generated any web pages, there may not yet be a file to display. If you click Help, you may have since deleted or moved the help files, or you moved the GED-GEN program without moving the help files. Secondly, a file is inaccessible if another program has it opened exclusively. This might occur if you are editing a file with another program and then try to view it at the same time using GED-GEN.
Otherwise your computer may not be configured to associate an Internet browser with web page files. Normally files with an extension of ".html" are automatically associated with an Internet browser. To make this association, follow your Internet browser's instructions, or configure the file types in your Windows operating system. Check your computer's help facility for instructions.
13. Why does nothing happen when I try to use the View or Help commands?
There is another application running that is intercepting GED-GEN's request to open a web page (.html) file. Close other running applications, one at a time, and try the View or Help command again until you determine the offending application. When you close that application, your Internet browser should display the web page properly.
This behavior is due to the Windows operating system. The file association for HTML files may be configured to use Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE). When a request is made to open an HTML file, Windows uses DDE to send the request to any running application that can process it. If another application does process it, Windows does not start your Internet browser as GED-GEN expects.
For example, Microsoft Photo Editor accepts a request to open a web page, but it does not display it. Since it accepts the request, Windows does not open the Internet browser and the View or Help command appears to do nothing. If you close Microsoft Photo Editor and try the command again, it should launch your Internet browser to display the web page.
14. Why do the View and Help buttons bring up my web page editor?
GED-GEN assumes that web pages are associated with an Internet browser. Your web page editor has changed this behavior so that files with an ".html" extension cause it to open the file. For best results, change the file types on your computer so that web pages are associated with your Internet browser. Or, once the file is loaded in your web page editor, use the editor's viewer feature to see the web page.
15. Why does the alignment and formatting of my web pages look terrible?
If the text on your family pages is misaligned, or appears centered on the page rather than left-justified, or if some words appear exceptionally small or large, chances are it's the headers and/or footers you specified. Click the Options button, then the Headers tab. If you included any HTML formatting, be sure that you specify a closing tag for every beginning tag that requires one. For instance if you centered your family page header using <div align="center">, then don't forget the corresponding </div> closing tag. Also check that any <font> has a closing </font>.
16. What is the ">>>" symbol I see on some of my family pages?
This symbol is a placeholder for a link to another family page. It is displayed in place of a spouse's name, when that name should not or cannot be displayed. This occurs in two cases.
If an individual's spouse is living and you have chosen to exclude living individuals, then ">>>" is displayed as the link to the individual's family page. The living spouse will not appear on that family page, and therefore his or her name is not used as a link to the page.
If a child on a family page has children, ordinarily the name of the child's spouse is used as a link to their family page. However, if the name of the spouse is unknown (i.e., empty), then ">>>" is displayed as the link. To avoid this situation, specify UNKNOWN for the names of any unknown husbands or wives in your family data file. Using this convention also allows unknown individuals to appear in the index.
17. Why can't I play video or audio items in my multimedia galleries?
When you test your generated web pages by viewing them on your local computer, you may not be able to play the video or audio files in your multimedia galleries. Your browser shows a question mark where the video or audio should display. Other types of multimedia files might be affected as well.
This behavior is by design. Due to security concerns, many Internet browsers restrict access to local files on your computer. The browser will not play certain files to avoid running any malicious programs, even though the files are your own video and audio files.
Once you transfer your pages to your website at your Internet Service Provider (ISP), and view them over the Internet, you should be able to play your video and audio multimedia items.
18. Why does nothing happen when I click a link to move between family pages?
If you are using Microsoft Internet Explorer and you click on a link in a family page (or surname or index page), you may find that nothing happens. The web page doesn't appear and there is no error indication displayed by the browser.
This problem only occurs if your web pages are on your local computer, before you transfer them to your website. Internet Explorer implements tighter security controls. It will not open a web page that is located on your local computer if it contains active content, such as scripts. However once you transfer your web pages to your website on the Internet, you and your visitors should have no problem viewing them.
In order to test the links on your pages before you transfer them to your website, you must tag each web page with the "Mark of the Web." This is easily done in GED-GEN by clicking the Options button. Then click the Headers tab followed by the Advanced tab and then <HEAD> Block. In the After <HEAD> field there, type the following line:
<!-- saved from url=(0014)about:internet -->
Now click the Multimedia Pages tab and then <HEAD> Block and repeat the above line in the After <HEAD> field there too.
This will mark each web page generated as if it were downloaded from the
Internet and thus bypass the local machine security mode. For more information,
visit the Microsoft Developer's Network 
and search for
MOTW.
19. How do I add an actual website to my multimedia gallery?
You can add an actual (live) website by creating a "local" web page that automatically redirects the browser to your desired website. When a visitor views the slide page containing this multimedia item, they will see the actual website.
Use a text editor like Windows Notepad and create a web page file, say Lincoln.html. Enter the following lines as an example. You may wish to copy and paste these lines rather than re-type them. Change the two links to be the address of your desired website.
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html><head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<title>Sample HTML Redirection</title>
<script type="text/javascript" language="JavaScript">
<!-- Begin
function Redirect() {
window.document.location.replace("http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_(president)")
}
// End -->
</script>
</head>
<body onLoad="Redirect()">
<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_(president)">Click here</a>
for a Wikipedia article on Abraham Lincoln.</p>
</body></html>
In your favorite genealogy program, add Lincoln.html as a multimedia item in an individual's scrapbook (or a family's scrapbook). Then export a GEDCOM file and run GED-GEN. When you generate your web pages with multimedia galleries enabled, your "local" web page will be included like any other multimedia item.
A visitor to your website who views your multimedia gallery will see the actual website on the slide page for this item.
The above method uses JavaScript to retrieve the actual web page. Your visitor must be connected to the Internet, and have JavaScript enabled. If JavaScript is not enabled, they can click the link directly. There are other ways to cause automatic redirection, but this example gives the general idea.