Web based family history software

This Help forum is for issues relates to the latest release (1.4.6). For issues related to beta or git version please use their own Help forum.
Before asking for help please read "How to request help" by clicking on that tab above here.

Question Is webtrees the right tool for my project?

  • SchoutenCC
  • Topic Author
  • Visitor
  • Visitor
10 years 7 months ago #1 by SchoutenCC
Is webtrees the right tool for my project? was created by SchoutenCC
Hi all,
Wondering if you guys can help me decide. I've run webtrees for an extended family tree which works like a charm. But now for something completely different, I'm thinking of starting a more structured project, recreating the population of a specified area over some centuries.

This is, once you start thinking of what you want to do, quite different in a numer of aspects, including (but not limited to...)
* Larger scale (though the number of records itself need not be a problem, searching/identifying individuals might become more cumbersome)
* Many unconnected fragments of 'migrants' who actually did live in the area but did not marry into the population (can be entered of course, but should they affect statistics?)
* I'll be wanting to open up the data for further research by others. Would that be by simply giving away copies of the gedcom or is there a more intelligent way of sharing?
* I'll be wanting to run a lot of custom database/statistics queries to write reports (possibly even leading to publishing a prosopography). Is webtrees' database model open to this? Perhaps through the web application itself?
* I'll be wanting to somehow integrate entire archive documents (church books, civil administration), not linked to an individual but either to a large group or to noone specific.

All in all, questions start popping up. I know I can simply input all the people and backlink from the people to the media files etc. and have some statistics, but is webtrees what I want for a project like this on a larger scale? Should I use a different system? Should I create something custom? Should I integrate webtrees as only a display part of a larger website that shares data amongst components?

I'd appreciate your thoughts in helping me decide this one.

Thanks,
Chris

Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.

  • SchoutenCC
  • Topic Author
  • Visitor
  • Visitor
10 years 7 months ago #2 by SchoutenCC
Replied by SchoutenCC on topic Is webtrees the right tool for my project?
As a small example, what I would like for custom queries/stats is stuff like:
* Return population in given year (temporal cross sections)
* Analyze population size/growth over period of time
* Household size, life expectancy etc. all over period of time
* Analyze population by subgroup (split by religion for example)
* Visualize social networks using graphs

Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.

More
10 years 7 months ago #3 by fisharebest
Replied by fisharebest on topic Is webtrees the right tool for my project?
I'm currently hosting a similar(?) project on hosting.webtrees.net. It's a private site, so there is no public URL.

It is a Dutch museum, and they are recording every known inhabitant of their town. There are currently 300,000 individuals in the database. Many are unrelated. I believe that much of the data comes from church records and similar.

So, webtrees *can* scale up to that size of task.

The "Statistics charts" show the sort of reporting that can be produced. These are all straightforward to write / modify / extend.

Your project will benefit from the changes that are currently planned (facts/events/dates/places in more structured tables) - querying will become much easier and more efficient.

If there is a more appropriate tool for this task, I haven't found it. But I'd be interested to know what options you find.

Greg Roach - greg@subaqua.co.uk - @fisharebest@phpc.social - fisharebest.webtrees.net

Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.

  • SchoutenCC
  • Topic Author
  • Visitor
  • Visitor
10 years 7 months ago #4 by SchoutenCC
Replied by SchoutenCC on topic Is webtrees the right tool for my project?
Hi Greg, thanks for your quick reply. Is there a basic description/howto on modifying or extending the reports I can familiarize myself with?
I'd be really interested to see which dutch museum you're referring to (pm if not allowed to post publicly?) since I'm also doing it for a dutch town so we'd be using the exact same type of source. Are you simply hosting it or full on collaborating?
I'll continue searching various options and let you know what I end up with :-)

PS: you refer to planned changes, do you think you are talking weeks, months or years before release? (very globally speaking, I can wait as I have no defined start/end dates for my project yet)

Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.

Powered by Kunena Forum
}