Dopers who do genealogy, could I get your help? (website testing)

Mundane Pointless Stuff I Must Share (MPSIMS)
#1

I’m developing a web site for genealogists, and I’ve gotten to the point that I’ve done all of the testing that I can do myself, and I would appreciate it if anyone with that interest will help me with further testing.

Right now, all you can do on the website is:
Create a new user id
Load a genealogy data file from another genealogy program.
Map the loaded data.
Functions 2 and 3 require that you create a user id first!

The web site is here: Spreading Roots

Sample Map - note that the sample is not “live”.

In order for a person to load data and map it, they will need genealogy software that they have entered family data into, and that software needs to be able to export data for other programs. This is the file that you will load.
If you are willing to test, all you need to do is create a user id, load a genealogy data file (GEDCOM format, if you know what that is), and then map it. I guess the most important part is that I would like feedback on the process, and to know if you get any errors or have any problems loading your file.

Note that the load is a fairly long complex process, which involves the option to fill in data at a couple of different points. In addition, if you’ve got a lot of data in your family tree, it make take some time to transfer the file to the server.

On creating a user id - passwords are being stored in a data base but are* not being encrypted*. This means that I can see the password you use to log in to the site. So don’t use your SDMB password, or the password you use for other sites.

This thread approved by Lynn Bodoni, et. al

#2

I just registered. I’ll play with it when I get home from work.

#3

Well I just tried it and got the following error:

#4

I tried a number of different times and couldn’t get it to work. The file only has 75 names and is one family. I have been using PAF so I wouldn’t think the gedcom would be bad.

#5

Would you be able to open the file and tell me what is on line one? Feel free to x out any names.

#6

Here are the first few lines, up until the first name.

0 HEAD
1 SOUR PAF
2 NAME Personal Ancestral File
2 VERS 5.2.18.0
2 CORP The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
3 ADDR 50 East North Temple Street
4 CONT Salt Lake City, UT 84150
4 CONT USA
1 DEST PAF
1 DATE 6 Aug 2010
2 TIME 09:25:34
1 FILE test.ged
1 GEDC
2 VERS 5.5
2 FORM LINEAGE-LINKED
1 CHAR UTF-8
1 LANG English
0 @I31@ INDI

I can send you the whole file if you’d like, it’s not my family and I believe they are all deceased.

#7

I would appreciate that, send it to zyada @ prodigy.net

#8

Email sent, let me know if you can get it to work or not.

#9

I’m trying using a fairly small .ged file.

#10

just tried a another smaller .ged I just exported from PAF 5.0. Here is the result:

Validating File
Invalid format at line 1
Sorry, this system is currently unable to upload file: syntax error

#11

Ok, I’ve got the PAF problem fixed - this program is putting a couple of non-ascii bytes at the beginning of the file, (which other programs seem to handle ok), so I’ve filtered those out.

#12

hmmm. doesn’t like the gedcom I generated from a tree on ancestry.com

#13

Hmm, one bug, and three files that weren’t following the file format standard (and a need to make my map key a bit smarter still)…

I’ve got the loader to handle all of the files that I’ve been made aware of. If you’d like, try loading them again and tell me how they work now.