A recent post by @BGilkison inspired me to finally create my own Find a Grave source template. So, I thought I’d share it here, in case anyone wants to use it or just see how crazy I am.
Before diving in, I want to say a thank you to both @BGilkison and @chicagomom for some specific inspirations while I created mine.
ADVISORY This post is extremely long and detailed. You might go cross-eyed 
Introduction
I usually start with Evidence Explained as a foundation, which I did here as well. But also pulled from other sources / inspirations, such as Jason Crews.
One area where I’ve deviated from EE is that I don’t bother with the specific photo credit at the end. The reason: many memorials have more than one photograph. In fact, there are often more than one photo of the actual grave marker. (Case in point: my own grandfather.) So whose photo do you cite? What if the grave marker isn’t the one set as the “cover photo”? What about all the other attached photos … how are they to be included in the citation?
In the end, I decided to treat Find a Grave somewhat like an anthology book of short stories, with each memorial being a page. Generally I don’t granularly cite specific elements of a book page, but just the page itself. That’s how I’ve set up my template to perform.
Another variation is that I capture both the creator information and the maintainer information. Continuing with the book analogy, I treat them as though they’re co-authors. The footnote sentence is correspondingly much more complex, since sometimes the creator is still the maintainer and sometimes Find a Grave themselves take over maintenance.
A third variation, inspired by @chicagomom, is dealing with the marker type (grave marker, cenotaph or monument) which can factor into how the memorial and citation are perceived.
Overall the template is designed for “lumping” all the citations under a single Master Source “Find a Grave”. Each citation can then have multiple “facts” linked to it.
The Source Template Definition
Below is the template definition. A few notes:
- Both the main site URL and specific memorial URL are captured. The reason is so that the shorter main site URL can be used in the Bibliography entries without having the longer one.
- The source detail fields are ordered in the way I typically gather the info. They’re also grouped thematically {overall page identifiers/features, location info, creator info, maintainer info, access info}. They could be reordered for a different workflow if that doesn’t align with your style.
- A few fields trigger footnote variations, depending on if they are blank or populated
The footnote sentence
Similar to @BGilkison, my sentence is like a mini-program with several nested “value” switches (the kind that use ? before a field name). It can handle if the creator and maintainer are the same or different, or if taken over by Find a Grave (which doesn’t seem to have a profile ID). If specified it can also insert items like the type of memorial and the relationship of the maintainer to the deceased. It also has some built-in quality-assurance flags to help spot key missing information.
In the following section I’ll break it down, but here is the raw sentence template. It’s a monster:
<i>[WebsiteTitle]</i> ([SiteURL]), <[SiteType:lower]|website presenting database and images>; memorial page <?[MemorialType]| (marked as a [MemorialType]) |>for <?[MemorialName]|[MemorialName]|<b>missing name of deceased</b>>, Memorial ID# <?[MemorialIDNum]|[MemorialIDNum]| <b>memorial ID missing</b>> (<<i>[MemorialURL]</i>|<b>memorial URL missing</b>>) <[AccessManner]|accessed> [AccessDate], referencing <[CemeteryName]><, [CemeteryLocation]>; Memorial created<?[MemorialCreationDate]| on [MemorialCreationDate]| <b>missing creation date</b>><?[CreatorUserName]| by "[CreatorUserName]" <?[CreatorProfileID]| (User ID [CreatorProfileID])|>| <?[CreatorProfileID]| by User ID [CreatorProfileID]|>><?[MaintainerUserName]| and maintained, at the time the memorial was <[AccessManner]|accessed>, by [MaintainerUserName]<?[MaintainerProfileID]| (User ID [MaintainerProfileID])|><?[MaintainerRelationship]| ([MaintainerRelationship] of the deceased)|>. | and maintained, at the time the memorial was <[AccessManner]|accessed>, by the same user<?[MaintainerRelationship]| ([MaintainerRelationship] of the deceased)|>.><? [MarkerPhoto] | Marker photo available on memorial page. (Aside from the names and dates on the marker, other details asserted on the memorial page may not be supported by evidence.) | No marker photo available on memorial page. (Details asserted on the memorial page may not be supported by evidence.)><?[Annotation]| [Annotation]|>
The breakdown
The sentence heavily relies on value switches to flex between possible conditions. Several of the switches end with “|>” which means don’t write anything. For more information on value switches, please see the help (Sentence template language)
Getting started ... the SiteType
After a few Master Source fields, the first variation is the default SiteType value. As an IT professional, the language in the EE template doesn't quite align to my taste. A "database with images" is just a set of relational database tables sitting on a computer somewhere, not directly viewable. To see the data you have to access it, pull it together and view it some way. The revised default SiteType value addresses that by calling out that it's a website presenting that data.Handling marker type
The next bit handles whether it's a grave marker or not. If MemorialType is populated (cenotaph or monument), it puts that in there. If left blank it skips adding that snippet.memorial page <?[MemorialType]| (marked as a [MemorialType]) |>
Memorial basics
These components write out the name of the deceased, memorial ID and URL, flagging if those are missing:for <?[MemorialName]|[MemorialName]|<b>missing name of deceased</b>>, Memorial ID# <?[MemorialIDNum]|[MemorialIDNum]| <b>memorial ID missing</b>> (<<i>[MemorialURL]</i>|<b>memorial URL missing</b>>)
Then there are a few basic fields dealing with the cemetery and location.
The creator/maintainer sentence ... hold on to your hats!
The logic now gets very complex . It creates and joins together three sentence fragments covering when the memorial was created, who created and who is maintaining it. Note that the lack of spaces at certain points is critcal to making sure the resulting sentence looks right.
Creator-Maintainer fragment one: creation date
It begins the sentence fragment by testing for and dealing with creation date ...
Memorial created<?[MemorialCreationDate]| on [MemorialCreationDate]| <b>missing creation date</b>>
Creator-Maintainer fragment two: creator information
Next it adds original creator info to the sentence fragment ...
- It tests to see if the creator name value exists.
- If the name exists then it does nested-testing for the existence of the creator ID.
- If both exists, it creates a sentence fragment where the name is listed with the ID in parenthesis.
- If only the name exists, it omits the ID.
- If the creator name doesn’t exist, it tests for the ID by itself.
- If the ID exists, it creates a sentence fragment with the ID and no parenthesis.
- IF both the name and ID are absent, the creation fragment isn’t created.
<?[CreatorUserName]| by "[CreatorUserName]" <?[CreatorProfileID]| (User ID [CreatorProfileID])|>| <?[CreatorProfileID]| by User ID [CreatorProfileID]|>>
Creator-Maintainer fragment three: maintainer information
The 3rd part of the fragment adds the current maintainer information …
- The logic is similar to the creator fragment, testing for and dealing with name and ID presence / absence.
- The fragment also tests for the existence of relationship info and adds it if present
<?[MaintainerUserName]| and maintained, at the time the memorial was <[AccessManner]|accessed>, by [MaintainerUserName]<?[MaintainerProfileID]| (User ID [MaintainerProfileID])|><?[MaintainerRelationship]| ([MaintainerRelationship] of the deceased)|>. | and maintained, at the time the memorial was <[AccessManner]|accessed>, by the same user<?[MaintainerRelationship]| ([MaintainerRelationship] of the deceased)|>.>
The resulting sentence can handle variations such as a creator who is some general user or has a relationship, a different creator and maintainer, a maintainer with a relationship, Find a Grave as maintainer, etc.
Wrapping up the footnote
The last major Footnote sentence tests whether or not the memorial has a marker photo. It incorporates a variation of the caveat that @BGilkison uses. It also varies the language about reliability if no photo exists for direct inspection.
<? [MarkerPhoto] | Marker photo available on memorial page. (Aside from the names and dates on the marker, other details asserted on the memorial page may not be supported by evidence.) | No marker photo available on memorial page. (Details asserted on the memorial page may not be supported by evidence.)>
The Footnote sentence concludes with a field for any random annotations that were included, such as the memorial being marked as a veteran or famous.
Some examples
All fields empty
A famous person create by someone else but managed by Find a Grave
The glorious Josephine Baker. Note the odd characters in the pasted URL. The original had a letter with a diacritical mark.
Creator and maintainer are different
One of my 5ggfathers. Note that the maintainer’s username and ID are the same.
Creator and maintainer are different, relationship info available
One of my great-grandmothers. I manage the profile and the relationship is noted.
Creator is maintainer and relationship info available
A fictious example of the first human casualty on Mars, created and maintained by his daughter. A monument because no remains were recovered. No photo exists yet because it hasn’t been transmitted yet.
Conclusion
If you’ve made it this far on my post thank you for your time and attention!
I hope you find it useful. Or at least good for a laugh. (Does anyone know what the longest single forum post record is? 
)
. I do know about the user source template submission. But there have been some recent new user posts about sources & creating custom templates. I thought it might be useful to them and future new users to see how one is built … a sort of behind-the-scenes look.