Web page creation: a future enhancement?

In previous versions of Roots Magic it was possible to generate web pages for placing on one’s own web server. This appears to be absent with v8. Yes, you can generate Ancestry data, but not HTML.

Is there a chance this feature will be added back in?

The RM developers will have to answer this question. However, I would note the following.

RM7 had three ways to generate Web pages.

  1. Pre-RM6 style (static HTML)
  2. RM6 style (dynamic HTML based on static data)
  3. myrootsmagic.com

The pre-RM6 style Web pages had been listed as deprecated and I was not surprised that they are not supported in RM8. Most RM users don’t seem to like this style very much because it can seem old and clunky. The pages look and feel very much like printed reports that have been webified with hot links and that sort of thing. There were actually quite a few different formats available: family group sheets, pedigree charts, pedigree charts with group sheets, ancestor book, descendant book, and alphabetical book. Of RM7’s three styles, these were my personal favorites even if they were probably out of favor with the overall RM7 user base. The pages could be hosted anywhere that hosted Web pages, and a user would have had to identify and use such a hosting service.

To the best of my knowledge, the RM6 style had not been listed as deprecated. I was therefore curious if they would be supported in RM8. They are not supported in RM8. They had a more modern feel than the pre-RM6 style. You pretty much got an individual summary page for each person with facts, parents, spouses, and children all listed on the page. To me, the style was very similar to the style of the data on RM’s mobile app. It wouldn’t surprise me if the design of the RM6 style influenced the design of the mobile app or vice versa. The pages could be hosted anywhere that hosted Web pages, and a user would have had to identify and use such a hosting service.

myrootsmagic.com has the advantage for RM users that the hosting is provided by RM and is free. It’s very much easier for many RM users to use this kind of service than to have to find a Web hosting service. myrootsmatic.com has the disadvantage that it loads your entire RM database to myrootsmagic.com. For many users, their database is far too large to take advantage of the service. Because of that, I don’t use the service. Also, I can’t remember how privacy issues work with myrootsmatic.com. If you were super worried about privacy you would have to make a second copy of your RM database without living people and upload that to myrootsmagic.com instead of uploading your production RM database.

There are a number of third party tools and services to host genealogical data. Most of them use GEDCOM as input. This is the route I’m taking. That way, I am somewhat insulated from the vagaries of what RM or any of its competitors might or might not offer for Web hosting in the future.

We don’t currently have plans to support the RM6 or older style HTML websites. The old style websites were deprecated in RM7 and not continued in RM8. The only websites we offer are the MyRootsMagic websites that we host.

Thanks for the responses!

I kind of figured that would be the case, since as a retired software developer I recognized the HTML pages as “old style”. But they were still useful to me – I used to host my own genealogy on one of my websites (rented servers).

I host my own genealogy on my own servers.
I have been using the Gedsite software to host my RM8 data.
Gedsite only needs to have the GEDCOM file.
Once you learn the ins and outs of the software, you will like it.
www.gedsite.com/en/index.htm