Free websites

Hi folks. I used to have 2 family tree websites with yahoo/geocities, but yahoo teemed up with Bt and the geo' websites can't be edited anymore.

So, can anyone recommend a good, free website provider and hosting? I had a look at 1&1 which seem cheap and reasonable but wondered if you folks knew or used any others.

Could you use Blogger for something like that? Maybe a bit limited ...

Looks like weebly.com would be pretty good, though I've never used them.

Hi Ben. Thanks for that, but as for blogging, no, I would overload the system, there's such a lot of info plus photos etc.

I'll go have a look at weebly. BTW, two of my ancestors, going back to the mid 1600s, were shipped off to the New World, and I've been in touch with their descendants in the US.

Honestly Stardesk you are far better off going for very cheap paid hosting and getting yourself a proper domain.  That way you cannot be locked out or have all your hard work deleted.
I use dataflame http://www.dataflame.com/index.html and have a monthly plan - dont know if they are doing that at the moment but £30 a year is next to nothing.

stardesk wrote:Hi Ben. Thanks for that, but as for blogging, no, I would overload the system, there's such a lot of info plus photos etc.

I'll go have a look at weebly. BTW, two of my ancestors, going back to the mid 1600s, were shipped off to the New World, and I've been in touch with their descendants in the US.

Very cool, I always wanted to try that -- I traced one line of ancestry back to the late 1700s but hit a wall and never got back to it. I think there was some illegitimacy that made it tough to find the truth beyond that point

Sphinx's advice on this is going to be better than mine, I think it just comes down to whether you mind having to reconstruct the site yet again, somewhere else, if/when your free host goes away or does something else you don't like.

Its not quite as simple as reconstructing the site when a host goes down. There will be broken back links (everyone who liked your site will no longer be able to find it) search engine problems (because it may appear you are trying to use the same content in 2 different places) and may extend to issues over ownership of content - some free hosts have bits in the small print that allow them to use your content for their own advantage.

Morning folks.
Quite right Sphinx, some web providers will pass some of your content on to other companies, for money of course. I know that one or two do this with one's ancestry websites, some of the info is sold on to Ancestry.com
A similar thing happens with our phone numbers, the numbers are sold to cold-callers and other junk calls. I don't think anything is safe these days.
I'll have a look at 'dataflame'

Ben, illegitimacy is a problem when researching, you can never be sure that the person/s you're researching are genuine offspring or illegit, especially in years gone by. These days such things are recorded on birth certificates, ie: the father's name. Even so, researching does come up with some surprises. Such as two chaps in our family line, who would fit into a Charles Dickens story. In the 1700s they were caught, (in London), pickpocketing and were sentenced to transportation to Australia, who's descendants still live in Aus'. You never know what your going to come across.

There are enough women leaving the space for father blank to continue the confusion - and just cause Mrs Bloggs puts Mr Bloggs as the father does not mean the genes didnt come from Mr Milkman.

lol, despite modern recording, you never really know who was the father.

Ben, type into your search box 'Early migrations to America.' As you've drawn a blank they may well have European, British or Irish connections and migrated. Obviously I don't know but, if you are of African decent then that presents a problem. If you let me know perhaps I can be of more help, having spent a lot of time researching all manner of available information. Do it by a private message if need be.

Thanks, star -- I'd have to dig up the info first (I can't remember where I wrote it down, rrrr) but if I can find it I might enlist your help.

See the other thread -- my genome is all-European. Which surprised me, I expected to find a small amount of Native American or African. I could still have ancestors who were, I just didn't get their genes, though.