FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions

Gedcom is a file format created for storing and communicating genealogical information. It is supported by many good family tree applications.

AncestorsOnline.co.uk allows you to import and export information in the Gedcom format.

The source is where you found the information. Examples include Certificates, Censuses, Family Knowledge and Grave Stones.

Citing sources has two purposes, it serves to remind you where you learnt the information and it also gives others an idea of the reliability of that information.

The Documents feature allows you to put important documents relating to your family online. Examples included Wills, Obituaries, Newspaper Articles, Letters or Diaries.

Documents can be accessed independently through the 'Documents' link on the main page of your site. However they can also be linked to the records of individuals who are directly or indirectly mentioned in them. This means visitors won't overlook those documents relating to the people and families they are interested in.

You can give this password to family and other researchers allowing you to share your entire tree without making it publicly available.

N.B. The password must be changed from the default of 'changeme' for it to work.

AncestorsOnline.co.uk maintains a directory of hosted sites which is accessible from the AncestorsOnline.co.uk homepage. You may opt out of this directory by selecting the Ex-Directory option in the config menu.

Please be aware that this directory enables faster indexing of sites by search engines. By opting out of the directory you acknowledge that this may result in your site not being available via a search engine. Indexing by search engines is desirable if you wish to make contact with others researching the same families.

You remain responsible for your data and what information is made available to the public. We provide a living person filter allowing you to hide sensitive details of living individuals automatically, based on their year of birth, or manually on an individual by individual basis.

All data with the exception of census information, documents and photographs are exported to the Gedcom. Work is under way to find a method whereby census and transcription data can be exported as notes.

The import feature is designed to import all data that your AncestorsOnline site is able to display, including but not limited to birth, baptism/christening, death, burial, marriage, occupation, notes and sources for the afore-mentioned.

N.B. This may not include all data that your gedcom file contains! The Gedcom format is far from ideal, we do our best to accommodate all of the possible formats of a Gedcom but some Family Tree Software deviates from, or interprets differently the Gedcom standard. If you find some data is not included during an import please contact support and we may be able to improve the software to handle your gedcom.

If you should make a mistake and are unable to correct it yourself from your own records we may be able, subject to a charge, to restore the data. Restoration of backups on a site per site basis is not something we can offer free due to the time and work involved. Contact support for more information.

We make four backups, at six hour intervals throughout the day. In the event of a hardware failure or other such problems on our end no more than 6 hours of information should be lost.

Yes for the Gallery, no for Headshots. There is a limit of 10 MB for the gallery on each site. Images are re-compressed when they are uploaded to help you get the most out of the space available. As a rough guide, during beta testing it was calculated that 200-300 photographs of suitable dimensions could be added within that limit.

See the following page for a list of plans and prices: Registration and Prices

Currently we only accept Credit or Debit card payments. Payments are processed through PayPal (Europe) Ltd.

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Your card details are not held by or seen by AncestorsOnline. Payments are accepted by PayPal (Europe) Ltd and then that money is paid by PayPal to us. PayPal store your details on their secure servers, details can be found here on their website: Paypal security statement

If you cancel within the trial period you will not be billed and your access to the site will be removed at the end of the trial period.

If you cancel after the trial period has ended you will only be billed for the current subscription term and your access to the site will be removed at the end of the subscription term.

If you are new to researching your family tree and wish to know where to start the following sites may of be use:

The Genuki Guide to Getting Started - http://www.genuki.org.uk/gs/
Barry Rucks Frequently Asked Questions - http://homepage.ntlworld.com/barry.ruck/index.html
FreeCEN Censuses 1841-1891 - http://www.freecen.org.uk
Ancestry.co.uk, Pay per View records site - http://www.ancestry.co.uk
FreeBMD Births, Marriages and Deaths 1837-1910 - http://www.freebmd.org.uk
UKBMD Local indexes for several counties - http://www.ukbmd.org.uk