Ancestors Now provides a free service for genealogists of all levels and experience to easily upload their genealogy data and publish it as an Ancestors Now Tree. Ancestors Now Trees consist of linked profile, source, and support pages built for each person and source in your database where all the relevant information about them is collected. Examples can be found listed under the Tree Ring below. Currently the website supports GEDCOM file import only. Most popular genealogy applications, whether for a PC or a Mac, allow exporting directly to GEDCOM files.

   Using the service is simple and free. First, register here. Once registered, you will receive an email with a link to activate your account. Log in, and you will be able to access your dashboard where you can upload your GEDCOM file and build your tree. In most cases, the tree takes only a couple of minutes to build. For those wanting to take advantage of some of the more advanced features, select the advanced configuration and step through the wizard. A FAQ is available, along with a forum that can be used to ask questions, and a blog where I wax poetic about updates and the many available features (The Blog and Forum will require a seperate registration to post, anyone can read.).

   The mission of the Ancestors Now website is to help genealogists present their data in a way that is more useful, more usable and provides a better aid for advancing research. Many of the features provided encourage better documentation and help find problems and inconsitencies with your data. We also go to great lengths to retain as much of your data as possible when building your tree, and try to inform you at every step what data may not have been imported completely.

   The Ancestors Now Tree service is totally free and without advertising. It supports a number of privacy options including hiding all data for living persons and allows you to directly remove your GEDCOM file and/or your tree, and of course, your free membership at any time. You retain all rights to your data. Ancestors Now will never sell or give it away. You can even configure your tree at a private controlled URL and/or disable search engine indexing if you wish.

   The Ancestors Now website supports several important extentions to the GEDCOM standard that must suffice until a new, better and inclusive standard is agreed upon by the governing bodies. The FAQ explains these in detail. Some examples are:

1. 1. numerous privacy options for your data
2. 2. allowing parental association source references
3. 3. indicating conclusion models for source references
4. 4. allows categorizing sources using 3 criteria
5. 5. setting certainty assessments for all claims
6. 6. allowing multiple linked quotations per source
7. 7. setting source quotations page numbers
8. 8. the ability to indicate claims are disproved
9. 9. indicating marriage order
10. 10. setting census enumeration types

Your GEDCOM file is not required to use these extensions, but if found they will present a richer experience. In addition, Ancestors Now trees supports setting character sets and other HTML metadata, and limited localization of strings. They also allow overriding the CSS and permit image hotlinking to external websites for photographs and source records. All individual profile pages include a fully scrollable, bi-directional, 6-generation family chart. Ancestors Now Trees can be configured to estimate birth years when missing, analyze your database for inconsistencies in your data, build an ancestor list and up to 5 descendant lists for a single individual, configure fully and display the Ancestors Now Census Table, show dates in long or short format, and turn on or off the many different report pages, which also include the following: a latest updates page, source pages, article pages, timeline pages for all events, and military events, an immigrants page, a nobility page, location pages, external links, and a statistics page.

My name is Tim Forsythe. I am a genealogist as well as a web developer and software engineer, and have been creating free tools for genealogists for over 10 years. Some of these can be found under the Tools menu on the Blog. There you will find VGed, a Windows based GEDCOM validator, and VGedX, a WIN32 DOS based version. VGed and VGedX both support GEDCOM 5.5, 5.5.1, and 5.6. VGedX will even generate small GEDCOM test files that include all possible tags and can be used by developers to test their GEDCOM importing support. I am also the creator of GREnDL 2.0, The Genealogical Record Exchange and Description Language.

   My passion for genealogy started when I was young, but I only began serious research in 1999. I began blogging on the subject a couple of years ago. My goal, besides learning from more experienced genealogists whenever I can, is to help explain to those interested successful research paradigms, and show how they can be used to best present their data.

   We are currently in beta. Beta is the early state of a project when it is still in active development and undergoing daily changes. During this period, things can break easily and availability of service can flucuate. In general, it is not quite ready for prime time. I expect this project to remain in beta for a while longer I do my best to verify changes, but sometimes my best efforts fall short. You can help out by letting me know via email or on the support page anytime you see something that is not right. If you would like to be an official Beta Tester, let me know, and I will find things for you to test out.

1. 1. test out user style sheets
2. 2. test out image hotlinking to external sites for photographs and source images
3. 3. suggest areas that need better documentation (i.e. FAQ)