Alan E.
Mann, A.G.
alan.familyhistory@gmail.com
Accredited
Genealogist
Internet
Basics:
Using
the Internet Effectively
This session is about
effectively using the Internet in your family history endeavors.
What
is a URL? The short answer is an Internet address. You should recognize the
components of a URL. This will help you understand what’s going on and give you
a chance of finding things when something goes wrong. Look at the following
address:
http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/6266/index.htm
There
are nine components to that address.
1) http – stands for HyperText Transfer Protocol. This tells the computer what
“language” to use to interpret the machine code it retrieves.
2) :// -- this indicates
that the desired file is not located on the local computer, but on a network
(with a drive letter, this would refer to a network drive).
3) www – the name the company gave to their computer (students
often name computers Bertha, Gertrude, etc. and the address becomes
Bertha.byu.edu instead of “www”). www is the
default name for a computer that has not been given a different name. BYU Idaho
named their genealogy server Abish.
4) geocities – the name of the company or
organization that owns the computer with the information you want.
5) com – This is the type of organization that owns the
computer. “com” is for commercial company, “org” is
for non-profit organization, “edu” is for an
educational institution, etc.
6) /Heartland – the name of the directory on the www
computer at Geocities.com
7) /6266 – this is a sub-directory or sub-folder
8) index.htm – this is the name of the file you are asking your
computer to load when you click on the link above.
The point is that
when you enter a URL or click on an address, you are directing your computer to
load a file located a computer somewhere in the world. The address specifies
the computer, where it is on that computer, and what the name of the file name
is. Because the natural language of the web is http, and Internet browser
assume that you are not looking for a file on your own computer (if you are,
use the “open file” command on the File pull-down menu), browsers will
automatically insert http:// -- you don’t have to type that. Just leave it out.
The
computer name, company name, and organization type are not case sensitive. familysearch.org and FamilySearch.org are the same thing.
However, the directories and file name ARE case sensitive. Index.htm is NOT the
same thing as index.htm. Both are different from INDEX.htm However, some web
servers remove capital letters. THOSE servers do not distinguish between
index.htm and Index.htm. Generally, you don’t know which are case sensitive and
which aren’t, so as a general rule use the same case as you see in a link you
are given.
There
are certain defaults. With most organizations, you can leave off the www – that
is, geocities.com will work just as well as www.geocities.com.
Internet
Explorer (IE) is the MicroSoft product which displays
web pages. This type of program is called a web browser. There are several web
browsers available. IE is currently at version 7. It’s
chief competition is FireFox, currently in version 2.
The FireFox browser offers several advantages,
including reduced security risk. You can download FireFox
free from www.mozilla.com.
Genealogy
searching
Some
basic sites to use
§
Roots Surname List at http://rsl.rootsweb.com/cgi‑bin/rslsql.cgi.
§
Genforum at www.genforum.com. Look for a message board for your ancestor's
surname.
When
searching for family information on the Internet, consider searching by:
