Alan
E. Mann, AG
alan.familyhistory@gmail.com Accredited
Genealogist
Grainger Family History Fair www.alanmann.com/articles
Internet
Basics
Helpful Hints
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.
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 - www.genforum.com. Locate a
message board for ancestral surname.
§
Basic sites – www.familysearch.org, www.ancestry.com, www.usgenweb.org
§
Searching – Google, Ask, Live, Yahoo
§
Directories - LinkPendium, SearchSystems, GenSleuth, CyndisList, State Archives
When
searching for family information on the Internet, consider searching by:
