Hi, I’m Timothy de Paris, a former software developer, now a researcher and writer.
During the COVID lockdowns, I found myself without much to do. To occupy my time I turned to the hobby of genealogy — and was quickly hooked. After almost a year of full-time research, I realised that I needed a better way of sharing my discoveries with family. Having a geographically dispersed family, a website seemed the best option.
Following an extensive search, I didn’t find any software that could help me create the type of website I was looking for. Existing options required family members to register (and sometimes pay!) for complicated genealogy websites – or to scroll through endless pages of unengaging exported ancestor profiles and tree diagrams. The best option available seemed to be simply publishing my own website from scratch.
I started building a WordPress website, integrating dynamic functionality including maps, timelines, and fan charts. However, I quickly grew tired of the repetitive work of building each ancestor’s profile page, individual record pages, and linking between all the relevant content. So, I created the first version of WordPress code which automated the process of building the website for me, based on the records I uploaded.
Having seen many other genealogists express a desire for similar publishing capabilities, I decided to develop FamilyStory into a plugin that anyone could install and use. And so, the FamilyStory WordPress plugin was born.
As I continue to develop and improve FamilyStory, I am working to these goals:
- Telling my ancestors’ stories – providing more than just genealogical facts and diagrams, using interactive maps, timelines, and imagery to give a more rounded view of the little we know about our ancestors’ lives.
- Focusing on accuracy – including sources for all published facts and displaying confidence ratings for my research, allowing others to make up their own mind with all the available information to hand.
- Simplifying the publishing process – with genealogical record templates, extracting the key facts from available records and automatically publishing this information to all relevant places – ancestor profile pages, family group pages, record pages, etc.
- Securing stories for future generations – as FamilyStory is free and open-source software, your website is not dependent on a paid subscription, or the will of a for-profit company. You can host your website wherever you choose. Additionally, FamilyStory websites are compatible with web archiving tools including Internet Archive.
I hope that other genealogists will find FamilyStory useful. If you’re interested in using FamilyStory and need some more guidance, or if you want to help make FamilyStory better, please get in touch!