Second Site News #017

Second Site Version 1.7 (Build 0) Released

The latest release of Second Site has the following new or changed features:

• The new Relationships feature calculates relationships and adds them to person page entries.

  For example, let's assume that many people included on a site are related to "John Doe" and "Jane Sample". To display those relationships, designate both John and Jane as relationship targets. The results would look similar to the following mock person page entries.

  Robert Doe
  Relationship: Father of John Doe

  Wilma Stone
  Relationship: Mother of John Doe

  Alan Sample
  Relationship: Father of Jane Sample

  Betty Smith
  Relationship: Mother of Jane Sample

  Robert Alan Doe
  Relationship: Son of John Doe
  Relationship: Son of Jane Sample

  (The links above won't work because this is just an example. In a real site, the links would lead to the person page entry for the given person.)

  Robert Alan Doe is related to both John Doe and Jane Sample and so Second Site shows both relationships. Also, it is not evident from the example, but Second Site calculates the closest blood relationship between the people involved.

• The new People.Suppress Marriages for Living People property lets users suppress marriage and divorce information for living people. This property modifies the behavior of the existing People.Suppress Details for Living People property.
• The new Exhibits.Output Folder property tells Second Site where to copy the exhibit files during the Make Site process. It is now possible to separate the exhibit files from the HTML files that make up the site. Separating exhibit files from page files may make it easier—and faster—to synchronize the files on your PC with the files you upload to your web site.
• The new User Data Folder preference allows users to remove the files that control certain advanced customizations from the Second Site program folder. This makes it easier to maintain those customizations across Second Site program updates.
• The User Links and Flag Icons features have been improved. You now use a list control to add, edit, reorder, and delete User Links and Flag Icons. You can define as many User Links and Flag Icons as you want.

  For User Links, a single link can now be designated as a Header link, a Footer link, or both.

• All XML Formats now support Flag Icons.
• All Themes supplied with Second Site now support "favicons". See the Shortcut Icon page.
• Speaking of Themes, the Carla's Graphics Theme now has a new Graphics choice: Family Tree.
• The Page Sizes.Person Page Sequence menu has the following new choices: By Reference Field, By Birth Date, and By Death Date.

In addition, I changed the HTML for the Carla's Graphics Theme in an attempt to avoid a browser bug where certain links did not work despite being defined properly.

These changes, and others, are described in the Second Site Change Log.

All existing customers should download this free upgrade. If you are a registered Second Site user and the About Second Site window (Help > About command) does not show the same version number and build number as above, I recommend that you download this new version and install it. You will not lose any SDF files or sites you have already made.

You may need your registration information when you install the new version.

Web Hosting Update

In June, I asked members of the Second Site Newsletter mailing list two questions.

1. If Second Site had a feature where you could add relationship information to the person page entry, would you use it?

   and

2. If I offered a cost-effective—but not free—web hosting service, would you consider using it?

As described above, Second Site now includes the relationship feature I asked about in question #1. Unfortunately, the news is not so good with respect to question #2. Second Site users indicated moderate interest, but the potential web-hosting partner has not risen to the challenge. I still hope to convince that company or another firm to create a special package that has a good balance of features for genealogical site hosting.

More news as it happens!

Downloads

Second Site is available via download only. See the Downloads page.

Purchases

For purchasing information, see the Purchases page.