Trying to Create Searchable Online Database

[Azarna]

I have a 14 year old family & local history website where I share information on the people and history of a nearby village. It is all free for users.

I would love to be able to collate my very large collection of birth, marriage and burial records into searchable databases, so that visitors can easily search for the names they are studying. Because I have data from a variety of sources, I could expand on Parish Register entries etc, to include missing ages, occupations and so on. Over time the databases would become more and more detailed and useful for family historians.

I have Microsoft Access, and Excel, and could create my database in either.

My problem is I don't know how to make it so visitors can search the database from my website.

The site is built with Serif Webplus. I also have a couple of self-hosted Wordpress blogs, so could use those to host it if that is easier. My hosting account includes MySQL databases - but I don't really know how to use MySQL, I am game to learn if this would work. I can host the database on my account, so storage is not an issue.

I have searched extensively on how to do this and found quite a few software packages that offer the search box end of things - however they require (often quite significant) monthly fees. I would be prepared to invest a small sum into a one-off purchase, but I simply can not afford to pay monthly for this.

So, I know how to make a database in Access, or a spreadsheet with the data in Excel. What I need to know is how would I have this searchable from my website. The search enginey bit.

Any guidance would be very, very gratefully received on this.

I would dearly love to share this wealth of valuable information as soon as possible.

[maesglasssclub]

Hi Azarna
not sure if this will help, but I am a member of a lot of Genealogy sites set up around the Country, they are all connected to the Yarhoo e mails, which means you have to have a yarhoo account, most of the records are in a an Excel formular and are searchable using FIND.

I dont know much more about how they were set up, but being as you are offering the same, I think if you contacted one of the groups they could tell you more.

Mongenes, is for Monmouthshire, then there are Frome, Forest of Dean, and many many more, try googling them.

Robert

[Azarna]

Thank you very much, maesglasssclub. I will indeed look into that option :-)

[PhotoFamily]

You may be interested in GENDEX:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GENDEX

And then, when you've created your GENDEX file, you might find this website useful to spread the word (not just rely on search engines)

http://www.familytreeseeker.com/add.php

But there's the problem of presenting your family tree. Many stand alone, one payment systems will create web pages to traverse a family tree (Family Historian does this, but I'm sure others do it too). And you could use The Next Generation Software to build your family tree online (one time payment, ongoing cost of website upkeep). Of course, all software have "next releases" that cost some money - but usually not monthly.

But, I'll also throw out the idea of WikiTree.com. I'm starting explore it. It's free - but it's a wiki - you don't "own" your ancestor's profile page, you share it with others who collaborate with you.