Desperate For Help - Software/Internet

[Guest]

Greetings All,

The new kid on the block here. As a somewhat beginner, I have a ton of questions. However, I'll post only a few here now:

1) Formerly, I owned FTM. I never really understood completely how it worked. I had a ton of information and time invested when my hard drive crashed. I lost my program and all the work I had done. I need to re-purchase some software. I have several wishes. Some of which I will list below.
2) I want the "core" software to reside on my PC and/or Laptop.
3) I want to be able to take my laptop to a relative and type in data as I research with them.
4) I want to be able to share this information with only whom I designate.
5) I have registered with GENEALOGY.COM. It is my belief that I need to purchase the software of my choice and THEN I can upload it to genealogy.com. Do I have this correct? I'm confused. I Have Not began my trial yet.
6) Genealogy has 3 levels of membership. Basic - Deluxe - Gold. Although they don't say the price until you begin the trial, I'm assuming it's $60+/year. Exactly what am I paying for? Simply a place to upload my tree to? It looks like they also allow you to add branches to your family tree. But, isn't that what the software is for? This is totally confusing to me. And what happens to your tree if you don't renew? Does it disappear or what?

So, to say the least, I'm not sure what to do based upon my needs. Any help would be appreciated.

Bob

[Elaine ..Spain]

The first thing you need to do is get a family tree program for your computer.
There are many commercial ones and a couple freebies.
Have a look at the 4 links above which probably cover the most popular.
Family Tree Maker and Family Historian you have to buy, PAF and Legacy are free to download from the internet. They are all pretty much the same and will cover your points 2,3 and 4.

Not sure what you are referring to when you mention Basic - Deluxe - Gold at Genealogy.com although I believe what you are looking at is uploading your tree into one of the Ancestry databases, either a personal or public tree or theAncestryOne World Tree. Don´t worry about this at the moment -you can upload a tree to an external site for free!

What version of FTM do you have - have you still got the original disc. Easy to say now, but if you had backed up your data all the work would not have been lost when your hard disc crashed. A lesson learnt here I think!

You don´t say where you live but if your research is England/Wales based then you really need access to a site which offers the 1841-1901 census returns. The most obvious choice is Ancestry. If you are researching Scotland then Scotlands People is the one to go for.

There are some usual sites listed on our Online Research page in the wiki (reference library) - both freebies and subscriptions.
Online Research - Family Tree Forum

So first thing to do is get some software for the computer - also tell us where your main areas of research are likely to be so that we can advise on the best subscription to go for.