Configuring a Family Tree

The Sample Tree is provided as part of the Gigatrees' distribution. The HTML website can be built locally using the sample batch file. ( sample-html.bat ). When executed it will create a basic family tree using the provided GEDCOM file ( config/sample.ged ). The database version can be built using the other sample batch file ( sample-db.bat ), but requires the configuration file ( config/db.xml ) to be modified before execution. The gigatrees plugin and default theme were already loaded as part of the configuration file( user.xml ). I then loaded the Google Maps plugin to support the Population Distribution Heatmap. I then added some shortcuts up front. Because this is a sample site, I redefined the $ROBOTS$ placeholder to discourage crawlers (I also added a robots.txt file to the server path to disallow all user agents and added a empty sitemap.txt file). I then set the website domain. This should always be the root domain. Since I was going to install my website into a subfolder of that domain, I defined the root path to include the subfolder. Next, I defined the plugins URL to reuse the Gigatrees plugins since they are identical and set the site title and owner. Lastly, I enabled the database.

  <Plugins>
    <Plugin> plugins\gigatrees  </Plugin>
    <Plugin> plugins\theme.a    </Plugin>
    <Plugin> plugins\googlemaps </Plugin>
  </Plugins> 
  
  <Placeholders>
    <Placeholder> <Name> $SERVER$      </Name> <Content> [Super Secret Server Path]  </Content> </Placeholder>
    <Placeholder> <Name> $DOMAIN$      </Name> <Content> https://gigatrees.com       </Content> </Placeholder>
    <Placeholder> <Name> $SITE$        </Name> <Content> demo-sample-tree				     </Content> </Placeholder>
    <Placeholder> <Name> $DATABASE$    </Name> <Content> $SITE$.db                   </Content> </Placeholder>
  </Placeholders>

  <Setup>
    <Domain>      $DOMAIN$     </Domain>
    <RootPath>    /$SITE$      </RootPath>
    <PluginsURL> 	/plugins/    </PluginsURL>
	
    <SiteTitle>   Sample Tree  </SiteTitle>
    <SiteOwner>   Tim Forsythe </SiteOwner>
  </Setup>

  <Database>
    <EnableServerDatabase> true          </EnableServerDatabase>
    <LocalDatabasePath>    %OutputPath%  </LocalDatabasePath>
    <ServerDatabasePath>   $SERVER$      </ServerDatabasePath> 
    <ServerDatabaseName>   $DATABASE$    </ServerDatabaseName>
  </Database>
 

So there you have it. These instructions should get you started in building a family tree website.