Are you ready to put your family tree online for FREE FREE FREE?

Are you cheap like me and don’t want to fork over your hard earned cash to put your family tree up on the web for everyone to see (or perhaps just a select few)?  If so you’ll need a FREE web hosting service and a FREE family tree website generator. I’ve got you covered, here’s how you do it.

First you’ll need a FREE web hosting service. For this you’ll want to go to https://heliohost.org and sign up for a FREE slot. If they’re not offering any free slots at the moment you can usually pay a flat fee of $1 (US) to jump the line. Heliohost works nearly identical to GoDaddy, Bluehost and other popular hosting services, except that is FREE. And unlike InfinityFree, it even includes seamless SSL certificates. It also uses Plesk as a CPanel replacement. They have an embedded Discord server bot that allows you to ask questions, and they are remarkably responsive and helpful. Several times I asked how to do something like setup a subdomain and they just did it for me. If you already have a domain name you can point it to their name servers.

Lastly you’ll need a "really good" FREE family tree website generator. For this you’ll want to go to https://gigatrees.com and download the FREE application. [full disclosure: I’m the application’s author and have been using and maintaining it for 25 years] Gigatrees has loads of unique features such as DNA charts and tables, census tables and zoomable location maps. Its most popular feature is its data consistency checker which locates and highlights dozens of types of inconsistencies in your database. Gigatrees works with any GEDCOM 5.5 or 5.5.1 file exported from any application including Ancestry.com. You can generate your family tree as discrete HTML files for viewing on your desktop or as an SQLite database with all the necessary support files. NO PROGRAMMING is needed. It runs on Windows directly, or on a MAC using a Boot Camp partition running Windows. The Gigatrees website includes complete configuration instructions and blog. Once you build your website, you can drag and drop the files from your output folder onto your Heliohost server, an viola FREE website. (here is mine as an example: https://timforsythe.com/greybeard)

BTW Gigatrees can also be used to build other standalone websites such as a blog or photo gallery, or just an collection of discrete pages (or in any combination thereof).