Introduction & question about YouTube tutorials for Ancestris

[montreal_kogan]

Hello Ancestris community!

My name is Chloe and I am new to this amazing software. I'm also relatively new to genealogy itself; I've been researching my paternal, eastern European Jewish family for the last couple of months, and although I've learned a LOT in that short period of time, it's clear that I still have loads more to learn. Anyway, I'm ready to start feeding my research thus far into a family tree with Ancestris, and that's my brief introduction!

Here's my question, and thank you in advance for your help:

I've discovered and started to read the help documentation (under docs.ancestris.org), but I'm wondering if there might be an index of helpful tutorial videos hosted on YouTube that walk through various aspects of Ancestris? I'm sure the help documentation is excellent, but I tend to learn much better through watching videos rather than reading.

As an example of one thing I'd love to see a video on is the process of downloading location data from Geonames.org, installing it in and using it in your Ancestris family tree.

I'd love to hear if you have any recommendations for any such videos that would be useful for a newcomer! Otherwise, obviously, I'll always have the Search feature on YouTube 

Thank you,
Chloe

[FredericL]

Hi Chloe,

Thank you for your message. I am glad that you start with Ancestris.

At this stage of the Ancestris evolution, we have just completed the documentation and have not yet considered other static support of assistance.

On the other hand, we have a very active forum in which we would love to assist and explain.

I know it is not as visual as a video, but it has the benefit of being customised to your questions.

I hope we will be able to help.

Regarding geonames, you can download the locations using the List of Places view or the Geo map view. Ancestris will run a first search of places and associate the locations that you have if it founds them on geonames. That's pretty much it. From then on, your places will be stored in a settings file on your computer, not in your gedcom file. It is up to you to store them in your gedcom file using the Places Editor, accessible from the List of Places or the Table of Places.

Best regards,
Frederirc

[Lamardelmy]

Hi Chloe and Frederic,

I'm also new to this software and into genealogy !
I look for your messages as comming into Ancestris i also was looking for video tutorial. And wondering if i would do some and how it would be welcomed or not by the community.... When i will be better using it and in genealogy too.
Lamardelmy

[Zurga]

Ancestris is a free software with a team of volunteers.
All good will are welcomed.
Tutorials videos would be a great addition to our community.
So, don't limit your creativity.
You could use the documentation as starting point for your videos.
You can do it with few knowledge, your discovery of the software can be a good start for others users like you.

The most recent video done is the presentation by Frederic for the Salon virtuel de Généalogie last year :
https://docs.ancestris.org/books/communication/page/2020 (the video is in French).

Zurga

[Lamardelmy]

Hi Chloe

I'm printing some of the manual to begin a video . hope this week end. I m also sure that will halp ancestris to be known. I will make it in French though. And i saw on your profile french language...

Lamardelmy

[montreal_kogan]

I want to thank everyone for your responses! This truly feels like a big family community.

Frederic, I really appreciate you walking me through the Geographic Places steps. For some reason, I could not get that feature to work, so I thought I had to go into the GeoNames website in order to download places. But following your steps, it worked PERFECTLY and I'm so happy!

Lamardelmy, I would be so excited to watch your videos! I do know a bit of French, having grown up in Montreal, but I'm rusty after years of disuse. Still, I hope I will be able to follow along! And I'm sure lots of other users would love the lessons.

Thank you all for the wonderful welcome!

Chloe