Thinking about purchasing TNG

[eventide]

I'm thinking about purchasing TNG to work alongside Reunion - just for presentation purposes. It seems like some of you here are familiar with it so I am hoping you can give me insight into your experience working with it

And I have a few questions...like how easy/difficult is it to work with? Do you need any special technical knowledge?

Are there any fields for events, facts or sources that don't transfer over?

I'm most worried about sources, some of which are using free-form text (I have had issues sending those over to someone that uses FTM so maybe it will be a problem with TNG too.)

Thanks for any advice.

[j2sacks]

I, too, am thinking of purchasing TNG and would love to hear some tips and tricks. I've spent some time in the TNG wiki reading how to import data. This forum's friend, Roger, has written several articles, referencing Reunion. theKiwi

[donworth]

I have two instances of TNG at http://www.bishir.org and http://www.bishir.org/gen (both are hosted on the same hosting service)

I've been delighted with it! Set it up initially back in 2008 I think. I made the mistake of customizing some things in it by diddling the files and HTML and that makes it harder to update it to newer versions. So I would recommend you stick with customizations you can do in the administrative web pages that are built into it rather than getting fancy in the guts of it. I've had no problems with getting fields transferred and sources, both free form and structured, get across fine. Make sure you download the entire contents of the web site from time to time so you have a good backup. If you use simplyhosting.net for the hosting service they will install TNG for you for free. If you aren't very technical that can be a godsend. You can do almost anything you need to do with the TNG administration web screens and they are pretty self-explanatory.

Don

[theKiwi]

I'm thinking about purchasing TNG to work alongside Reunion - just for presentation purposes. It seems like some of you here are familiar with it so I am hoping you can give me insight into your experience working with it

And I have a few questions...like how easy/difficult is it to work with? Do you need any special technical knowledge?

Are there any fields for events, facts or sources that don't transfer over?

I'm most worried about sources, some of which are using free-form text (I have had issues sending those over to someone that uses FTM so maybe it will be a problem with TNG too.)

Thanks for any advice.

To successfully use TNG you need a few things:

1 - a hosting service for the website - SimplyHosting.net is very TNG friendly, and they will do the initial setup for you once you purchase the TNG software

2 - a domain name - SimplyHosting.net can help you with that, or you can buy it somewhere else - GoDaddy or OneName and then host it at SimplyHosting

3 - a familiarity with FTP software - this is how you get things from your computer to your TNG site, including media files, updated GEDCOM files, and updates to the TNG software

4 - patience...

This is my great great grandfather's page in TNG

http://lisaandroger.com/genealogy/getperson.php?personID=I16&tree=Roger

Everything on that page, except for the Place Levels shown on the map, transfers from Reunion by GEDCOM file. You just have to make sure that all the fields in Reunion are setup with unique GEDCOM tags, and that TNG is set to import those tags if they are custom tags you've created in Reunion.

Freeform sources transfer over OK - I don't have any purely free form sources, but a number with Free Form text in them eg

http://lisaandroger.com/genealogy/showsource.php?sourceID=S624&tree=Roger

The Free Form text shows in the field called Text

Roger

[eventide]

Thanks Don and Roger.

All the info and samples you gave are extremely helpful.

[eventide]

Couple of quick question if you guys don't mind - the answers may change how I input some sources in Reunion.

It looks to me like if I use free-form text to create the source/citation then the reference number won't have any text next to it to tell the user what the source is. Is it possible to place the contents of free form text there instead? perhaps not. Otherwise I may add the title in the title field even if its repetitive.

Also once looking at the source contents, where does the citation detail and the free-form text go? So far I haven't seen separate fields for this info, but perhaps they both move over to the text field?

Screen Shot 2020-05-19 at 1.03.25 PM.png

[theKiwi]

Yes - I went through all my sources in Reunion to add a Title and Author as that's what TNG uses for the display at the bottom of the getperson.php page.

Roger

[eventide]

Thanks Roger! I better get to work.

[j2sacks]

Yes - I went through all my sources in Reunion to add a Title and Author...

That's why I'm trying to figure this out while I have only 22 sources and 17 pictures loaded into my Reunion file. I've got hundreds of photos/files waiting but only want to touch them once.