PHPGedView, Geneweb or what else ?

[Denis Beauregard]

Hi:

I am looking for a web site genealogy software for a still small
genealogical society. Something that would need almost no
maintenance after installation, except to add or delete users,
and friendly enough so that users won't email me every day.
It would be something that would allow to enter/modify a database
online.

Any comparison between PHPGedview and Geneweb in that context ?
Any other software I should consider (except writing mine...) ?


Denis

--
0 Denis Beauregard -
/\/ Les Français d'Amérique - http://www.francogene.com/genealogie-quebec/
|\ French in North America before 1721 - http://www.francogene.com/quebec-genealogy/
/ | Mon association de généalogie:
oo oo http://www.genealogie.org/club/sglj/index2.html (soc. de gén. de La Jemmerais)

[Robert Melson]

In article <[email protected]>,
Denis Beauregard <[email protected]> writes:

Hi:

I am looking for a web site genealogy software for a still small
genealogical society. Something that would need almost no
maintenance after installation, except to add or delete users,
and friendly enough so that users won't email me every day.
It would be something that would allow to enter/modify a database
online.

Any comparison between PHPGedview and Geneweb in that context ?
Any other software I should consider (except writing mine...) ?


Denis

Denis,

I've used both and have settled on phpGedView as being easy to install
and maintain and reasonably trouble free. The big difference between
pGV and GeneWeb at this point is how they handle user privilege and security:
pGV is easier, smarter and more robust, IMO, while GeneWeb's security seems
to be something of an after thought and is not really useful or effective.

What I particularly like about pGV is the way it can be tailored to grant
privilege (none, view, edit, admin) on a per-user and per-gedcom/database
basis. In my case, I have a guest user who can view the information in my
principal database but in no other of the three I maintain, a couple of users
who have across the board edit capability, while the remainder can edit one
or two and have no privilege otherwise. I've reserved admin/commit privilege
for myself, so any changes made have to be approved/committed by me, although
that could be shared if desired.

Although pGV relies on a 3d party webserver while GeneWeb is - 'scuse the pun -
self serving, I don't view that as a disadvantage. I'm currently running
Apache 1.3.6 but could as well be running 2.X if I wanted to upgrade my
server.

Short answer to your question: I'd recommend pGV.

Bob Melson
(Servin' Ol Bob)

--
Robert G. Melson | Rio Grande MicroSolutions | El Paso, Texas
-----
Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to
prove that the other party is unfit to rule---and both commonly succeed,
and are right." ---H. L. Mencken

[Paul Blair]

Robert Melson wrote:

In article <[email protected]>,
Denis Beauregard <[email protected]> writes:
Hi:

I am looking for a web site genealogy software for a still small
genealogical society. Something that would need almost no
maintenance after installation, except to add or delete users,
and friendly enough so that users won't email me every day.
It would be something that would allow to enter/modify a database
online.

Any comparison between PHPGedview and Geneweb in that context ?
Any other software I should consider (except writing mine...) ?


Denis


Denis,

I've used both and have settled on phpGedView as being easy to install
and maintain and reasonably trouble free. The big difference between
pGV and GeneWeb at this point is how they handle user privilege and security:
pGV is easier, smarter and more robust, IMO, while GeneWeb's security seems
to be something of an after thought and is not really useful or effective.

What I particularly like about pGV is the way it can be tailored to grant
privilege (none, view, edit, admin) on a per-user and per-gedcom/database
basis. In my case, I have a guest user who can view the information in my
principal database but in no other of the three I maintain, a couple of users
who have across the board edit capability, while the remainder can edit one
or two and have no privilege otherwise. I've reserved admin/commit privilege
for myself, so any changes made have to be approved/committed by me, although
that could be shared if desired.

Although pGV relies on a 3d party webserver while GeneWeb is - 'scuse the pun -
self serving, I don't view that as a disadvantage. I'm currently running
Apache 1.3.6 but could as well be running 2.X if I wanted to upgrade my
server.

Short answer to your question: I'd recommend pGV.

Bob Melson
(Servin' Ol Bob)

I'd pretty much agree with Bob, but include The Next Generation in your
list of possibles. And keep an eye out for GenMod, which is an offshoot
of PGV.

A new version of PGV has just been released - give it a month to settle
down before you go public with it. No particular reason, but new
releases sometime need "adjusting"

Paul

[Robert Melson]

In article <[email protected]>,
Paul Blair <[email protected]> writes:

Robert Melson wrote:
In article <[email protected]>,
Denis Beauregard <[email protected]> writes:
Hi:

I am looking for a web site genealogy software for a still small
genealogical society. Something that would need almost no
snip

Denis,

snip

Short answer to your question: I'd recommend pGV.

Bob Melson
(Servin' Ol Bob)


I'd pretty much agree with Bob, but include The Next Generation in your
list of possibles. And keep an eye out for GenMod, which is an offshoot
of PGV.

A new version of PGV has just been released - give it a month to settle
down before you go public with it. No particular reason, but new
releases sometime need "adjusting"

Paul

Paul's right, of course. I didn't mention TNG simply because I have not used
it and my cursory exploration of it didn't include its security paradigm
(damn! I _hate_ that word, but it _is_ useful!). As for GenMod, I looked
at it rather briefly after Paul mentioned it in a previous post and see that
it's not quite ready for prime-time at this point. Only time will tell if it
will be a contender.

Each of the three existing applications has a web page from which you can link
to sites using the product or see/use a sample program and database:

pGV: http://phpgedview.sourceforge.net/
TNG: http://lythgoes.net/genealogy/software.php
GeneWeb: http://cristal.inria.fr/~ddr/GeneWeb/en/index.html

I might add a further thought here: because pGV and TNG are written in PHP,
almost any competent programmer can easily customize the code, whereas
GeneWeb is written is a somewhat obscure language, OCAML; while you DO get
GW's source code, customization at code-level - beyond cosmetics - would be
a somewhat more difficult task than for pGV and TNG. Counter balancing that
concern, keep in mind that PHP is an interpreted language, while OCAML is
compiledd - which means that GW will execute somewhat faster than the other
two applications.

And, in honesty, there's a potential disqualifier for pGV - and, I assume,
TNG - in that it has difficulty handling gedcoms > 2Mb or so; that's what the
developers say, anyway. Part of that, I suspect, has to do with the simple
table structure used for the underlying database, part may be a limitation
of PHP, I'm not really certain. As I mentioned, I maintain 3 separate
gedcom/database pairs on my system, totaling > 2Mb and have seen no performance
egradation as a result. But if you will have a single gedcom of > 2Mb it
might be well to test pGV's performance ahead of time.

Sleepy Ol' Bob



--
Robert G. Melson | Rio Grande MicroSolutions | El Paso, Texas
-----
Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to
prove that the other party is unfit to rule---and both commonly succeed,
and are right." ---H. L. Mencken

[Hugh Watkins]

Denis Beauregard wrote:

Hi:

I am looking for a web site genealogy software for a still small
genealogical society. Something that would need almost no
maintenance after installation, except to add or delete users,
and friendly enough so that users won't email me every day.
It would be something that would allow to enter/modify a database
online.

Any comparison between PHPGedview and Geneweb in that context ?
Any other software I should consider (except writing mine...) ?

you need a static site with a gateway to the database

eg
http://www.rootsweb.com/~njmorris/passa ... little.htm

http://lapham36.blogspot.com/ <<blogs canbe multiuser

http://wc.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?db=lapham
I get updates sent to me from around the world

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