Using phpGedview with Legacy

PhpGedview is a free program for displaying your Genealogy data in tree form on the web. Note that your web server needs to run PHP version 4.3.x. or better - most do, but if you want to check yourself, place phpinfo.php on your site and point your browser to it.

Once set up, it is simplicity itself to update it by uploading your new GEDCOM - and any new pictures and thumbnails.
To prepare for PhpGedview This should present no problems from the GEDCOM point of view, but the issue of pictures is a little more tricky, and needs to be addressed first.
1.	Pictures Pictures attached to marriages don't show in Legacy reports - but they do in phpGedView. Pictures attached to events show in both. So if you want pictures in both Legacy reports and PhpGedView, attach marriage pictures to events .
2.	Go through the Legacy pictures folder, making sure that all are named carefully, with no upper case or spaces. Underlines can be used instead of spaces. So rename "John Doe d 1899" perhaps as "john_doe_d1899" etc. This is a general web issue and not for Legacy.
3.	Go to Legacy Options - Customise - Locations
4.	Click on 'Test all multimedia paths'
5.	Uncheck 'remove all paths'
6.	Check 'make a list of all missing multimedia files'
7.	Correct any errors
Note that Legacy does not discriminate between capitalised names and lower case names, so be careful that you actually have the re-named lower case pictures entered in Legacy.
Thumbnails PhpGedview uses thumbnails, and probably the easiest way to create these is to download and install the free 'Irfanview' software from http://www.irfanview.com/ The thumbnail folder has to be a sub-folder of your images folder, so create a blank subfolder 'thumbs'. If you already have a folder for images for use with the Legacy generated pages, you can use that for phpGedView - just add the 'thumbs' folder.
In Irfanview
1.	Go to File > Batch Conversion
2.	Look in \your image folder\
3.	Alter the output directory to \your image folder\thumbs
4.	Check 'Use advanced options'
5.	Check 'Resize' and enter 100 pixels in both Width and Height
6.	Check 'Preserve aspect ratio' and 'Use resample function'
7.	'Add all pictures', and click 'Start'
All required thumbnails will be created in just a few seconds
To Prepare your Legacy File for PhpGedview
Once the pictures are correct, a GEDCOM can be exported from Legacy with two specific options selected
1.	Produce output for: Gedcom 5.5 only
2.	Character set: UDF-8
Installing PhpGedview
Read about and download PhpGedView from http://phpgedview.sourceforge.net/about.php You will need to read all three sets of instructions in Documents - Installation, Media and readme.txt. They overlap considerably, but each has unique crucial bits in it. Error messages when uploading GEDCOMS, stating that some lines precede the header are dependant on the program producing the GEDCOM and are corrected by the 'Cleanup' command provided for that purpose.
Once your GEDCOM and the thumbnails are loaded and working, in phpGedView, go to Lists > Multimedia Lists, and check that all your pictures show correctly. If not, you have to correct the pictures and thumbnails as shown there. Note that phpGedView has nothing to do with Legacy Family Tree or Millennia Corp!

Updated Sat, 31-Jan-2015

Site created and maintained by Rodney Hall