Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Please see the Main Page topic on the Static Content page for an explanation of the Main Page.Extra Content property.

Please see the Page.PersonHREF page which explains how to create links to people in static content.

Please see the Filters page which explains the People.Exclude Living property and the Flag Filter capability.

The most common cause of missing people is an incorrect Living flag value for those people in the TMG project.

If the People.Exclude Living property is checked, which is the default value, Second Site will exclude people whose TMG Living flag is set to "Y" or "?". Please note that in both TMG and Second Site, the sole determinant of whether someone is living or not is the Living flag. If it is set to "N", the person is not living. If it is set to "Y" or "?", the person is considered alive.

In some cases, and especially after importing data from another program, the Living flag may not be set properly for all the people in your TMG project. Check the Living flag for one of the people who is missing. Is it set properly? If not, you may want to consider using the Set Living=N feature in my TMG Utility program which can help you find people with Living=? that should have Living=N.

Second Site will interpret the sentences in your TMG project exactly the same as TMG. There are a few rare exceptions that involve the inclusion or omission of spaces and it is easy to fix the sentence so that the revised sentence produces the exact same output in TMG and SS.

If you see big differences between TMG and SS, one of these three reasons is the likely cause:

1. You are not using the same project in SS as in TMG.

   This usually hapens to people after they upgrade TMG or change the name or location of their TMG project for some other reason. They forget to update the SDF file to use the new version of the project.

2. You have changed the sentence in language "A" in TMG but are using language "B" in SS.

   This often happens to users from the UK and is the result of the Second Site property Data.Language.Sentence Language being set to "English" rather than to "EnglishUK". That, in turn, is the result of accepting "English - Standard" in the "Set Default Values" window when creating the SDF file via File > New command. The proper choice for user from the UK is usually "EnglishUK - Standard".

   The problem is not exclusive to UK users; the problem can occur whenever there is a mismatch between the language used in TMG to define the sentence and the language SS is told to use to create the site.

   Note that Data.Language.Site Language does not affect which sentence is used.

3. The web site does not include all people (living people are excluded, for example).

   If a sentence has unconditional references to witnesses or principals who are excluded, those references will insert "an unknown person" (or the equivalent in other languages) into the output.

   If a witness is excluded in SS, and the reference to the witness is conditional, the TMG output will show the name of the witness but the SS output will not. That is by design. See the Showing Excluded People topic.

If the Database.Primary Tags Only is checked, then only primary names will be included in the index. For a more in-depth discussion of how names are handled by Second Site, see the Names section.

Families are listed in order by the child with the earliest sort date on a primary birth tag. Second Site ignores children with no primary birth tag, or a blank sort date for that tag. If a family has no children with a primary birth sort date, then Second Site will use a blank date and that family is likely to be sorted first.

To adjust the sequence, adjust the primary birth sort dates. If all the children for a couple have no primary birth tags, add a Birth (or Birth-Est, etc.) tag for at least one child of the couple. Set the sort date, but leave the date and all the other fields blank. Make sure that Omit SortDate-Only Birth Events is checked to prevent the tag from printing.

1. Second Site only supports external exhibits for images, audio, and video. If the exhibit is internal, Second Site won't show it. Second Site does support both internal and external text exhibits.
2. If People.Suppress Detail for Living People is set, Second Site will not include exhibits for living people.
3. For external images exhibits, don't be misled by TMG's thumbnail images. If TMG shows the thumbnail image in the exhibit log, that doesn't necessarily mean it knows the location of the external exhibit. Please confirm that you can open the exhibit in TMG. If you can't, then Second Site won't include the exhibit in your site.
4. My TMG Utility program includes the Verify Exhibit Paths feature to help you diagnose exhibit path problems.

Large image exhibits are usually the result of using high-resolution images as exhibits. Digital images are essentially thousands of very small dots of colors where each dot is called a pixel. A high-resolution image has many pixels, and a high pixels-per-inch (PPI, or DPI for dots-per-inch) setting. The more pixels per inch, the clearer and sharper the printed image.

High-resolution images are good for printing. A photo designed to print 3" x 3" might be stored as 300 DPI or higher. The printing application and the printer driver will combine to pack 300 pixels into an inch, and so the image will print at the intended size.

When that same image is displayed on a monitor using a web browser, the high-resolution causes a problem. The monitor has a fixed resolution that is much lower than the image's resolution. Monitors usually are somewhere between 72 and 100 DPI. The 900 by 900 pixel image can be printed at 3" x 3", but on a monitor it will be 9" x 9" or larger.

The web browser can resize the image down to 3" x 3", but browsers don't resize images as well as image editing software. Also, for the browser to resize the image, the user pays the price (in time) of downloading the large image but only sees the image quality of the scaled down version. As a result, Second Site does not resize images automatically. Second Site has a special feature to enable you to store high-resolution images as exhibits, but use lower-resolution versions for your site. See the description of the Alternate Image Folder. TMG Utility can help you create the lower-resolution images. See the Export Images feature. That page has specific directions for how to make lower-resolution images for use with Second Site.

For images of people, such as a "head shot" that you attach as the primary person exhibit, I suggest you make the image 200 pixels by 300 pixels. The dimensions don't have to be exact. 200 pixels wide leaves some room for text to flow to the right of the image. 300 pixels long gives the picture a nice aspect ratio (the relative length of the width to the height) that resembles a formal portrait.

For more information about exhibits, see the Exhibits section.

Web browsers will only allow certain types of images to be included on an HTML page. Browsers can be configured or extended to support more images types, but by default browsers support JPG, GIF, and PNG images. If you attempt to embed an image that is not one of those types, Second Site will link the image instead. When the user clicks the link, the browser will show the image or ask the operating system to show the image using some application installed on the user's PC.

The Exhibit Gallery is a list of exhibits, not images. If two exhibits in your TMG project refer to the same image, both exhibits might be included in an Exhibit Gallery depending on the Exhibit Gallery options.

The simplest way to start is to add a comment to a place. In TMG, edit the place from the Master Place List (MPL) and add a comment. Make sure the place you modify is included in your site. The actual, specific place must be used by an event that appears on the site.

In the Place Index section of SS, make sure the Place Index is enabled. Also make sure that "Show Place Information" is checked. To make things easier, check "Only Places with Information". That will reduce the clutter and allow you to see the place exhibits more clearly. You can turn it off after you know it is working. Then build the site.

Browse to the master place index, and then navigate to the place index entry for the specific place. If you checked "Only Places with Information" then there will only be one (or possibly a few) places in the index. You should see an "i" (information) icon.

Once you get a place comment working, you can move on to using actual exhibits. Don't add any HTML to the place comment or anywhere else. Just attach an image exhibit to the place. Enter a caption for the image. Then rebuild the site. Click the "i" icon again and you should see the comment and the image.

The answer depends on which background you want to set. In some Layouts, a page background and a "container" background are visible. The container is smaller, and in fixed width Layouts, it will be slightly wider than the text.

To change the page background set the Theme.Colors, Backgrounds.page-background-image property to "none" and the Theme.Colors, Backgrounds.page-background-color property to the color you desire.

To change the container background set the Theme.Colors, Backgrounds.container-background-image property to "none" and the Theme.Colors, Backgrounds.container-background-color property to the color you desire.

Links can be styled via stylesheet parameters. The Theme determines the initial colors, but users can customize those values. In the Theme Section, Colors, Backgrounds sub-section, set the link-related text colors as desired. Other characteristics of links can be set via Link-related styles in the System section.

When a style property is set to "inherit", Second Site does not include the attribute definition in the stylesheet. When an attribute is omitted in CSS, the value is inherited from the parent HTML element, which is usually the element that visually surrounds it or precedes it. For example, if a name is included in a paragraph of text, and there is a style associated with the name, setting font-family to "Inherit" will set the font-family to the same value as the surrounding paragraph text.

You can add content to the main page via the Main Page.Extra Content property. Any text you add there will appear on the main page of the site. Use HTML to make paragraphs, format text, etc.

By default, the "previous" and "next" buttons are disabled on those pages. You can enable them on Person Pages by enabling the Layouts.Person Pages.Include Prev/Next Links. Similarly, you can enable them on Source Pages by enabling the Layouts.Source Pages.Include Prev/Next Links.

To use graphic files for the "previous" and "next" buttons, follow these steps:

1. Set Styles.Button Images to "Use available images"; this enables graphic buttons in general.
2. Make sure you put an image file for each button in your Input (-i) folder. The image files should be named "previous.jpg" and "next.jpg". You can use JPG, GIF, or PNG files. If you do use GIF or PNG, adjust the file extension to match the filetype.

Note that the "next" button will appear even if you can't go forward and the "previous" button will appear even if you can't go back. When the site does not use graphic files for the buttons, the button is shown in a disabled state, but Second Site 2 doesn't currently support a disabled state for graphic buttons.

The first question you should ask yourself is whether you should add music to your web pages. Many people who visit your site will not appreciate it.

If you are certain you want to add music, here's one way to do so. It uses the Main Page.Extra Content property and the non-standard EMBED tag but should work in most browsers. The music will only play on the main page, but you can extend the idea to work with any page by putting the HTML in a different static content property.

1. Add this HTML to your Layouts.Main Page.Extra Content property:
   
   <embed name="background" src="music.mp3" width="300" height="10" loop="true" autostart="false"></embed>
2. Copy a music file to the Input (-i) folder for your site, and rename it "music.mp3". If you want to use a WAV file, change the EMBED tag SRC= parameter: make sure it matches the name of the music file you put in the Input (-i) folder.
3. Make the site. Second Site will copy the WAV file to the Output (-o) folder and add the HTML to the main page.

You can password protect your site, but the method is determined by your web hosting service. Generally, the web hosting service will support some means of assigning a password to a folder, and you store the web pages produced by Second Site in that folder.

Make sure that your Second Site project is using the proper TMG project. This is a fairly common mistake. People occasionally copy a TMG project and then start modifying the copy. Later, they re-open a Second Site project that uses the original TMG project and wonder why a newly-built site doesn't reflect the recent changes. The solution is to change the Second Site project to use the correct TMG project via the Set Database... button in the Data.Database section.

This is a complicated issue.

Web browsers are supposed to honor the ASCII and Unicode non-breaking space character. In both ASCII and Unicode, the non-breaking space character has the numeric value 160. You can specify the character 3 different ways.

1. You can use the   entity.
2. You can use the   entity.
3. You can put the character value 160 in the text file using a text editor that allows you to do so.

When HTML authors want a non-breaking space in a document, they will typically use method #1 or method #2. When XML or XHTML authors want a non-breaking space, they will typically use method #2. When an XSLT Stylesheet is part of the page-writing process, the page author will typically use method #2, but the   entity will be transformed into a single character, and so when there is an XSLT Stylesheet involved, the result is identical to method #3.

There seems to be a problem using method #3 with specific configurations of the Apache Web Server. If the web server has been configured to add a default ContentType response header, and the charset is set to utf-8, some web browsers will not correctly interpret character value 160 as a non-breaking space.

(See the Apache documentation on the adddefaultcharset directive)

It is only appropriate to set the default charset to utf-8 if the files being served are actually Unicode files in the utf-8 subformat. In most cases, the files being served are not utf-8 files. Still, I am not sure whether the web server or the browser is to blame.

If you ask your web site host to remove the directive for your site they should do it. If they cannot or will not change the directive, you can use the Language.HTML Character Set property to force Second Site to write utf-8 files.

The Input (-i) Folder is a staging area. Various actions you take using the SS user interface modify the contents of the -i folder, such as importing a VCF chart or defining icons. SS uses the files in the -i folder during the Make Site process. Some of the files are copied directly to the -o folder, but many of the files are altered in some way as they are copied.

The Output (-o) Folder contains the files that make up a site. It includes all the files required by the site.

If you publish your site via the web, you should copy the files in the -o folder to a web server. You do not need any files from the -i folder. You may or may not want to copy the -o folder itself, but that depends on how the rest of your web site is organized. If your genealogy pages are a subset of the main site, they should probably be put in a sub-folder, the -o folder or a renamed version of it.

Similarly, if you are creating a CD-ROM, you should copy the files in the -o folder to the root folder of the CD-ROM disk. In this case, you should not copy the -o folder itself, just the files in it. See the CD-ROM page for more information.

Yes, but when using Second Site with Windows Vista, do not create SDF files anywhere in the path beneath the Program Files folder.

When you open an existing SDF file, or make a new SDF file, Second Site attempts to read the contents of the Themes folder under the User Data Folder. If the User Data Folder has been moved or renamed, the error above will occur. The cure is to use the File > Preferences > Set User Data Folder... command to reset the User Data Folder to an existing folder.

Second Site only supports TMG datasets that use the "ASCII" (TMG v4) or "Machine" (TMG v5+) or "General" (TMG v5+) collating sequences. If you use a different sequence, you must change to one of the above sequences before using Second Site, and then reset it back to your preferred setting after using Second Site. Second Site supports international collating sequences, but not via the TMG collating preference. See the Language Section.

No, your PC does not need more memory. The error message typically indicates a minor structural error with your TMG project. It sometimes happens after TMG has quit unexpectedly such as during a power failure. Contact me directly and I can help you repair the database.

The person in question has more than one primary relationship tag for either the mother or father relationship. This condition is difficult to detect in TMG when you look at the child's Person View (PV). The Person View has only a single slot for the primary mother and the primary father, and if there are two or more such records, only one is shown. The easiest way to solve the problem is to click on the primary father and then choose the Edit > Toggle Primary command (or click the equivalent button on the toolbar). If another primary father tag is displayed, then you can decide which of the two candidates should be primary. If no second primary father is displayed, repeat the process for the primary mother.

Second Site deletes the existing Output (-o) folder and recreates it before making the site. If one of the other programs running on your computer has a file from that folder open, that will cause this error.

You will have to close the file in the other program, and in some cases, you may have to quit the other program.