TNG Installation Instructions

• Files and Folders
  1. 1. Extract Files
  2. 2. Connect to Your Remote Web Site
  3. 3. Setting up Your Remote Environment
  4. 4. Copying Files to Your Site
  5. 5. Creating Folders
• Permissions and Settings
  1. 1. Explanation of "Permissions"
  2. 2. Setting Permissions
  3. 3. Advanced Settings
  4. 4. Database Settings
  5. 5. Create the Database Tables
  6. 6. Other General Settings
  7. 7. Pedigree, Import and Log settings
• Your Data
  1. 1. Setting up Users
  2. 2. Setting up Trees
  3. 3. Importing a GEDCOM
  4. 4. Custom Event Types
  5. 5. Manual Data Entry
  6. 6. Secondary Processes
  7. 7. Photos, Histories & Headstones
  8. 8. Backup/Optimize/Restore
  9. 9. Templates
• Customizing Your TNG Pages
  1. 1. Style Sheets
  2. 2. Header, Footer and "Meta" Files
  3. 3. Home Page
• Final Notes
  
• Appendix

Single-page installation guide (show everything at once) | Hide all

• Files and Folders

  Step 1: Extract Files

  If you downloaded TNG from the Internet:
  The file you downloaded is a zip file, which means it actually contains quite a few files all "zipped up" together. Please find this file and unzip or extract the included files to a new folder or directory (name doesn't matter) on the hard drive of your local computer. Your operating system may be able to handle this operation, but if not, there are several specialized utilities can find on the Internet to do this job for you. A few you might look at are WinZip or PKZip for Windows, or ZipIt or StuffIt for Mac.

  Some files should extract into subfolders called "admin" and "English". If you don't see these folders after performing the extraction, please delete the files you extracted and perform the extraction process again.

  If you obtained TNG on a CD:
  All the files you need are already extracted in the proper folders on the CD. You will also have folders for alternate language packs and pre-built templates. You can copy everything to a new folder on the hard drive of your local computer if you wish, but it isn't necessary.

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• Files and Folders

  Step 2: Connect to Your Remote Web Site

  Connect to the remote web site where you plan to install TNG. This could be done using a control panel file manager shown to you by your hosting provider, or using an FTP program (FTP stands for "File Transfer Protocol"). If you use the FTP method, you will need to know your FTP host name, username and password.

  Once you get to your site, navigate to the folder where your site's home page resides. From here on, we will refer to this folder as the root folder (even though it probably isn't called that). If you're setting up a new site, the folder might be called "www", and your home page will likely be called "index.html", "index.htm" or "default.htm.

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• Files and Folders

  Step 3: Setting up Your Remote Environment

  Now that you've found your root folder, you need to decide whether you want your web address to point directly to your TNG installation, or if you want to keep a separate home page.

  If you want your address (ie, http://www.yoursite.com) to take you directly to your genealogy, you will need to delete any existing home page or plan to merge it with TNG's home page, which is called "index.php". You will be installing TNG in the root folder, so you can then skip the rest of this step. For you, the root folder and the genealogy folder will be the same.

  If you plan to set up a larger environment of which genealogy is just one section, you might want to create a subfolder on your site to hold your TNG files. You can name this folder anything you'd like, but we will refer to it from here on as the genealogy folder.

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• Files and Folders

  Step 4: Copying Files to Your Site

  If you are using a web-based file manager:
  First you will need to create two new folders on your remote site within the genealogy folder. Call these subfolders admin and English. Be sure to spell these correctly and to use the proper case (for example, "English" instead of "english").

  Now copy all the extracted TNG files from your local computer to your remote site, putting all files in their respective folders. All files not in a subfolder should go in your genealogy folder.

  If you are using an FTP program:
  Select all the extracted TNG files and folders from your local computer and copy them to the genealogy folder on your remote site. The admin and English folders will be created for you on the remote site. If your FTP program does not allow you to copy folders, follow the instructions above under "If you are using a web-based file manager."

  IMPORTANT: If you are viewing this "readme" page on your home computer, finish this step and then load the readme.html page from your remote site instead. It should now be in your "genealogy" folder. This will make the rest of the installation a much easier.

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• Files and Folders

  Step 5: Creating Folders

  Now you will need to create a few additional subfolders inside the genealogy folder on your remote site. The names listed below are only suggested, as you can select whatever names you want. In fact, it is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED that you name your backups and gedcom folders something else besides "backups" and "gedcom" to protect your data from others who may know the TNG folder structure.

  Headstones Folder:
  Histories Folder:
  Backups Folder:
  Photos Folder:
  GEDCOM Folder:
  GENDEX Folder:

  If you don't plan to use any photos, histories or headstones on your site, you can omit those folders from the above process. If you don't plan to use the GENDEX feature, you can omit that folder as well.

  If the above process fails to create the folders, you will need to use your FTP program or online file manager to create them.

  Language Folders

  If you plan to use any of TNG's alternate language packs (or if you plan to translate TNG into a new language), please also create a subfolder for each alternate language inside the genealogy folder.

  If you are viewing this page from your web site, you can attempt to create any of these language folders here. Do not use spaces or special characters in the folder names.

  Enter folder name:

  Please write down or remember the names of all language folders created in this section, as you will need to enter them into another location later. If the above process fails to create the folders, you will need to use your FTP program or online file manager to create them.

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• Permissions and Settings

  Step 1: Explanation of "Permissions"

  You will now be asked to set the "permissions" on some files and folders. If you have a good understanding of permissions, please feel free to skip over this explanation to the next step. Otherwise, please read this. You may be able to set your permissions with the click of a single button in the next step, but you will still benefit from this explanation.

  So what are permissions? Permissions dictate who can do what with which files. In other words, you can say who has "permission" to write to or read from a certain file. TNG requires that everyone be able to write to some files and folders, so we will need to set those permissions accordingly.

  Some people like to refer to these permissions as a three-digit number. Others prefer a string of "rwx" characters, and still others just speak of "read, write and execute". When you are setting permissions, you may encounter any of these three methods.

  With each permission you set, you are granting rights to three different entities: the "owner" (that's you), the "group", and the "world" (includes all visitors to your site, even you). That's why permissions always come in groups of three.

  If you follow the number method, each number represents a sum of read, write and execute for the different entities. Read = 4, Write = 2 and Execute = 1, so if we tell you to set a file to "664", it means that the owner and group will have Read and Write permissions (4+2), the world will have only Read permissions (4), and no one will have Execute permissions.

  Using the "rwx" method, 664 would then be represented as rw-rw-r-- (the "-" character means that a permission is omitted).

  Note: Mac OS X users could use the DonationWare software called BatChmod (available at VersionTracker.com or MacUpdate.com) to do the permissions settings in a user-friendly environment.

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• Permissions and Settings

  Step 2: Setting Permissions

  If you are viewing this page from your web site, you may be able to set all required permissions by clicking this button (go ahead and try it):

  If that operation was successful, you can skip the rest of this step (although it might be interesting reading anyway, and it would fill you in on what just happened). Otherwise, please continue.

  1. Within your genealogy folder, find the filesgenlog.txt, config.php, importconfig.php, logconfig.php and pedconfig.php and give them all Read/Write permissions for all groups (666, or rw-rw-rw-) using your file manager or FTP program. Each FTP program or file manager is different in the method used to set permissions, so please ask your hosting provider or read the documentation on your software for more detailed instructions if necessary.

  NOTE: In some cases, hosting providers will not allow you to set the "world" group to Read/Write. In that case you can use 664 (or rw-rw-r--).

  2. Now navigate to your remote admin folder and find the file there called genlog.txt (yes, there are two different files with this name). Also give this file Read/Write permissions for all groups (666/664, or rw-rw-rw-/rw-rw-rw--).

  3. Finally, navigate back to the genealogy folder and set the permissions on the photos, histories, headstones, backups and gedcom folders to Read/Write/Execute for all groups (777, or rwxrwxrwx). If your provider will not allow 777, then 775 (rwxrwxr-x) will work as well. On some systems, 755 (rwxr-xr-x) will also work. If the operation to create these folders earlier in this guide was successful, then they should already have the needed permissions.

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• Permissions and Settings

  Step 3: Advanced Settings

  If you are not your own site administrator (you're using a hosting provider), you will not have access to your PHP configuration, so you can skip this step.

  Otherwise, please make sure that your php.ini file (part of PHP, not TNG) contains the following settings:

  file_uploads = On
  error_reporting = E_ALL & ~E_NOTICE

  If you can find a line in php.ini referencing the value LimitRequestBody then comment it out or delete it, as this will prevent you from uploading files larger than the size indicated on that line (sometimes this value is located in the php.conf file, so look for it there if you don't find it in php.ini).

  You may also wish to increase the value for upload_max_filesize if you have a large GEDCOM file. It could also be advantageous to set output_buffering to "On".

  If your PHP installation is on a Windows machine, you may have to change the session.save_path variable to point to your Windows temporary folder (i.e., C:\Temp).

  If you are running PHP 5, be aware that it does not automatically link in MySQL. You will need to change the following in php.ini:

  Specify in PATHS AND DIRECTORIES
  (This is the directory in which the loadable extensions [modules] reside. Make sure the php_mysql.dll file and others specified below are included in the PHP sub folder ext so that they can be found.)

  extension_dir = C:\PHP\ext

  Activate in DYNAMIC EXTENSIONS:

  extension=php_mysql.dll
  extension=php_gd2.dll
  extension=php_mcrypt.dll

  For more information on MySQL and PHP 5, see http://us3.php.net/mysql.

  Also set the following:

  register_long_arrays = On

  If you make changes to your php.ini file, you must restart your PHP service before the changes take effect.

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• Permissions and Settings

  Step 4: Database Settings

  It is now necessary to establish a connection with your MySQL database. You will need to enter the correct information here before TNG can do anything besides let you edit the settings. If you don't know the requested information, please ask your hosting provider to give it to you. Here's a brief description of each item:

  Host Name: The computer where your database resides. It's usually the same one your web site is on, so the value here is most always "localhost" (no quotes).

  Database Name: Sometimes a hosting provider will set up a database for you and will tell you the name. Other times they will expect you to create your own database using your "control panel". TNG will attempt to do that for you here if the database name you enter does not exist, but in many cases the host will not let this happen from a script. If that's the case, you will need to create an empty MySQL database using your control panel and give it a name yourself before entering the information below.

  Database Username & Password: This information is specific to the database and may be different than any other username & password your host has given you. If you had to set up the database yourself, you may also need to set up a user and give it a name and password. If so, make sure you give this user ALL rights and assign it to the database. The assignment may be a separate step. (Note to ICDSoft users: you don't need to create a new user, and your database username and password will be the same as your control panel username and password)

  Enter your information here, then click "Save and Verify" below:

  Host Name:
  Database Name:
  Database Username:
  Database Password:

  Alternate Method: If the button fails and you are instructed to complete this operation manually, you can enter the information directly by going to the Admin area at http://www.yoursite.com/genealogy/admin/index.php (if you're reading this from your web site, click here: admin/index.php). From there go to "Setup & Configuration" and click on "General Settings."

  What might cause this operation to fail? Here are some things to watch for:

  1. Always check to make sure you have spelled everything correctly and have the right case.
  2. Some database utilities add a prefix to your database and/or username. You may think you set up a database named "genealogy", but in reality it may have been named "prefix_genealogy". Be sure to look at what was created to make sure you have the right name.
  3. Sometimes the host name requires a port number (ie, "localhost:3306") or a socket path (ie, "localhost:/path/to/socket"). Check with your hosting provider.
  4. Some providers require that your database name and your database username are the same. Others make your control panel username/password match your database username/password.
  5. You may have just forgotten to assign the user to your database.
  6. If you are running MySQL 4.1 with anything less than PHP 5, the difference in password authentication schemes could cause a problem. Check here for instructions on how to fix this: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/Old_client.html

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• Permissions and Settings

  Step 5: Create the Database Tables

  Next you will need to create the database tables. To do that, make any necessary adjustments to table names, then click the button below. IMPORTANT: If you created the tables previously, doing this will erase ALL of your existing TNG data!

  Addresses Table:			States Table:
  Cemeteries Table:			Countries Table:
  Children Table:			Sources Table:
  Families Table:			Repositories Table:
  Headstones Table:			Source Citations Table:
  Headstone Links Table:			Events Table:
  Languages Table:			Event Types Table:
  People Table:			Reports Table:
  Photos Table:			Trees Table:
  Photo Links Table:			Cross-referenced Notes Table:
  Histories Table:			Note Links Table:
  History Links Table:			Save Import Table:
  Places Table:			Branches Table:
  Timeline Events Table:			Branch Links Table:
  Users Table:			Temp Events Table:

  Alternate Method: If the button fails and you are instructed to complete this operation manually, go to the Admin area at http://www.yoursite.com/genealogy/admin/index.php (if you're reading this from your web site, click here: admin/index.php). From there go to "Setup & Configuration" and click on "Create Tables."

  What might cause this operation to fail? Here are some troubleshooting tips:

  1. Always check to make sure you spelled everything correctly and have the right case in the previous step.
  2. Make sure you are running this script from your web site and not from your home computer.
  3. Some database utilities add a prefix to your database and/or username. You may think you set up a database named "genealogy", but in reality it may have been named "prefix_genealogy". Be sure to look at what was created to make sure you have the right name.
  4. Sometimes the host name requires a port number (ie, "localhost:3306") or a socket path (ie, "localhost:/path/to/socket"). Check with your hosting provider.
  5. Some providers require that your database name and your database username are the same. Others make your control panel username/password match your database username/password.
  6. Check to make sure your database user has ALL rights. The user may be set up correctly, but if it doesn't have rights to create or delete tables, you won't make it past this step.
  7. You may have just forgotten to assign the user to your database.
  8. If you are running MySQL 4.1 with anything less than PHP 5, the difference in password authentication schemes could cause a problem. Check here for instructions on how to fix this: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/Old_client.html

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• Permissions and Settings

  Step 6: Other General Settings

  There are other general settings you can change if desired. To see these settings, go to the Admin area at http://www.yoursite.com/genealogy/admin/index.php (if you're reading this from your web site, click here: admin/index.php. From there go to Setup & Configuration and click on General Settings.

  Make changes to the General Settings as needed. You shouldn't need to change any of the table names. Click the Help link at the top of the page for an explanation of each field. You can come back and make changes here at any time.

  NOTE on the Root Path setting: The value you see here the first time should be the correct value, so you shouldn't have to tamper with this. If you do, you can retrieve the original value by blanking out the value and saving the page. You must then return to the Settings page and save it again.

  NOTE on the Language setting: This is your default language. If you want your default language to be something other than English, you must first create a folder for that language and have the appropriate language files in that folder before changing this value. When you're ready, change this value to the name of the folder where your default language files reside. Do not put spaces in the language folder names. Be sure to match the case exactly. Others will now see this language first when they visit your site. Since TNG remembers your most recent language every time you log in, you will still need to use the language dropdown box to switch to your new language the first time.

  When you're finished, be sure to click the Save button to save your new settings.

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• Permissions and Settings

  Step 7: Pedigree, Import and Log settings

  To set options in other areas, go back to the Setup & Configuration page, then:

  Select Pedigree Settings to set up all pedigree chart variables. Edit the settings to reflect your web site's overall style and to accommodate your data. An extensive help file is accessible from this page to explain all options found there. You only need to do this if you don't like the current way pedigree charts are displayed, and you don't have to do it now if you're not sure what the effects will be.

  Select Log Settings to set up all log-related variables. Remember to read the Help screen for information on each setting.

  Select Import Settings to set up all import-related variables. Again, be sure to read the corresponding Help screen for information about anything on this page. If you are planning to import a GEDCOM file that contains links to photos and/or histories, pay special attention to the fields labeled Local Photo and Local History paths.

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• Your Data

  Step 1: Setting up Users

  From the Admin main menu, go to the Users area to set up at least one user. A "User" can represent one or more people with the same access rights. Until you have at least one user, your Administration area will be wide open to all visitors, and all visitors to the public part of your site will be able to see all data for all individuals.

  You may add as many users as you like, but the first user you add MUST be an administrator (that's you). An administrator must have Add, Edit and Delete rights and must not be assigned to a tree. On the first user you won't even have the option to assign a tree. Since you haven't set up any trees yet, you won't be able to assign users to trees just yet anyway.

  If you do not create an administrator first, or if you delete your administrator user, you may have trouble getting back here!

  Only an administrator will be able to access system-wide functions like the Setup & Configuration or Users. Only users with some combination of Add, Edit and Delete rights will be allowed into the Admin area. Assigning a user to a tree or branch limits that user's rights to their assigned tree or branch.

  You don't have to set up any users at all, but if you don't, we strongly recommend that you password protect the Admin folder. Most hosting providers allow you to do this via their web-based control panel. If you don't have access to such a control panel, ask your hosting provider how to password-protect a folder. Also note that if you don't have any users, living data will be accessible to all visitors.

  Again, see the Help on this page for more information.

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• Your Data

  Step 2: Setting up Trees

  From the Admin main menu, go to the Trees area to set up at least one tree. A "Tree" is defined as an independent data set, or a group of individuals, families and sources that is independent from any other such group.

  Do you need multiple trees? Data from one tree cannot be linked to data in another tree, so the rule of thumb here is that if any links exist among your potential trees, the data really should be merged into one tree. Most people will only need one tree unless they are planning to maintain separate and independent GEDCOMs.

  The first two fields (Tree ID and Tree Name) are required, but everything else here is optional. You will not be able to edit the Tree ID after you save this page. It should be a short identifier with no spaces. It will not be displayed on any public pages.

  Do not set up branches at this time. Come back to do that after importing or entering your data.

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• Your Data

  Step 3: Importing a GEDCOM

  If you are not planning on importing any data from a GEDCOM file, you can skip this step. Otherwise, go back to the Admin main menu and click on Data Import to prepare to import your GEDCOM file. Your file must be in standard 5.5 or 4.0 format, and you can import it directly from your local computer or from the "gedcom" folder on your remote site. Please read the Help file linked to from this page for detailed information about all import options.

  If you are using multibyte characters in any part of your file (for example, characters you can't find on a standard Western keyboard), you should also be careful to use the ANSI character set when creating your file.

  If your GEDCOM file is large, the import may not finish. You will know the import has finished when you see a "Finished" message with the number of people, families and sources that were imported. If your import does not finish, your host may have a limit on the size of uploaded files. If you cannot resolve this with your site administrator, copy the GEDCOM file to the "gedcom" folder. Then proceed to import the file, leaving the first field on the Data Import screen blank (see the Help on that page for more details).

  If the import begins but halts before you see the "Finished" message, your web server may be killing the import to save resources for other processes. If this happens, make sure your GEDCOM file is in the "gedcom" folder on the remote site, then return to the Import Settings and check the box labeled "Save Import State". Finally, try your import again. This time you will see a link at the top of the page that says, "If Import fails, click here to resume." Click on that link and the import will begin again at the point it stopped. You might have to click this link multiple times, depending on how large your file is or how concerned your host is about resources.

  If your GEDCOM included photo and document links, you will need to upload the actual files manually to the TNG "photos" folder you created earlier. Be sure to preserve any existing file structure from your Local Photo and Local History paths if that's important to you.

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• Your Data

  Step 4: Custom Event Types

  TNG maintains the most commonly used GEDCOM tags (ie, Birth, Death, Marriage) as "standard", meaning they are always imported every time. All others, including proprietary tags specific to certain software packages, are deemed "Custom Event Types". Events of these types are not imported or displayed until you tell TNG to "Accept" them.

  The easiest way to set up all your needed Custom Event Types is to import your GEDCOM file first, then go to the Custom Event Types area on the Admin main menu. All Custom Event Types used in your GEDCOM will be displayed there, but all will be set to "Ignore". Edit each one you want to import and switch the flag from "Ignore" to "Accept". Also change the "Display" field to something more readable (for example, change "OCCU" to "Occupation". You may enter a different Display message for each language you are supporting. Do not change the "Type/Description" field.

  Once you've made your desired changes, run your import again to see the custom events imported and displayed.

  If you're not importing a GEDCOM file, or if you'd rather set up Custom Event Types first, use the buttons at the top of the Custom Event Types screen to set up types for individuals, families or sources prior to manual entry. Do not enter anything for "Type/Description" unless your tag is "EVEN" (for "Event"). See the Help file on this page for more information.

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• Your Data

  Step 5: Manual Data Entry

  If you are planning to enter your data manually, choose People, Families or Sources from the Admin main menu to get started. Everything should be fairly self-explanatory, but all pages have associated help files you can use if you need them. There are no rules as to whether you should enter people or families first. It's up to your personal style and preference.

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• Your Data

  Step 6: Secondary Processes

  After importing or entering your data, go to Secondary Processes to perform various functions. See the Help file on this screen for detailed information on each process. For example, click "Track Lines" to trace the lines of descent within your genealogy. This places a small mark next to children in a family group who have offspring of their own, allowing users to more easily follow your lines of descent.

  If your desktop software did not sort children or spouses according to birth or marriage date, you can use the "Sort Children" or "Sort Spouses" utilities to do that now.

  From this area you can also create a GENDEX file to enable your site to be indexed on the TNG Network.

  Another option here is "Relabel Branches". (You can create "Branches" in a tree in order to confine user rights to only a part of that tree. To create branches in a tree, go back to Trees, then click the Branches icon for that tree.) If you re-import your data with the "Replace All Data" option after setting up your branches, your branches will be removed during the import. Use the "Relabel Branches" feature to put them back.

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• Your Data

  Step 7: Photos, Histories & Headstones

  Photos and Histories may be imported as part of your GEDCOM file, or you may set them up manually using the Admin menu. If you import these items with your GEDCOM, you will need to copy the actual files to your TNG "photos" or "histories" folders separately.

  Cemeteries and Headstones are not supported as separate entities by the GEDCOM standard, so these will not be imported in a GEDCOM file as such. You will need to use the Admin menu to set them up. If you had links to photos of headstones in your GEDCOM, they will be imported as "photos". You can then use TNG to convert them to "headstones". See the Help under Admin/Photos for more information.

  Photos, Histories and Headstones must each have a unique physical path and file name. Because of that, you will see an error message if you try to add a second record for the same file name.

  Links to Photos, Histories and Headstones are held in separate tables, so re-importing your GEDCOM will not break these links unless the ID numbers in your GEDCOM have changed since your last import. You should verify they are the same before re-importing. NOTE: if you imported these items with your GEDCOM and have changed your Root Path since then, importing these items again will create duplicates. To avoid this, click the option on the Data Import screen to ignore media present in the GEDCOM.

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• Your Data

  Step 8: Backup/Optimize/Restore Utilities

  It is recommended that you back up your table data regularly using the Backup utility. This will create a series of .bak files in the "backups" folder. If possible, it is also recommended that you set permissions on the "backups" folder to 771 (rwxrwx-x) for maximum security. To avoid data loss in the event of a server crash, copy or move these .bak files down to your local computer.

  If your data becomes corrupted or lost, you can use the Restore utility to bring it back.

  The Optimize utility can be used to speed up your data access by removing slots for deleted records.

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• Customizing Your TNG Pages

  Step 9: Templates

  An easy way to quickly give your site a professional look and feel is to install one of TNG's pre-built templates. The templates are available on the TNG downloads page. Simply download the one you want, extract the files from the zip, and copy the extracted files to the genealogy folder on your site. Some of the files will replace files you already have there.

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• Customizing Your TNG Pages

  Step 1: Style Sheets

  Even if you use one of the pre-built templates, you may want to make changes to fonts, colors, text sizes and other style elements. All of these aspects are controlled by "style sheets". Style sheet files end with the .css extension. The style sheets used by TNG are genstyle.css and tngtabs1.css/tngtabs2.css (two different tab styles). To make changes to a style sheet, simply open it in a text editor, make your changes, then save the file back to your web site. Some comments are included to help you know which lines control what elements. If you're not sure what you can do in a style sheet, we recommend you try http://www.htmlhelp.com/reference/css, or simply search the Internet for "style sheets help").

  Tabs: Some TNG pages have a series of tabs across the top. You can choose from two different tab styles (see the General Setting page for more information). If you choose the square style, you can change the colors of these tabs in the "tngtabs2.css" file. You will want to make your "active" tab match the "fieldnameback" definition from genstyle.css, and you will want to make your "inactive" tab match the "databack" definition from genstyle.css.

  If you choose the slanted tab style, you can change the attributes in "tngtabs1.css", but the colors are made from image files. To create new tab images in a different color, make sure your "photos" folder has been made writeable, then go to the page switchcolor.php in your browser (http://www.yoursite.com/genealogy/switchcolor.php). If you're reading this page from your web site, click here: switchcolor.php. You will see a utility that will help you create new tab images. Again, you will want to make your "active" tab match the "fieldnameback" definition from genstyle.css, and you will want to make your "inactive" tab match the "databack" definition from genstyle.css.If the utility does not work for you, you may not have the GD image library installed on your web site. Try creating the tabs here instead: http://lythgoes.net/genealogy/switchcolor.php.

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• Customizing Your TNG Pages

  Step 2: Header, Footer and "Meta" Files

  If you have other style sheets you want to add, or if you have scripting code or meta tags you want to place on all your TNG pages, add them to the TNG files called meta.html (public pages) and admin/adminmeta.html (admin pages).

  To change the appearance of the header that appears on all TNG pages (except the home page), edit topmenu.html or topmenu.php (enables dynamic language switching in the header) in a text or HTML editor and customize as needed. If you decide to use topmenu.php instead of topmenu.html, you will need to indicate that in the General Settings in the Custom Header value.

  To change the appearance of the footer that appears on all TNG pages (except the home page), edit footer.html in a text or HTML editor and customize.

  Things to note about these pages:
  1. They are actually only page fragments, meaning that they are pieces of HTML and not complete HTML pages. If you open them in a "smart" editor like FrontPage, it may try to "fix" these fragments by adding back the "missing" pieces. It is therefore recommended that you first open them in a text editor or save a backup copy just so you can compare before and after and delete any elements that are added back. For instance, the topmenu.html file contains a <BODY> tag but no ending </BODY> tag. If the </BODY> tag is added back, your pages may not display properly.
  2. You may rename these files if you want. If you do, be sure to put the new names in the appropriate fields on the General Settings page. Changing the extensions to ".php" is essential if you plan to include any PHP code.

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• Customizing Your TNG Pages

  Step 3: Home Page

  Your home page for TNG is called index.php. If you had a prior home page called "index.htm" or "index.html", you may have to remove it in order for your new home page to be displayed when your domain name alone is entered into a browser.

  To customize your home page, open index.php in your text or HTML editor and make changes as needed. You may rename it, but if you do you will also need to indicate the new name in the General Settings. If you are planning to use TNG as a Nuke module, you will want to use and customize the version of this file that comes with the TNG Nuke Add-on instead.

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• Final Notes

  Searching:
  When doing a simple search from the default "home page" (index.php), TNG looks to see if the search terms are "contained" in the corresponding fields of the target records. In other words, a search for "Ed" will find "Edward", "Fred" and "Cedrick". This is intentional so that as many results as possible will be returned. If you wish to limit responses to those that start with the search term(s), simply edit the index.html file and include the following hidden fields in the form: lnqualify ( for surnames; value="starts with") and fnqualify (for given names; same value). This will coerce the search to find results where the beginning of the data starts with the search term(s). This also has the additional benefit of significantly improving performance during the simple search. If you have a large database, this might be something to consider.

  RSS:
  To use the RSS newsfeed feature, open your favorite RSS reader and subscribe with this URL: http://yourdomain.com/yourgenealogyfolder/tngrss.php. You can make the feed appear in a different language by appending "&lang=yourlanguage", where "yourlanguage" is the name of the language in TNG.

  Timelines:
  Depending on your margins or sidebar width, you may find that the bars on the timeline do not line up correctly with the year markers. If this is the case, please edit the file timeline2.php and adjust the values $lineoffset, $chartwidth, $checkboxcellwidth and $division as needed.

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• Appendix

  Appendix (list of files)

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