Pages

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Exploring WikiTree - Post 5: Adding Photos

I uploaded a GEDCOM file to WikiTree in the first post of this series.  In Post 2 in this series, we explored the Family Tree and navigation within the tree on the WikiTree site.  In Post 3, we saw what was included on a Person Page previously edited, and in Post 4 we went through the process to Edit a Person Page.

In this post, I'm going to upload a photo to a Person Page.  I'm going to add a thumbnail size photograph of my great-grandfather, Henry Austin Carringer (1853-1946).

Starting from his Person Page (private profile, of which I'm the Profile Manager):


From the Person Page, I can click on the small "place-holder" image next to the person's name, or on the small "upload image" link beside the "Photos with Henry Austin" section on the right side of the screen.

When I click on either one, an Upload Photo window that says "Click a browse button to find an image or PDF on your computer. For help working with pictures, click here."  The user can browse their file folders for the image to be uploaded.  The site says "(Uploaded files need to be in a standard JPG, GIF, or PNG image format, or Adobe PDF, and be 10MB or less. Inappropriate images may be removed. Please see our Terms of Service.)"  The screen for my upload looked like:


I picked Austin's photo from the list, and it uploaded fairly quickly.  After the upload, my screen went back to an "Edit Photo Info" page and showed Austin's photograph:  I added the date and location for the photo to the fields provided, and could choose "certain," "uncertain" or "location not applicable" for the place and "exact/certain," "approximate/uncertain," "before this date" or "after this date" for the date.  This screen looks like:



 Here's Henry Austin Carringer's Person Profile after the photo upload:



A user who sees the Person Profile can click on any of the icons below the picture on the right side of the screen above - the icons are for "I Like This," "Send e-card," and "View/Edit."

The Profile Manager and Trusted List can add any number of images to a Person Profile using the "upload image" links on the Person Profile page.  Images of families, homes, census records, passenger lists, military records, etc. can be uploaded to the WikiTree system.

The user can select the new image to be the preferred photo to be shown on the WikiTree family tree.  I haven't figured out yet how to delete a photograph from the Photo list, or change the preferred photo once I have more than one.

What does my WikiTree family tree look like after I've uploaded some photographs? Here's the tree for my mother:



Due to page size limitations (they want this to print on one page, I think, using the Print-Friendly link), the photos for only the latest three generations are shown.  My preference would be that there be space available for a photograph for each person on this page, and the capability to save it as a JPG or PDF file.  I could do a screen capture of this and save it as an image if I wanted to.

Here is the Print-Friendly image of the above chart:



It prints out as you select - portrait or landscape, using your File == Print selection - on one page.

That was pretty easy and fairly fast to perform.  I love easy and fast.  I still like WikiTree!

1 comment:

  1. Hi Randy!

    You wrote: "I haven't figured out yet how to delete a photograph from the Photo list, or change the preferred photo once I have more than one."

    Users often ask these questions, so we'll have to figure out a better way to explain them.

    I'll answer the latter question first since it's easier. You can replace the preferred/primary photo for a person by selecting another one. You check the box on the image editing page in the right column. If you want to remove (and not replace) the photo, you can uncheck the box.

    The explanation for deleting images is a little more complicated. Actually, it's not just a complicated explanation ... because there is no way to delete a photo! Sounds crazy, I know.

    You can remove a photo so that it doesn't appear anywhere. To do this, you just click the "REMOVE" link under the person or page's name on the photo editing page. The image will not appear anywhere but it will still exist on our server. This way, if you want to recover it later it still exists. Photos that aren't associated with any profile are automatically deleted periodically.

    Leaving the photo on the server can be valuable because other trusted people can "REMOVE" someone (even the last person) from a photo you uploaded. Your cousin might be saying "that's not Aunt Jane in this photo" and your cousin might be right. Or he might be wrong. The point is that images are collaboratively tagged and edited just like other things on WikiTree. And since they're collaborative, we need some protections against deletions.

    All that said, we've been working on a way to enable the person who uploaded a photo to delete the photo without eliminating the benefit described above. In the meantime, anyone who needs a photo deleted can ask us to do it immediately rather than waiting for it to be automatically cleared.

    Chris

    ReplyDelete