Monday, March 9, 2015

Creating My Who Do You Think You Are? Story

In July 2014, FindMyPast announced the ability to create your own Who Do You Think You Are? Story.  The announcement said:

"To create their Story, visitors to the site just need to enter in the details of their immediate family, going as far back as they can, along with any family photos they may have. Once this information has been entered, an animated retelling of that family story will be played out, interspersed with significant contemporary issues that would have shaped the way people lived at the time."

At the time, I thought "that's a great idea, i'll do it when I have some time."  Fast forward to the FindMyPast breakfast at the RootsTech/FGS 2015 Conference, where Josh Taylor showed his WDYTYA? Story - it was funny, and well done.

I thought "I can do that, but it probably won't be as funny or as short.  But it may be a great way to connect to my family and tell some of the family stories I've learned."

Last week, I created my WDYTYA? Story on http://www.whodoyouthinkyouarestory.com/.  You can see the result at  http://www.whodoyouthinkyouarestory.com/timelines/1ljVI1l2FALXkqV7Wn0Cmw


(The link to show it is not live, don't click on it!)

The creation process was really very easy - log in (it's FREE), upload a photograph, put in the year, add a description of the event, and click on a link and your photo story is put into a Timeline that alternates your photos with historical photos.

In order to show you the process, I added another photo today:

1)  I clicked on the "Add to Story" button in the lower left corner of the screen above:



The popup window let me Add a Relative or Add a family event."  I chose to "Add another event."

2)  The "Add An Event" screen opened, and there are fields to "Upload a photo," "In which year did it happen?" and "Describe the event."


I found the photo I wanted to add from my computer files, clicked on "Upload a Photo" and then selected the Photo, and clicked on "Upload" and it did.  I then added the year and a description of the event.

3)  Here is the page I added:


I clicked "Save" on the screen above, and the finished page in my WDYTYA? Story appeared:


From the screen above I could Edit or Delete the page.  I edited the description a bit more because I made some typing errors, and saved it again.  Now it is part of my Who Do You Think You Are? Story.

To watch my story (all 60-some uploaded photos and the accompanying historical event photos), click on  http://www.whodoyouthinkyouarestory.com/timelines/1ljVI1l2FALXkqV7Wn0Cmw/

Note to those who don't want to linger 10 seconds on each page - you can advance quickly though the story to the next photo by using the right and left-hand arrows at the bottom of the story page.  You can also advance through the story by clicking the dots at the bottom of the screen.

The one thing I couldn't figure out was how to change the order for some of the events besides changing the year.

This story system works really well - I added about 60 photos and did not find a maximum number.  I don't know what the maximum might be if there is one.  If I was going to do this again, I would get the photos in one place and in the order I want to show them, but I wasn't that organized.

My next issue is "How do I save this?"  Or maybe I can't save it, although I would like to.  Will it always be on the WDYTYA? Story website?  I don't know.

I hope you enjoy my Who Do You Think You Are? Story.

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2015/03/creating-my-who-do-you-think-you-are.html

Copyright (c) 2015, Randall J. Seaver


3 comments:

Diane Gould Hall said...

It was fun watching this Randy.

Jana Iverson Last said...

Randy,

I want to let you know that your blog post is listed in today's Fab Finds post at http://janasgenealogyandfamilyhistory.blogspot.com/2015/03/follow-friday-fab-finds-for-march-13.html

Have a wonderful weekend!

Julie said...

That's pretty neat, Randy. Hadn't heard about this until I read your post, so thanks for sharing!