* Export to TNG from scratch!

[lesleyl]

Finally upgraded to v 7.019 and I am just starting my journey to get to grips with TNG. But I'm feeling as if I'm stumbling at the first hurdle, because despite looking at other forum posts and help I really don't understand how to get my media/links to my media across.

My media is set up in subfolders beneath merged_tree.fh_data in the merged_tree project

I know I need to use the Export GEDCOM File plugin, but even after reading the Help, I don't have the first clue what settings I need to be using or what I should be looking for in a successful export!

Any help would be very much appreciated

[tatewise]

Hi Lesley.
Both FH and TNG are extremely complex products with a great many customisation options.
So it will take a while to become familiar with how to achieve a satisfactory outcome.
It partially depends on what features you have used in FH and what features in TNG you want to migrate onto.

Media have options in FH such as setting Link to Face frames, Link Note Captions, etc.
TNG has various ways of categorising Media.

The Export Gedcom File plugin tries to accommodate many of those features but you may not need all of them.

Did you find the Help for migrating to TNG as the GEDCOM Destination at https://pluginstore.family-historian.co ... generation

You should not be touching the ...\merged_tree\merged_tree.fh_dat\Media\ subfolder.
If you have used the defaults, the exported GEDCOM and Media are in ...\merged_tree\Public\Export\

It may be worth starting with a small but representative Project and migrate that to TNG first until you have learnt the ropes.

[lesleyl]

Thanks for the reply Mike and thanks for the additional link that I hadn't previously spotted.

I have a small project from a family that I won't be including in the TNG site, because it's not associated in any way with my One Name Study, but it is representative of the way I have worked with my bigger project; it should be a useful one to try out.
I've been through a tutorial from the Guild of One name Studies that helps with the TNG settings, so gradually creeping forwards!

Thanks for comments on the media - very helpful

[ADC65]

I work with TNG a lot and I would be happy to help where I can.

FH and TNG do work well together once you have ironed out the intricacies. There are a couple of 'gotchas', especially around Witnesses, but even these can be made to work (via Mike's Export Gedcom Plugin).

Media export/import is notoriously unfathomable. I had many emails back and forth with Darrin, TNG's author, and was left just as confused. I eventually worked things out. You will need to plan what you want to do with media in TNG. Do you want ALL media (e.g., photos, documents, certificates, etc.) in the same category, or do you want to split them? Do you wish to create TNG Albums, and should they contain only photos, or everything attached to a person? TNG V14 now allows you to create Albums attached to places, sources, etc., as well as people, but I would start simple (I eventually decided not to use Albums as I found them too basic).

I would start with a very simple tree - say one family with two children, first with no media and slowly add things like photos and other media. Then maybe use the sample project in FH7, although if you are more familiar with the contents of the tree you mention it might be better to use that.

There is a TNG forum which might also help - link is https://tng.community/index.php?/forums/ - though the level of help there can be variable - it's nowhere as good as this forum.

If you're willing to write, or at least run, a small bit of SQL code on your webserver after an upload you can do a lot of tidying up and get things looking as you want. I would suggest, while you are experimenting, deleting data from your tree before the next upload (Admin > Trees > Clear) as although an new Gedcom import will clear your tree, it will leave all the old media links in place. You can back up your tables (Admin > Utilities > Select All > Back Up Drop-down> Go) first if you want, but if you make another backup you will overwrite the last one. Make sure you clear your cache or refresh your browser (F5 or shift/F5 for Chrome-based browsers) after you have done an import to make sure you are seeing the latest import.

Once you have a workflow sorted it is an easy 5-minute job to do an export from FH, clear and import to TNG and do a quick SQL tidy up. But it can take some effort to get to that point.

I can give you access to my site if you want so you can see how I have it set up.

[lesleyl]

Hi ADC65
Thanks for this very helpful feedback and willingness to share your experiences. As an IT person all my working life, I find it quite alien to be unable to work out how to move forward, so your comments, particularly about the structure of the media are particularly useful.

When I started FH in the early 2000s, I had no intention of using TNG (which apparently was written about the same time as FH), so I didn't have any regard for the data structure I used inside the media folder; I simply created a folder for each family, with sub-folders for certificates, Census, wills etc. Unfortunately, I wasn't consistent - when are we ever when we are starting out? This has been made worse recently by merging my side and hubbie's side into one tree, which I thought was advisable before adding to TNG. My side didn't have the folder structure, so they are all just in the Media root folder

It's definitely sorting out the work flow that is causing me angst and your comments were again really helpful. I'm not sure about the situation re running SQL; my copy of TNG is housed at Guild Of One name Studies, so I'd have to ask the question.
With regard to media, would you advise sorting out the media on my full tree into a flatter structure and fixing the links before I go any further? I'm very happy to do 'back office' work if that makes the whole thing easier in the long run.

Thanks again
Lesley

[ADC65]

Hi Lesley,

I'm glad you have some reassurance, because when it finally does 'click' you will find it has been worth the effort, I'm sure.

You should not have to rearrange your local media folders or their contents in any way. Mike's Export Gedcom Plugin, with the right settings, will output all the media in the correct folder structure which can then be uploaded direct to your TNG site via FTP. The fine-tuning part is then adjusting the settings in TNG so it understands what it finds in the uploaded Gedcom.

TNG can cope with as many separate trees as you want on one installation/site so if you want to keep your two trees separate in FH then you can, although this will mean maintaining two trees in both FH and TNG, which is not complicated if you're organised!

I'm unfamiliar with what you mean when you say your TNG is housed at the Guild of One Name Studies. I assume you have access to the TNG Admin panel or you would not be able to upload a Gedcom in any case! I am also assuming you must have some sort of access to the server space to be able to upload your media files? This is usually via something like CPanel, unless the Guild has some other structure in place. Can I ask who installed TNG for you - as this would also need server access. If you do have CPanel access, you can run SQL from there (phpMyAdmin) but this is really just a nice-to-have and much further down the line anyway, so don't worry too much about it.

If you are happy for me to have a raw (FH7) Gedcom file from you, and the attached media (or at least a good sample of it) I can try and run it through the Export Gedcom Plugin with appropriate settings and load it to a sample tree on my web server and see if I can get it working. It would all be private of course with no public access. If you are interested, just contact me via messaging here and I will reply to your email with my details. Otherwise I'll be happy to help you through step-by-step, here or by email.

Cheers,
Adrian

[lesleyl]

Thank you Adrian.
I'll answer the Guild question first; if you are doing a One Name Study and are a member of the Guild, you can have a TNG site (or Guild + WordPress site) set up by the Guild webmaster for you, on purchase of a TNG licence. Your One Name Study forms the basis of the website, although you can include additional branches. If your membership lapses or on your demise, the tree is preserved and can be viewed by accessing the Guild site.

I am at the point of recently having had my TNG website & WordPress (for blogging), set up with an admin account on each. I'm choosing my template and have watched one of their videos on the Settings. As is the way with all expert demos, it missed the bit that was probably obvious to them (but was a black hole as far as I was concerned) - where to put the media and how! He just showed several "Collection" options in the Upload section - Photos, Documents, Headstones etc. However, having a look through just now, I may have found the tab!

Rather than work initially on my full tree, I'll add some media to the small tree I discussed above; it's actually one that my grandson did a few years ago as part of his Year 6 history project - catch them young!

I would like to contact you directly, but I cannot see a messaging option on this board; but if you look at my profile, there is an email link for me there I think. Please feel free to use it to contact me.

[harold]

There are a lot of things to consider and, as Adrian hinted, there is much to be learned by experimenting to start with.

Dealing with media is always one of the biggest considerations when setting this up. The following describes how I deal with it currently.

In my experience there are several ways you can handle media when exporting to TNG. The export plugin gives you a large number of options and TNG seems to handle them quite well as long as your workflow and import media settings mesh with the export choices.

I do maintain a detailed hierarchical folder structure in FH7. It allows me to easily find and manage my media within FH as well as through explorer when required. I do not make data changes in TNG, meaning structure is less important, so I just dump everything into the media folder. When you export from FH if you are using the export plugin, then you have the option to maintain a folder structure or not. If you do not select this option then all of your media gets dumped into the same folder as the exported GEDCOM file with no folder structure. This is what I do. The export plugin will add a suffix or a prefix to the name of each media file based on your preferences. If I remember correctly, it will also warn you if there are any file names which may end up being too long or possibly invalid. Another reason I do not use the option to maintain the folder structure is that the export plugin creates numerous additional subfolders within the existing media hierarchy. I understand the reasoning for it, but it is not the best fit for my current workflow.

Next, I need to ensure that I set the Extra Option > Manage Keys in the export plugin to Move to note & _TYPE. TNG uses this on import. Each of my media records in FH is assigned a keyword. I use uppercase keywords. They seem to cause fewer issues with TNG. I use keywords such is PHOTO, CENSUS, BIRTH, BAPTISM, DEATH, MARRIAGE, OBITUARY, DOCUMENT, HEADSTONE, HISTORY, etc. You can assign more than one keyword to a media record but the uppercase keyword needs to be the first one in the list. That is the one TNG will look at. FH does not seem to like the uppercase DOCUMENT keyword and keeps resetting it to Document so I use the Keyword Update plug in to help maintain the keywords.

On the TNG side of things I set the Photo, Document, History, Headstone, Multimedia paths each to simply media This is the directory where I transfer all of the media files from the FH export location. This setup is done on the Setup >> Configuration >> General Settings admin page. Additionally on the Setup >> Configuration >> Import Settings page I make sure all of the Local Path settings are blank and the setting for If no local path match is set to Import file name only.

The next thing, before I actually ran the first import was, I had to set up collections to correspond to each of the uppercase keywords I use. This is a one-time set up unless you want to change or add new collections. TNG already has default collections set up for PHOTO, DOCUMENT, HISTORY, HEADSTONE. I added others to match my keywords. This can be done on the Admin >> Media page. Select the Add Collection button. The illustration shows the options I used to create a collection for the CENSUS keyword. There is detailed help to describe each of the fields. Pay attention to the help advice on the Same setup as: option, it tripped me up the first time I tried to use it.

Screenshot 2023-03-09 084025.jpg (42.04 KiB) Viewed 736 times

Once the collections are set up, the import process will automatically place each media item in its proper collection based on keyword. As far as I know there is no restriction on how many collections can be created, but they are added to the dropdown media menus and too many could become unwieldy. There are options to help with that, but they are beyond the scope of this discussion. I have considered organising photo collections based on major family groups (e.g. my maternal and paternal lines and my wife's maternal and paternal lines to start) but I am not sure if it adds any value since collections would still be quite large.

Additionally there are options to set up albums. I do not use them currently because they are TNG specific and need to be rebuilt every time you do a full import. This could be done using custom SQL scripts, which you would run after import. Reading between the lines, I suspect that Adrian may be doing something like that. Maintaining a detailed directory structure for your media (which I currently do not) would also help with this method. It is on my list of things to investigate more deeply in future.

This is not the only, or the best workflow. It is what I have been using successfully for quite a while. As Mike said earlier both TNG and FH are very complicated tools with a lot of options. This makes them very flexible but can also complicate things until you understand the best workflow for you.

[lesleyl]

Hi Harold
Thank you for such a detailed reply, which I will read thoroughly.
The more I read, the more I realise that it's been all about confidence and little gaps in my knowledge/understanding of how TNG works.
I am going to take the next couple of days to set up and run a small test. I'll let you all know how on!

Thanks again to everyone who has replied

[harold]

In my experience when it comes to exporting GEDCOMS from FH, or importing media into TNG the first and best approach is the following (not that I ever follow this advice):

• Read carefully every single line of the online help related to that subject.

• Wait 30 minutes.

• Then re-read it twice.

• Wait an hour.

• Read it again.

Finally before you do anything with your data.

• Repeat above steps.