Introduction
The FHUGThe Family Historian User Group is a group of user with wide-ranging experience, from newcomers to very experienced users, all of whom are very willing to shared their knowledge about the programme. Forums allow you to ask questions about Family Historian, Ancestral Sources, Genealogy Research, and many other subjects, but a little knowledge about how to use them will help you get the most from them.
Your Information and Preferences
Your Location and Family Historian version are edited along with other personal settings by clicking your user-name top right and choosing the User Control Panel > Profile options. Under User Control Panel > Board Preferences you also have a limited choice of board styles; it’s recommended that you use one of the MetroLike options.
Posting Forum Topics
Detailed (but generic) forum usage documentation is at PHPBB3 Documentation Chapter 5. User Guide and there are also some Frequently Asked Questions.
Forum Specific Guidance
Here are some tips for when you are posting or editing a Forum Topic.
Posting a New Question
- Check that you’re posting in the right forum; there’s a brief description of the purpose of each forum on the list of forums; and there is often a ‘sticky post’ at the top of each forum with additional guidance.
- Choose a title that describes your question or problem. “Help Needed” doesn’t help anyone work out if they’re in a position to advise you; “Choosing Report Options for a Narrative Report” does.
Getting Notified of Responses
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When posting a topic, below the editing box there is a tick option to Notify me when a reply is posted. User Control Panel > Board Preferences > Edit Posting Defaults will let you turn this option on or off by default.
- When viewing a topic, in the spanner menu next to POST REPLY there is an option to Subscribe topic. Be sure to check the text before using this; if you are already subscribed it changes to Unsubscribe topic. This can be useful if you either forgot to ask to be notified of responses when you created a topic, or you’re interested in following responses to somebody else’s topic.
- At the bottom of every Forum, there is an option to subscribe to the whole forum (and be notified of all postings in it.)
User Control Panel > Overview > Manage Subscriptions will allow you to modify the forums and topics you’re subscribed to (useful if you’ve forgotten what you’ve signed up to).
Attachments
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Many file types are allowed including:
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all Family Historian custom data files
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screen-shot & image files such as GIF, JPEG, JPG, PNG, TGA, TIF, TIFF
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plain text files such as XML, TXT, LOG, JS, CSV, CPP
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document files such as DOC, DOCX, ODG, ODP, ODS, ODT, PDFThe Portable Document Format (PDF) is a file format developed by Adobe to present documents in their original formatting, independent of software, hardware, and operating systems. PDF files can contain text, graphics, links, and buttons, form fields, audio, video, and, PPT, PPTX, RTF, XLS, XLSX
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Maximum file size is 256 KBytes.
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For other file types or large files use right-click Send to > Compressed (ZIP) folder to create a Windows compatible ZIP file. Avoid tools such as PkZip & 7-Zip as other users may not have them.
Taking Screenshots
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Use the Windows Snipping Tool as described in the Utility ~ Windows Snipping Tool, as it is free in all current versions of Windows, or the free Snip & Sketch tool in recent Windows 10 versions.
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Alternatively, use the free Windows Paint tool, with PrtScn button and Paste command, then use File > Save as > PNG picture file.
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In Linux, select a ScreenshotA screenshot is an image showing exactly what you are seeing on your PC screen. You can use the free Windows Snipping Tool / Windows Snip and Sketch; on a Mac use CMD Shift 4 to capture screen-shots; all are utility from your software repositoryA repository is a place (physical or online) where collections of original source data are stored and maintained. and use it to screenshot the whole screen, the active window or a selected area. If bemused by choice GNOME Screenshot seems to work well in Ubuntu based systems. If [fH] says the file is too large to upload use a utility like GIMP to resize it.
- On a Mac (using VM, PlayOnMac or CrossoverCrossOver is a Microsoft Windows compatibility layer available for Linux, macOS, and Chrome OS. It enables many Windows-based applications to run on Linux, macOS, or Chrome OS operating systems. CrossOver is a retail product developed by CodeWeavers and based on), CMD-SHIFT-4 will capture a screenshot.
Custom Tags
- If you want to provide a link to content in this KnowledgeBase, you can get the code by navigating to the relevant page in the Knowledge Base and clicking on the chain-link
in the menu bar. The link you want will be copied to your clipboard and can be pasted into a Forum Topic using CTL-V.
in the menu bar. The link you want will be copied to your clipboard and can be pasted into a Forum Topic using CTL-V.- You can create shortcuts to Topic Forums. Open any Forum Topic and there is an asterisk * to the left of its Subject Title (except in Prosilver style). Click on it and hit CTL-C to copy the TOPIC link that can be pasted into another posting without having to copy the number and title. Unfortunately, it does not work if double (“) quotes appear in the Title, so a Moderator may replace them with single (‘) quotes.
Site Searches
Built-in Search Facilities
All Forums can be searched using the Search… and ADVANCED SEARCH options top right; any single Forum can be searched via its Search this forum… option. Also try the Home page SEARCH feature. The Knowledge Base has its own Search box at the top.
Extended Search for Keywords with Google Site Search
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You may find that the built in keywords search does not find what you want, or even too much. If so you could try the Google Site Search which also gives you the power of all the other Google search options. The downside is that the format of the list of results in Google may not be as well formatted as the results returned from an FHUG search.
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This simple example for the whole FHUG site will only include the full phrase change any and exclude usage.
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"change any " -usage site:www.fhug.org.uk
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This example will return results just from the FHUG Forums
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"change any " -usage site:www.fhug.org.uk/forum/
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This example will return results just from the FHUG Knowledge Base
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"change any " -usage site:www.fhug.org.uk/wiki/
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To make it quicker to access you could perform a Google Site Search and bookmark it, then in future just amend the search term. You may find the format below of the search quicker to use with a bookmark. You probably don’t need the double quotes at the end, but this will save an extra blank keystroke and also make it ready for a phrase search; having clicked on your bookmark it will return all results for the site, you can then add your search criteria directly after the “”, or use the “” for a phrase search.
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site:www.fhug.org.uk ""
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This is just one of the many help pages on the web regarding Google Search, and is specific to site search.
Bookmarking Topics
You can bookmark a topic using the spanner icon at the top of the topic and choosing Bookmark topic. If you click on your username towards the top right you can View Bookmarks, and optionally remove one or more bookmarks that you no longer want.
