Second Site

A presentation for South King County, Washington, TMG Users GroupGlenn Gilbert

8 June 2006

Creating A CD-ROM

Navigation: Page Down to advance Page up to return

Overview

the Basics What is Second Site What is HTML What is CSS Putting HTML, CSS

& TMG together

the Specifics What you need Purpose Using Second Site Burn the CD

Navigation: Page Down to advance Page up to return

What is Second Site

Second Site is a companion program to The Master Genealogist®

Second Site is a ‘report writer’ for TMG producing HTML output which may be used for: Web Sites CD-ROMs Reports for internal use

What is HTML

Hyper Text Markup Language HTML is the language of the World Wide Web. HTML is plain text. A Web Browser* reads HTML files and renders

the content in a graphical presentation.*Internet Explorer, Firefox, Netscape, Safari, Opera, Mozilla and others

What is CSS

Cascading Style Sheets CSS is a simple way to add color, spacing,

fonts, and other properties to HTML. CSS is plain text. CSS greatly reduces the amount of repetitive

coding that would otherwise be required in HTML to achieve the uniform look and feel (style) for a web site.

HTML + CSS HTML without style sheet…

<p><font face="times new roman" color="red"><b>This text is Times New Roman &amp; red &amp; bold.</b></font></p>

You need to type all the formatting tags every time you want text to appear in Times New Roman, Red & Bold. If you have hundreds of lines of HTML like this and you decide you’d prefer green, you’d have to

find and change every line. HTML with style sheet…<style type="text/css">

p.c3 {color: red; font-family: times new roman; font-weight: bold}

</style>

<p class=“c3”>This text is Times New Roman &amp; red &amp; bold.</p> Change red to green is simply a matter of changing the color in the style, it will apply wherever

the class c3 has been called. Not only is the HTML simplified, and smaller (loads faster) applying a global change is far

easier than editing what could amount to thousands of lines of code.

CSS continued

Second Site uses a Cascading Style Sheet to achieve a uniform look and feel for the web pages it generates.

Although making a change to a single CSS setting is not needed, it is helpful to know that if you want to change the appearance of just about anything in your Second Site web pages you will find the setting somewhere in the Stylesheets section. Second Site includes 55 default CSS classes, including 3

fully customizable user classes.

Putting HTML, CSS & TMG togetherHTML may be used in TMG

Use the [HID:] [:HID] formatting codes in TMG to enclose HTML. TMG contains a special Second Site formatting code [SS:] [:SS] which used in

conjunction with [HID:] [:HID] limits the enclosed output to Second Site web pages.Second Site generates all the HTML needed.Second Site generates all the CSS needed.

A knowledge of HTML and CSS is not necessary, but you may find an understanding of them helpful should you desire to add some formatting to the content you add in both Second Site and TMG.

There is a wealth of resources, both printed and on the Internet. I’d recommend starting with W3C - The World Wide Web Consortium andW3Schools Online Web Tutorials or simply search on HTML or CSS using your favorite search engine.Note: the links in this presentation require Internet access.

What you need

TMG Second Site A CD-Writer* Some blank CDs

*A hardware device, commonly found in most computers.If running an operating system older than Windows XP you will

need a CD burning program.

the Purpose

Will the CD be a one off to share information with a relative or fellow researcher?

Will you make several copies for distribution at a family reunion?

Will you include everybody in your dataset, or do you want only a selected group of people?

the Purpose continued

The answers to these questions will determine what you may need to do in TMG.The default setting in Second Site is to exclude living people, and is based on the Living Flag. Only people whose Living Flag is set to N will appear in the output. In fact the default settings in Second Site are most restrictive, with no mention of living persons.If you want to include or exclude a group of people Second Site has the ability to evaluate ONE flag in addition to the Living Flag. One or more of that flag’s values may be used, and people either included or excluded based on the flag. If you are making a CD for a family reunion, your database may contain families that would be of little interest to the intended recipients in this context. The same might apply if you were making a CD for an individual.

Therefore you need to set a flag in TMG, for this presentation I created a flag, used a Focus Group to select the people, and the Secondary Output option in the List of People report to set the flag value.

using Second Site

the Site Definition File The Site Definition File stores all the property

settings for a site. A SDF is required to build a site.

The -t and -p folders derive their name from the SDF.

Use File > New to create a SDF. Creating a SDF is the first step in creating a web site.

Second Site Help Site Definition File

http://www.johncardinal.com/ss/sdf.htmNote: the links in this presentation require Internet access.

using Second Site

understanding Second Site output folders

Second Site creates two folders. A template folder name-t (name is the SDF file name)

Contains template files.

Unless you plan to customize a theme you can ignore the contents of this folder

A pages folder name-p Contains page (output) files.

An additional exhibits folder, may be created depending on settings in Exhibits > Output Folder its location will vary.

using Second Site

understanding Second Site output files

Second Site creates several files. Files in the -t folder control output. (templates)

Files here will vary depending on the theme, and other options you choose in Second Site. These are the files you edit to create a “customized” theme which is beyond the scope of this presentation.

Files in the -p folder are the final product. (pages)These are the files you upload to a web server or burn to a CD-ROM. Each time you build or rebuild the site these files will change.

Second Site Help Overview

http://www.johncardinal.com/ss/overview.htm

using Second Site understanding Second Site output

the User Data Folder Although not required creating a User Data Folder is

a good practice, and highly recommended. The UDF helps keep output organized.

The UDF can be any folder, new or existing. Multiple UDFs can be used. Only one UDF can be active at a time.

The UDF protects theme customizations from changes in program updates.

Use File > Preferences > Set User Data Folder to set the UDF.

Second Site Help User Data Folderhttp://www.johncardinal.com/ss/userdatafolder.htm

using Second Site

Important Buttons Save

Saves the SDF file. Browse Site

Access your pages in your web browser directly from Second Site.

Make Site This is THETHE Button, when clicked Second Site

generates all the files that comprise your site in the -p folder. You will click this button many times in the process of building your web pages.

using Second Site

Second Site Help… Help is context sensitive. Clicking the Help button or pressing F-1

will open a web page with help based on the current section you are working in.

The Help menu also includes a search facility, as well as links to Internet resources.

using Second Site

The next steps will include: setting default language values. selecting a TMG database. choosing what data & tags to include or

exclude. choosing the people that will be included

or excluded.The selections you make will depend on the purpose or your Second Site project.

As you can see there are a large number of properties that can be changed, some will depend on the purpose of the project, but many will be based on your personal preferences.

• For the most part the default setting will be fine.

• They can be changed at any time and the site rebuilt.

• Experimentation is the best way to determine your personal preferences.

• Only a few properties need to be changed to create a finished product.

Many of the text fields in Second Site have an “Editor Window” that is useful when entering multi-line text. It functions much like TMGs Memo Editor, and can be accessed with the same function key F7, or from the Edit Memo button on the toolbar.

The Macro menu supports adding some HTML for adding images, links, and some formatting.

Second Site Help Edit Menuhttp://www.johncardinal.com/ss/mnuedit.htm

Second Site Help Site Sectionhttp://www.johncardinal.com/ss/secsite.htm

Add AutoRun Files

Places 3 files in the -p folder

• autorun.exe

• autorun.ico

• autorun.ini

The presence of these file in the root of a CD will launch the Main Page when the user inserts the disk in a drive.*

*unless Auto Run has been disabled in the drive properties by the user.

proofread Pages

Before you burn the web site to a CD proofread all the output, and make the necessary edits to your data in TMG.

Rebuild the site and check again. There is no limit to the number of times you can rebuild a site.

When satisfied with the result proceed to burning CDs.

Burn the CD

Navigate to the -p folder. Click Edit – Select All With mouse over selected files right click and

mouse over Send to finally click your CD-Writer.

Load a blank CD in your CD-Writer. If necessary open a Writable CD folder. When the folder opens click

Write these files to CD When the CD is done either check Yes, write these

files to another CD, click Next and follow the instructions to load another blank CD, or click Finish.

Note: I found this method much faster than loading the blank CD first!This may vary depending on your computer setup.

Resources Where to buy Second Site

Wholly Genes web storehttp://www.whollygenes.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvcLook for the link to Companion Products, in the left hand side bar

The complete Second Site Help system is available online, and you can review it at any time without purchasing Second Site.http://www.johncardinal.com/ss/contents.htm

Where to get TMG Utility http://www.johncardinal.com/tmgutil/

SupportAlthough there is no formal support system, the program developer,John Cardinal, monitors SECONDSITE-L,TMG-L, and the Wholly Genes Forum, and is quite responsive to questions and problem solving.

http://lists.rootsweb.com/index/other/Software/SECONDSITE.htmlhttp://lists.rootsweb.com/index/other/Software/TMG.htmlhttp://www.whollygenes.com/forums201/index.php

HTML & CSS W3C - The World Wide Web Consortium

www.w3c.orgLook for links to CSS and HTML in the left hand side bar.

W3Schools Online Web Tutorialshttp://www.w3schools.com/