Tim Forsyth released an extremely large update to Gigatrees last week, Gigatrees 5.4.9, and it has a lot of new features, particularly in the area of mapping out past events. Gigatrees is a free Windows-based tree website generator that generates HTML-based websites (or local SQLite3 databases) from your genealogy programs’ GEDCOM files.
Among the changes, there are 11 new features and two bug fixes, and some of these new features are significant – is a new page for Timelines, separated by centuries, and including every dated event in your database, there is a new page for Ancestor Maps, that can show you locations for events associated with individuals. A new page for Origin Maps has been created, showing only the location of the earliest events associated with individuals. There are pages showing immigration or emigration status, nobility status.
Note: Gigatrees 5.4.9 was patched on December 7th, 2024, for an issue relating to “parsing source templates that caused the program to spin”, with the version number remaining the same.
Most online genealogy programs that create/export family tree websites do not have a built-in blogging feature, but Gigatrees does Gigatrees also has extensive support for hundreds of third-party GEDCOM tags, and you can see a list of the more commonly used export applications here: Gigatrees – Supported Exporting Applications
- Demo here: link
- Download it here: Downloads – Gigatrees
- Quick Start Guide: Quick Start Guide – Gigatrees
| Gigatrees 5.4.9 – December 2, 2024 – Extensive release notes (full details) |
| Added a new page for Timlines. Timelines pages will appear in the menu separated into centuries, and will include every dated event in your database. |
| Added a new page for Ancestor Maps. <AncestorMaps> can be created for any number of individuals and will include every location for every event associated with the configured individual’s ancestors. Each location will appear as pinned marker on a world map overlayed by a density heatmap |
| Added a new page for Origin Maps. <OriginMaps> can be created for any number of individuals and behave similar to the Ancestor Maps descibed above, with the exception, that they will include only the location of the earliest dated events associated with the configured individual’s ancestors. This roughly aligns with their ethnicity. |
| Added a new page for Immigrants, which will include every person in your database having an immigration or emigration GEDCOM field and will display a table showing the immigrants name, date of immigration, the emigration and immigration countries (using ISO 3166-1 3-digit country codes) and the ship they traveled on. |
| Added a new page for Nobility Titles, which will include every person in your database having an nobility title GEDCOM field and will display a table showing a timeline with each person’s name, their title and a date if included in the database. |
| Added a new Ethnicity tab to each person’s profile page. You can disable this tab or configure it to be shown for only living persons in the <ProfilePages> configuration item. The Ethnicity estimates are calculated based on the origin of the each person’s earliest ancestor for each family line. |
| Added a new Fan Chart tab to each person’s profile page. You can disable this tab, configure it to appear inline on the main profile page instead of as a tab, set a maximum number of generations to show, and indicate whether to use reliability assessments for color-coding or a random pattern under the <FanCharts> configuration item. |
| Added support for automatic geocoordinate lookups. There are several new options under the <Locations> configuration item. |
| Added a new %GoogleMapsApiKey% placeholder for use by <Plugins>. Also added a googlemaps plugin which uses this placeholder, and is necessary to display the Ancestor and the Origin Maps. |
| Added a new configuration item <ShowMigrationPath> to the Ancestor Lists options. When enabled, a new column will be added to all ancestor lists (and descendant lists) showing their timeline location using 2-digit state codes or 3-digit country codes (ISO 3166-1). |
| Added a new configuration item <ShowUnmappableLocations> to the Data Validation options. When enabled, an element will be added to the data validation page showing all locations for which no coordinates exist. |
| Fixed hiding private photos and private blog posts when the <Privatize> is enabled. |
| Fixed an issue in blog posts causing an infinite loop when an end-of-hashtag was not found due to HTML anchors pointing to ids on the same page. |