Yesterday, Iris Voswinkel released Ancestor Tree Manager 11.0, a major update to the free Java-based cross-platform (Windows, Mac, Linux) genealogy program that generates a family tree website.
The main new features for Ancestor Tree Manager 11.0 is added support for importing and exporting GEDCOM 7.0, along with database optimization and a UI change.
It’s a good candidate for a spotlight article – one of the more interesting things it does is not only provide support for creating a family tree website (many genealogy programs do this), but it has the built-in communication functions of FTP, SFTP, and SCP, which means it can communicate directly between your computer and your web server (provided it supports one of those protocols) (link/manual covering this) and it supports comparison and synchronizing between your desktop and the web server, so that it only uploads the changed files. In the past, we sometimes found ourselves uploading a new copy of the tree every time even if it ran into the hundreds and even thousands of files.
With a lot of genealogy programs and utilities, your software will generate a directory full of files (a mix of HTML and JPGs/GIFs) and then you load your FTP program up and copy the directory or directories up to your web server. ATM makes it easier and faster to do this, and it really is built-in (screenshot of the file transfer page from ATM, from the official site):
You could use this as your main genealogy program, but if you are heavily invested in another genealogy program, you could also use it in place of a third-party FTP/SFTP/SCP utility – simply export a GEDCOM file from your main desktop program (list of tested programs, although it supports GEDCOM files in general), load it into ATM, and then upload the tree online.
One advantage besides you working with your data inside of a full genealogy program, is the file synchronization/comparison feature, that allows you to only upload the changed files.
A lot of credit needs to be given to the developer for including the full file uploading capability.
You can view a sample website here (in Dutch):
https://genealogie.sivworks.nl/index.html
If you’d like to read the online manual or see more screenshots (this is going away in a few months, replaced by a local copy when you install ATM):
https://ancestortreemanager.sivworks.nl/en/Manual/index.html
You can download it here (pay attention to the Java requirements):
https://ancestortreemanager.sivworks.nl/en/Miscellaneous/Download.html
| Ancestor Tree Manager 11.0 (November 2, 2024) |
| Support of GEDCOM 7.0 import and export |
| The output of the GEDCOM 5.5.1 export is changed to follow the structure of GEDCOM 7.0 (for as far as possible) |
| Function added: Help Send GEDCOM file |
| The manual is now available locally instead of on the ATM website (the old manual of version 10.1 will remain there until 01-01-2025) |
| Column Parents added to person list |
| Improved handling of capitalization issues in material |
| Storage of the ATM database is optimized |
| Several improvements |
Screenshot (from the official site)
