Relatively new to gramps. Have developed a small tree and generated a narrated website (local on desktop) via the Reports feature. It works, for me, but others might need an intro.
I create Narrated Webs and put them on thumb drives then send it to the cousin requesting their branch.
The Home Page, Introduction, and Contact pages use standard Gramps Notes as the text for the various pages. You can play around with the note’s Preformatted option in an attempt for something more stylized.
These Note records get added to the Narrated Web’s Page Generation option tab. A single image file can also be added to the pages. I have created collage images to add to these pages. To be clear, these images get added to Gramps’ media records so they be added to the NarrWeb.
If you do not add any files to the pages, the NarrWeb will not create the corresponding web page, i.e. Introduction.
Single line (or short) notes can be created to set as the Header or Footer text.
My standard footer is “This Family Genealogy Must NOT be Published to the Internet. The Information is for Family Use Only!”. My standard header is "The Ancestors and Their Descendants of … "
There is also the Extra Pages tab so you can add a html page created outside of Gramps.
This is NOT an answer. It is just reference of what the Wiki currently says… so we can look at it here and improve it in the wiki.
There are 2 separate sections to reference. The first is the How to: article mentioned above. It starts with creating the Media objects to be used by the Narrated Web Site report. Which is good… since when you get to the Report options you can only select (not create) the needed Notes and Media objects.
Go to the Media View in Gramps, and click on the add icon. In the Select a media object dialog, you need to click on the option Internal Note, and give a title, e.g., Home Page, Footer, …
Next, select the new media object, and edit it (double-click or Edit button). Everything you add in the Note tab of the media object, will appear on your webpage if you select this media object during the website generation.
If you know HTML, you can just type the text wrapped with the appropriate html code tags. If you do not know HTML, consider making a page with a “What You See Is What You Get” web editor like Bluefish, Quanta Plus, … . These tools contain icons to dynamically create webpages. The HTML text created in such tools can be copied in the note section of your Home Page Gramps media object.
The next wiki section documents the options selected during the configuration of a Web Report to be generated.
The Page Generation tab provides options for creation of commonly expected supplemental webpages & annotations common to all webpages throughout the generated website.
The first options are used to control generation of three supplemental pages: Home (Home webpage), Introduction (FAQ or About Us webpage) and Publisher Contact (Contact Us webpage).
Each of supplemental pages may be assigned a specific Media or Note item. By default, no content (neither media nor text from a Note) is assigned to these pages.
Content for these pages must originate as Media or Notes items that have been created before running the report. Once the desired items have been added to your Tree, you will be able to choose them from a list of Notes or Media Objects.
As you create the notes for the various pages, if you reference a person in the note, you can create a link to that person.
At the end of my Intro note I will often sign it Dave using one of the script fonts. Using the note’s link editor I create a link to myself in the database. When the NarrWeb is created, it will create the link to my web page. And this can be done with anything within the database. If you reference an Aunt Mary that helped you, you can link to her page.
If you use the NarrWeb as the primary report for sharing your work, the Link Editor can be useful in other notes you create within the database.
If you have a note with a person’s obituary, you can create the links for the people mentioned in the obituary to those people in the database. Or to an external internet page.
Within Gramps itself, these links will open the referenced object’s edit window. These same links within the NarrWeb will open their web page.
Go to the Media View in Gramps, and click on the add icon. In the Select a media object dialog, you need to click on the option Internal Note, and give a title, e.g., Home Page, Footer, …
I am feeling particularly thick the evening, sorry. I do not find an option “Internal Note”.
When select “Media” and click on the “+”, or select “Add” then “Media”, a new media window pops up , immediately followed by a window “Select a media object”. Since that apparently is not correct, I close that window and peruse the “New Media” window.
There I can select from Source Citations, Attributes, Notes, References. “Internal Note” is not seen. Choosing “Note” there are options such as Media Note, Citation, General, etc, but no “Internal Note”. Am I being too “literal” or pedantic here?
I always go into brain lock mode when I attempt to follow instructions and they do not agree with what I see. And many times that is my fault. I’m over 70 if that is of any value.
Thanks for all the assistance, I am sure I’ll get it eventually.
If I may attempt to narrow down my specific issue -
In the “Select a media object window”, I am supposed to select the option “Internal Note” and give it a Title. I am not presented with, or simply do not see, any item named “Internal Note”, so, I pause.
Should I simply ignore that, provide a Title and move on? Am I supposed to have previously created the item (an html file, perhaps?) which I am also to select?
Please understand I am unfamiliar with some things that may be “second nature” to more experienced folks, so some things I need more “hand holding” to grasp.
I could simply hack about, regenerate the web files and see what happens, but, better if I understand the basics first.
I haven’t needed to generate a site and haven’t used this report. So it needs someone to adopt the related pages and become their WikiContributor.
From the number of postings to the maillist and here, @SNoiraud has put a lot of Development work into evolving the capabilities. (And he has put more time into answering questions.) His spare time is better spent making improvements to the code and interface than struggling with the documentation in a non-native language with such a bizarre grammar.
So the user documentation is probably lagging behind the actual capabilities. (One of the pages was created in 2007. But there are not nearly as many updates to it as to the Report code.)
Your pointing out the inconsistencies will help improve the user docs. Thanks for slogging through that.
Thanks for the background. I find gramps to be an impressive project and appreciate that it provides an opportunity to accomplish something that has been a thought for decades.
I would be willing to offer assistance with updating the documentation, but, not knowing the program features and how they are supposed to function, makes that a task for someone else I think. As it stands, more harm that good would come from my meddling.
However, it may be that a “collaboration” via some means of voice communication and screen sharing, that progress on two fronts might result.
That aside for now, my efforts to hack my way through, have not produced the results I hoped for. When I have regenerate the web files I can see the added home page, header and footer files, they exist only as files. The index.html file remains as it was, so clearly I do not grasp something fundamental here. Attempting “too much, too soon” perhaps.
Actually, any new user with good grammar and attention to detail is a wonderful documentation person. They don’t skip steps as “obvious”, the way power users do.
And each edit is flagged as a new change needing review. So a thick skin is needed … because edits will be flogged endlessly like the proverbial dead horse.
But yes, many of us do use this forum as a collaborative reference when updating the wiki. So if/when this inquiry finds its answer, please mark that as a ‘Solution’
These are my records I used from the last time I created a NarrativeWeb (NW) for a cousin.
In the Notes view list I created a number of Note records that I use when I create a NW. I gave each note a unique ID number making it much easier to find the notes. You do not have to do this.
I do the same thing with various images. I have collected various genealogy themed comics and combined some together. To add the media object to the list you select Add (+) then navigate to the image file you want residing on your hard drive. When you select it, then you can make adjustments, fill out, the Title for the image.
Gramps does not actually store the image in the database. Gramps stores the path information so it can find the image.
