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Creating A Website From Your PAF File
The answers to both of your questions are, yes! Once again, PAF wins in my books for ease of use, flexibility and user friendliness in creating and editing websites. PAF also produces a GEDCOM file from your web site data and includes that file amongst the files to be uploaded to your ISP's server. PAF then places a link on the Table of Contents page to enable a viewer to download your GEDCOM file. For the first-time web publisher I really recommend using the PAF program.
You are not confined to having to load your entire PAF file into an HTML format as it is also very easy to pick and choose which individuals you wish to have included on your web site. Many choices are laid out for you on the various windows that are used by PAF to create your web site. All you have to do is click on a box to mark it to include, or exclude, certain information. For instance, on the very first window - Create Web Page - under Other Options there is a box that is marked by default to hide details for the living. If you decide you wish to have the names of the living showing on your web site, after you have obtained their permission to so do, click on the Show names box to check mark it. PAF will engineer the rest for you - it will hide their dates and places but include their names.
To create a website in PAF simply click on the Tools Menu and select the Create Web Page option. Do not be fooled by the term "page", here. PAF will create a fully indexed and paged web site that contains all of the sources, citations and notes from your PAF file, if you so desire. PAF will allow you to choose from one of their stock backgrounds for your pages and will also provide their stock navigation links and buttons on all pages. Best of all, you do not require any knowledge of HTML coding or web editing in order to create or run your PAF web site. PAF will take care of it all for you. The only ability you need to have is to be able to publish it to the server of an Internet Service Provider (ISP). In this regard, you will need to follow your ISP's instructions for uploading your web files to their server.
If you happen to have knowledge of HTML coding, PAF can be edited in any standard web editor that will open an htm or html file. In this case, you will have the flexibility of setting up your index pages in a manner that is more functional, change out the navigation buttons and links to those that are more interesting. The three standard index pages that are produced for every PAF web site are the "Table of Contents", a "Surname Index" and the "Full Name Index". Each of these pages can be modified to add features, change stock backgrounds, change layout of the output and to add or change navigation buttons.
The Table of Contents page is, in effect, the home page of the website and provides links to the basic features such as the Surname Index, the Full Name Index and a grouping of your direct families. This page also contains your name, address and email address.
The Surname Index lists all surnames, alphabetically ordered, but as one long paragraph. I have yet to find a program that will produce a surname index in what I consider to be functional.
The Full Name Index is a long list, again, ordered alphabetically by surname, but includes each person's full name with brief dates of birth and death. If you have used a consistent style to enter all of your data into your PAF program, i.e. used all capital letters on every surname you entered, then the output of this page by PAF will very closely resemble this page. Again, a little re-writing of the HTML code can be accomplished to make this stock page more aesthetically pleasing and logical.
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