Start Here!

Welcome to the Site Use Guide for GenerousGenealogists. Hopefully this page will make your use of this site a more pleasant and productive experience.  As the old GM TV commercial once said: “This isn’t your father’s Oldsmobile.”

Most of the materials offered offered on GenerousGenealogists are freely available to all site visitors, regardless of registration status; however, there are exceptions.

In order to be an active ‘interactive’ participant on GenerousGenealogists, we do require you obtain a user account.

We absolutely want to receive your thoughts and be available to assist you. It’s just that we really don’t want to receive a bunch of spam; so, if you are to input content on the site, we require you register here first.

Having said all that, it bears mention that our user accounts are FREE, so don’t be shy.

To register on our site all you need to do is click this link and follow the instructions which appear on the page.  If you prefer you may use your social login from that page to create an account here (we offer a number of options).

On your first login, you should pay particular attention to the following items:

Use cut & paste to enter your system generated password. Those user hostile passwords can be a real problem otherwise.

Once you have cracked the code and are logged into the GenerousGenealogists site, you should change your password.  You may do that by clicking this link, or just look at the very top of your browser screen on the right hand side, you will note Your Account, <username>.  If you click that, you may also edit your user profile and change your password there whenever you would like to in the future.

The GenerousGenealogists website offers numerous functions. Our major functions include:

• Volunteer Database
  is the place to go if you want help looking up information, getting photos, accessing specific texts, etc. This area is similar in function to the old RAOGK.
• Brickwall Forums ,
  this area is setup to get you help in addressing your family search Brickwalls.
• Coaching
  is an area we are building constantly to assist you develop more robust genealogy research skills and awareness; it is also where our Guest authors publish their materials.
• The Wiki
  As our Wiki’s “Helping others- Find the past” title hopefully indicates, The Wiki exists to document and share information on “how-to” conduct and manage genealogy research. This Wiki also serves as the platform for documenting our ‘collective’ preferences regarding the conduct of genealogy work.
• FamilyEcho,
  is a free online tool which allows you to build an interactive family tree of your ancestry, going back far into the past. Invite your parents or grandparents to collaborate online and fill in the missing details.
• Question & Answers Area (currently in a beta release state)
  this area is actually a part of our interactive coaching and knowledge sharing- ask anything you want about genealogy or this site… who knows what interesting information you may encounter. This area is very much like Yahoo Answers.
• Our Shop
  is where we offer various shirts, hats, mugs, etc. with our all too cool logo.
• Archivesis where we store all of our News articles and Postings

Simply click on one of the above links to visit that area.  Each area offers limited to extraordinarily detailed instructions on its use and function.  Please contact us with any questions you might have should you get to an area and encounter difficulty.

1. No ‘Spamming’ . Purposely spamming a message board with senseless, vacuous, or empty messages to gain a higher post count, or just to annoy others is prohibited! Commercial spamming and advertising are just as unwelcome.
2. Impersonating Other Users / Accessing Another User(‘s) Account is not allowed. You may not impersonate another member or create an account specifically for the purpose of provoking other users.
3. Accessing or using someone else’s account or attempting to access another poster’s account is strictly prohibited. You will be banned.
4. Piracy, and Warez Absolutely no warez. Linking or giving information about any site that distributes illegal software, or warez, seeking help to circumvent any copyright laws, or encouraging software or media piracy is grounds for an immediate ban.
5. Nudity/****  Please remember that this board is a ‘PUBLIC’ forum. There are 12 year olds here just as there are 90 year olds.  Nudity and **** is prohibited for obvious reasons.
6. Posting of any material that is protected by copyright, trademark or other proprietary right without the express permission of the owner(s) of said copyright, trademark or other proprietary right is prohibited.
7. Requesting Support please use our Problems? page for any technical problems. Before asking for support ensure that you read/ search relevant topics which may be found in the forums.
8. This forum is seen by many people of diverse values, ethnicity and age, please do not post obsenities or other potentially offensive terminology.
9. This is an English speaking forum, please type your post in English. If you don’t speak English, please translate your post in a tool such a Google translate before posting.

Here are several postings on topics involving GenerousGenealogists, what we do & don’t do, etc.

• Our limitations…
• Family History – Kate’s story
• Brickwalls — help us, help you
• GenerousGenealogists & the crowd
• 1000th registered user!
• A “Yahoo Answers” style place for Genealogy Questions….
• GenerousGenealogists & the APG
• Announcing GenerousGenealogists Brickwall Detectives
• Open request for help in Germany

Password Change- Account Profile Maintenance is available on the top right of every page, simply hover over the Howdy [your name] label.

Avatars (you may upload one from you Account Profile Maintenance area- see above)

Accounts in disuse and/or without email addresses may be removed, without warning or notice at the discretion of the site administrator.

Problem accounts & accounts which refuse our Newsletters may, at our discretion, be removed without notice.

If you wish, at some later time to activate a new account you may certainly do so.