FamilyTreeCircles.com Help and Frequently Asked Questions

Frequently Asked Questions

  1. What is Family Tree Circles?

    2. Family Tree Circles is a free genealogy website designed to bring researchers with common family trees together. By signing up, entering in some of your own surnames and creating your research journals, you can immediately begin to connect with others.

  2. What is a Journal?

    3. As family tree researchers, we collect not only vital records, but we collect stories. And where does it sit? In our notebooks, computers, and even worse, in our heads! By sharing your family history, you not only get your family history written down, but it's available to others who may share that same ancestor or family name.

    Further, by sharing your information, a fellow researcher may find you and share information that you didn't have. At FTC, we have connected hundreds of people who have been able to expand their family research by sharing information.

  3. What are "Subscriptions"?

    By subscribing to other members, their profile link is shoen in your profile. This shows others who's research you're watching. Also, you can get an RSS feed of all the journal activity created by the people you subscribe to.

    You can also subscribe to an RSS feed of ALL journals on Family Tree Circles. Click this RSS link. If you have an RSS feed reader, your computer will do the rest.

  4. What are "points", and how do I earn them?

    5. Points are awarded for doing certain activities on FTC. For now, you earn 3 points for posting a journal. We'll be enhancing this further in the future

    Top points earners get their place on the Top Points Earners page and mention on the homepage. Soon, we'll be offering additional benefits for reaching certain point levels, like additional privileges for editing surname wiki pages, option to turn off advertisements, etc.

    ...as if you need incentive to post your information here. Isn't a chance to connect with others, ask a question, or share your hard-researched family tree information enough?

  5. How can I upload my GEDCOM file?

    6. Presently, we do not accept GEDCOM file uploads. FTC is more about sharing detailed information about your ancestors than uploading monster GEDCOM files. There are lots of places for that.

    That said, we are looking into it for the future.

  6. Are you operated by one of the big genealogy sites?

    7. No, Family Tree Circles is independently owned and operated by a genealogy buff, just like you. FTC is a free service, with the exception of some hopefully inobtrusive advertisements.

  7. When I register, it says I already have an account here. I don't remember signing up!

    8. Family Tree Circles was created out of another website that we own that used to have a message board and goes back several years. We moved the messages and accounts over from there when this new site was created. Your contact information has not been shared with another organization in that move -- we just redesigned and changed the name.

    If you cannot remember your account information, try the username/password reminder page.

  8. How do I edit a journal I've posted?

    9. You can edit any journal that you've authored by clicking on the owner edit link while viewing the journal. See the picture below.

Technical Problems

  1. I am getting Javascript warning messages when browsing Family Tree Circles. What can I do?

    2. Errors like these are fairly common because Web pages don't always work perfectly with every computer. Error message boxes only pop up on Internet Explorer and are actually only useful to the people who are building Web pages.

    We do everything we can to avoid errors like these, but sometimes it's is difficult to test every case and fix all problems. We apologize if you are seeing errors.

    Be assured that JavaScript errors won't hurt your computer. And since the messages are generally useless to the average user and are nothing but an annoyance, you can turn off the display of these messages.

    To turn off JavaScript error messages in Internet Explorer for Windows:

    1. Click on the "Tools" menu at the top of the window.
    2. Select "Internet Options" from the list you see.
    3. Click on the "Advanced" tab. You'll see a window with a really long list of check boxes.
    4. Look for "Display a notification about every script error." If the check box next to it has a check mark, click on it to clear it out.
    5. Click on the "OK" button.

    If you are using Internet Explorer for Macintosh, the process is similar.