These are our most frequently asked questions.

OK … so how much is it going to cost me?

Nothing. We don’t do this for money.

We now rely solely on donations. We’ve been running without any funding for years, and it’s getting expensive to maintain the servers. We use a huge amount of disk space for all the images, which doesn’t come cheap.

So, to try to cover some of the costs, we ask people who have found the site useful to donate a few quid towards the upkeep.

So why do you do it?

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Do I need anything special to see the information?

Not really … although a nice bottle of red wine often comes in handy.

We don’t do anything flash, so as long as you have a fairly recent Internet browser you should be OK. We’ve tested it using Internet Explorer, Firefox, Google Chrome and Safari, which covers the vast majority of users. There can be annoying differences between different browsers, but these tend to be cosmetic rather than catastrophic. We could spend months fiddling to remove spurious extra lines and the like, but life is too short.

Basically, what you see is what you get.

If you suspect the page isn’t displaying correctly, then try hitting the Refresh button on your browser. Browsers store pages on your computer to make them faster to load. However, this means that sometimes you get out-of-date stuff hanging around.  For example, you’re expecting an image, but there’s nothing there. The Refresh will force the page to be re-loaded from our servers.

In general, you should always try to keep your browser up-to-date with the latest releases. If you don’t then not only will you have increasing problems viewing Internet sites (not just ours), but you will also leave yourself wide open to some of the nastier stuff lurking out there.

Can I upload my family tree to your site?

Unfortunately, not at the moment. There are a number of reasons for this:

  1. We’re always desperately short of disk space on our server, and if we allowed downloads it would clog up in double-quick time. We pay enough as is for server space, so we try to keep this down to a minimum.
  2. Everything we publish is checked (as far as we can) for accuracy. It gives us more quality control over the content of the site, and allows us to splice things into the published trees.
  3. As we’re happily splicing away we’re also adding value by finding and attaching images such as Birth, Marriage and Death records, Census records and … well, basically anything else we can find that’s associated with the people.

It’s just common sense, really.

However, we’re always happy to receive any information, including family trees. These then go into our pipeline … and eventually emerge onto the site. If you use software to manage your trees, you’ll probably find that you can export them into what is called the GEDCOM format.

We can read these files, and it saves a lot of time in the checking. If you would like to send us any stuff, then please send it to stuff@closeancstry.com, and we’ll add it to the list of things to do. Anybody that contributes to the site will end up as a Contributor, with full credit for their work.

What do your Trees do?

Our Trees are our window out into the world. They contain everything we’ve published, and is usually everything we have. There are now thousands of people and tens-of-thousands of images. Unlike many people, we don’t charge for any of the information, so be grateful.

You don’t have to log in to find stuff. Just have a rummage around.

The trees let you search, view graphically and download whatever takes your fancy. The only restrictions are for information on people still living. So, if you’re pretty sure they should exist, but they’re not turning up, then it’s highly likely they’re being protected by the software.

Anything else?

If that hasn’t covered it, please drop us a mail to: faq@closeancestry.com


And now for a bit of housekeeping

See the wood and the trees

We publish everything we have in our fabulous trees, so basically if you can’t find it, we don’t have it. With over 20,000 people, 5,000 families, 12,000 sources, and 69,000 image references currently sat in our database, you’ll appreciate the amount of work that has gone into this over the years.

You can see more in the Close Ancestry Trees.


Donations

We know that everyone in the world is after your hard-earned cash, but if you do feel a donation coming on as a result of your visit here, then please feel free to send it our way. It all goes towards the upkeep of the site, for which we charge absolutely nothing. So, please help us to keep the site free to use. Thanks.


Contacting us

If you find anything that you think may be of interest to us, then drop us an email at stuff@closeancestry.com


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