GeneWeb - Links to a database

This page indicates how to put links to GeneWeb pages. It is written as well for the users of GeneWeb as to those which, without knowing GeneWeb, wish to put direct links to GeneWeb pages found on the Web.

Read it carefully, because there are a small pitfall to avoid and a provided solution.

Links with numbers

It is absolutely possible to put links to GeneWeb pages in your bookmarks or HTML pages.

For example, you displayed the personal page of "John Smith" of the base you are consulting. You note that it corresponds to the address:

   http://machine:2317/foo?i=357

The "357" you see in the request corresponds to a number which was been attributed to "John Smith" by the utilities of GeneWeb (ged2gwb, gwc or gwd).

If the person responsible for this base (yourself or someone else) decides to update it, the numbers may change, and the link which you will have recorded will not work any more.

For the persons in charge of GeneWeb bases, know that it occurs:

By the command "ged2gwb" if you start from a new GEDCOM file.
By the command "gwc" if you clean up the database.

Remedy

For avoid that, add to the address the following sequence: ";opt=no_index", i.e., for the example above:

   http://machine:2317/foo?i=357;opt=no_index

Enter this address. GeneWeb will answer you the page:

Link to use

 * http://machine:2317/foo?....

This link is clickable (click on it), you must obtain the same page (here the personal page of John Smith), but with an address not containing any number but explicit references to his first name and surname.

Use that address in your links.

This applies to all the requests of GeneWeb, particularly with those displaying the relationship links where it is frequent to find 2 or 3 persons of the base coded by their number.

For the owners of GeneWeb bases, also use this procedure in the associated files: see the customization of pages.

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