Second Site generates high quality webpages that are visually appealing. As another advantage, the pages are generated directly from TMG’s internal database, not from a GEDCOM transfer with all its data loss and GEDCOM’s other inherent problems. Second Site will work with The Master Genealogist version 4 or version 5.

With Second Site you can create webpages on your own hard drive and review them. You can change the parameters a bit and regenerate the pages time and again until you get exactly what you want. You can even modify the pages manually, using any HTML editor of your choice. Once you are satisfied with the results, copy the webpages to almost any webserver to share your research with the world. You can also copy the webpages to CD-ROM disks to share your ancestry with your family. CD-ROM disks created by Second Site should work on Windows, Macintosh and other operating systems.

The best way to learn about Second Site’s capabilities is to look at a number of webpages created by the program. Start at freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~johncardinal/tmgsite/examples.htm and follow the links there to find many examples of Second Site in action. I suspect you will be impressed by the wide variety of Web formats created. Keep in mind that these pages were machine-generated; the user does not need to know anything about HTML or other webpage design programming.

Second Site is published and supported by John Cardinal, a well-known TMG user and author of the TMG companion programs, TMG Utility and On This Day.

I found Second Site to be easy to install and use. You start by purchasing the program on a safe and secure webserver and then downloading a large file. Once stored on your hard drive, you double-click on the file and follow the on-screen instructions. Within a minute or so, Second Site will be installed on your system. When you start the program for the first time, you must enter your name, e-mail address, and a serial number that was provided when you purchased the program.

To create a set of webpages, first you must create a new Site Definition File. This is easily done by entering data into Second Site’s menus. You specify the name and location of the TMG database to be used. Then you specify how much information is to be used, such as which tags to include, whether or not to exclude living people, whether or not to include ZIP codes or longitude and latitude, and so on. There are also options for footnote styles, methods of sorting data, and more. Next, you make your choice from a wide selection of HTML formatting styles to be used in creating the webpages. The number of options has to be seen to be believed; you could generate hundreds of thousands of different styles of webpages. Again, I would refer you to freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~johncardinal/tmgsite/examples.htm as the starting place where you can view many examples of webpages created by Second Site.

Here is a list of features available in Second Site, as copied from the program’s homepage:

• Creates custom websites but requires no knowledge of HTML.
• Reads TMG Version 4.0x and Version 5.x datasets. No GEDCOM data loss!
• Supports hundreds of site customization options, but you can create a great site in six easy steps.
• Makes narrative style pages using TMG's sentence definitions.
• Supports TMG's citations and sources.
• Handles witnesses and roles, and provides options to include or exclude the names of parents, children, witnesses and co-principals.
• Creates a Master Index and Surname Index. Indexes all names, primary and otherwise.
• Includes TMG exhibit files, and supports text and image exhibits attached to people, events and sources. Exhibits may be embedded on the page or given their own page and linked via a clickable icon.
• Understands TMG's printer codes ([BOLD:], etc.).
• Respects TMG's exclusion markers and sensitivity brackets.
• Creates efficient pages that load quickly.
• Manages all the pages that make up a site, including pages it generates as well as optional, custom pages that you create.
• Allows you to specify page sizes.
• Creates three generation pedigree charts for each person in the dataset.
• Automatically converts website references in source definitions to clickable links.
• Automatically encodes email addresses to hide them from "email address harvesters" which protects your privacy as well as the privacy of your fellow researchers.
• Second Site uses stylesheets and JavaScript to create professional quality pages that format properly on old browsers but take advantage of the features of new browsers.
• ... and more.

For my first attempt at creating webpages with Second Site, I took all the normal defaults. Ninety seconds later I was looking at webpages of my entire genealogy database, including all notes, source citations, links to other websites that I had previously specified, and much more. It worked well. Second Site also generates a log file when creating webpages. I then experimented with the various options within Second Site and generated the pages again and again. I experimented with background colors, background images, text formatting, and many other features. In each case I simply specified the actions in Second Site’s menus, and the program did the hard work of generating the webpages. I found the entire process to be logical and easy to accomplish.

When creating webpages, Second Site will even generate a GENDEX file that can be used to index genealogy data on the World Wide Web. For more information about GENDEX, look at: www.gendex.com/gendex/

I found another helpful feature for those who prefer to share their data on CD-ROM. When Second Site creates files for use in creating CD-ROM disks, it generates an AUTORUN file. This file will automatically launch a webbrowser and display the data when the CD-ROM disk is inserted into a Windows computer; the user doesn’t need to click on anything with the mouse.

John Cardinal has a winner with Second Site. Over the years I have reviewed a number of programs that automatically generate webpages from GEDCOM files or from a genealogy database. However, Second Site has the most options and the most capabilities of any of the programs that I have seen. This program is a "keeper." Any user of The Master Genealogist who wishes to publish genealogy data on the Web or on CD-ROM will want this program.

Second Site is a commercial program that is available only via download. It does not have a user’s manual but does have extensive help pages available on the web and also installed within the program. Second Site costs $29.95 (U.S. funds). There are no taxes or shipping charges associated with online file downloads.

For more information about Second Site, or to safely order the program online, go to: store.whollygenes.com/Search.bok?keyword=a006

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