As you already know, on itsourtree.com you can search the entire worldwide data base for names and, if they allow it, contact the people you found. This way, you might find out about relatives you didn’t know about, come to know ancestors or branches of your family tree you suspected to exist but did not know where and when.

If you’re looking for relatives to expand your family tree, you will probably not want to search our database for everyone with your surname but only for living people. Our constantly growing data base may turn up with too many results, so we added a feature that lets you choose between “All persons” and “Living persons”.

We’ve added two more tooltips to the site to help new and unexperienced users. The tooltips are shown when you touch the question mark with your mouse cursor:

The first tooltip explains the birth order of siblings. You can either set the birth order for every profile or enter the date of birth. Then, the birth order will be determined automatically.

(Click image to enlarge)

The second tooltip helps with cycle relationships and gives examples of the phenomenon.

(Click image to enlarge)

To some ears, Chinese names might still sound a little strange. But for most of us, the original way of writing them probably is a much greater problem, at least on internet sites where system fonts are not supported… If you’ ve got relatives from China and want to add their names correctly, you can now use the new setting “use system fonts” in the tree’s preferences under “Name format”.

Enabling this action will change the display of your relatives’ names slightly, but you will be able to insert for example Chinese letters as well. Of course, you can also print your tree with the system fonts, too.

Most of you already know the partnership icon that is displayed on the connecting lines between the profiles. You can (de)activate them in the tree’s settings under “Node style”.

 The three existing icons “married couple”, “ex married couple” and partners…

 have been complemented by another: Ex-partners (non-married couples) are marked by the following icon:

From now on, itsourtree.com supports Adobe Flash Player 9 only. The latest version allows us to print the tree, use the navigator feature and to add cycle relationships to the family tree. Most of you already use it anyway, but for those who cannot enter their tree: Here’s the solution. You need to update your Flash Player to the latest version and don’t worry, it’s easy. Simply click on the image below:

 Some users (especially those who still use Internet Explorer 6) may encounter difficulties with the installation. In this case, it will probably help to deinstall the existing Adobe Flash Player before installing the new one. To do so, choose “Adobe Flash Player X” in the Windows control panel under “Software“. Afterwards, you install the latest version.

To check the Flash Player version on your system, please click here.

We recommend the latest version of Mozilla Firefox  or Microsoft Internet Explorer for a perfect view on your family tree.

For all the poor guys who had lived without itsourtree.com until recently but want to know more about it (the “nOObs“), we offer some first-aid-basic-tips. All those who log in for the first time see the balloontips automatically. When logging in again, you will have to click on the following icon to see the balloontips again.

 You will get information on the photo upload and the message system, help with changing a person’s parents as well as links to this blog and the forum and much more.

As you already know (if not: click here and here), we keep updating our avatars so that you can add them to all those profiles you don’t have a picture for. We’ve just added some more avatars to our collection:

• The Teacher
• The Chef de Cuisine
• The Goatee Guy
• The Breakdancer

And this is what they look like:

To add them to your relatives’ profiles, you can access the avatars directly when you click on the empty picture of a person’s profile in the tree and click “Choose avatar” or in the person’s detailed profile under “Edit portrait”.

Welcome to the final episode of our guide to cycle relationships.

Today’s topic is: Mark two profiles as siblings

Another possibility of adding a cycle relationship to your family tree is marking two profiles as siblings. With this tool, you can add children to their correct parents. The details:

When you mark two persons as siblings, person 1 (and all his siblings) gets all parents from person 2 and vice versa. To see the option, the constellation has to meet a couple of conditions:

1. The amount of a person’s parents can never be larger than 2.
2. A person cannot be a sibling or ancestor of his own ancestors.
3. A person cannot be a sibling or descendant of his own descendants.
4. A person cannot be sibling AND child of a parent (or other following generations).

In the example below, James and Jim Doe shall be marked as siblings:

(Click image to enlarge)

To add a cycle, click on the icon in the lower right hand corner of your family tree:

  Then you choose the two profiles by clicking on them. The popup window suggests the possible cycles and you choose “Person 1 is the Brother of Person 2“. When you click on “Save” the two persons will be marked as siblings.

After saving, the family tree looks as follows:

(Click to enlarge image)

Part three of our cycle relationship tutorial deals with another possibility to cope with “pedigree collapses”.

Today: Mark two profiles as partners

The most frequent reason for a cycle relationship is a partnership or marriage within the family tree. This would be the case when two cousins marry.

In our example, Patricia and Jim Jameson are to be marked as partners.

(Click image to enlarge)

To add a cycle, click on the icon in the lower right hand corner of your family tree:

 Then you choose the two profiles by clicking on them. The popup window suggests the possible cycles and you choose “Person 1 is the Husband of Person 2“. When you click on “Save” the two persons will be marked as married. In the profile, you can change the status to “Partner, Ex-Husband…“, of course.

After saving, the tree looks as follows from “Jim Jameson’s” point of view:

 (Click to enlarge image)

 Both persons are displayed as partners and the profile that appears twice from this point of view, “Patricia Jameson“, has a grey node to indicate the cycle.

Yesterday, we’ve introduced you to the new cycle relationship feature. Today, we’ll be getting further into the details of this new feature and present you the three possible cases of cycles.

Today: Mark double profiles as identical

A person appears twice in the tree (so there is a cycle relationship) and the profile has already been added twice to the tree. With the new feature, the two profiles can be marked as identical. This should only be the necessary if you already added the double relationship by means of two profiles before we introduced the cycle relationship feature. In the following example, “Jim Jones” appears twice.

 (Click image to enlarge)

To add a cycle, click on the icon in the lower right hand corner of your family tree:

Then you pick the two profiles with a click in the tree. From the options of possible cycle relationships suggested in the popup window, you choose “Person 1 and Person 2 are the same person“. A click on “Save” marks the two profiles as identical and the profile you clicked on first (i.e. Person 1) inherits all information stored in Person 2’s profile. Person 2 will be deleted.

Tip: It is always better to click on the profile with more information first so that less information will be lost with the deletion of Person 2.

After saving, the tree looks as follows:

 (Click image to enlarge)

Let’s have a look at the tree from “Hillary Joyce’s” persepective. In this view, the cycle relationship nodes change, too. Now, it’s “Jim Jones” who appears with a coloured and a grey node.

(Click to enlarge image)

As the two connected profiles can be quite far away from each other in large trees, you can jump to the other by clicking on the little “+” in the upper left hand corner in the two profiles.

 There are three important rules for “marking persons as identical“:

• To mark two persons as identical means that Person 1 inherits all information from Person 2 and Person 2 will be deleted in the process. That means that Person 2’s profile cannot be a claimed one, i.e. it cannot be a profile of an active relative in your tree.
• No person can have more than 2 parents. Explanation: When you mark two persons as identical, Person 1 gets Person 2’s parents. When the persons are “marked as siblings“, Person 1 and 2 get each others’ parents (and siblings). This, of course, cannot mean that they have 4 parents. That is why the options “mark as identical” and “mark as siblings” are not always available.
• If you delete a person you added, the action cannot be reversed. Explanation: Person 2 is deleted when you mark two persons as identical. Even if you delete the cycle relationship later, Person 2 will be deleted for ever.