Advanced Web Facilities

Controlling Access

There is very little reason why most family historians would want to restrict access to their Web sites, but both family history societies and professional genealogists might find this useful, whether for chargeable access to transcripts and indexes, or to sell published materials.

Even though Web commerce is now very significant, there are still not straightforward mechanisms in place for individuals and small organizations to collect small amounts of money via the Web.

If you have a significant data collection you want to put on-line, then realistically your two options are:

• Make it freely available on one of the major non-commercial sites (e.g. Genuki or Rootsweb, which has an area for user-submitted datasets)
• Contact one of the commercial genealogy data services (e.g. FamilyHistoryOnline)

(Note that Genuki and FamilyHistoryOnline are not likely to be interested in data only for individual surnames.)

It is also possible to provide restricted access to Web pages, and thus allow only society members or those who have already paid for so many searches in advance, to view the materials. Since this is usually done by protecting certain files or directories with passwords (sometimes via a form), it can only be done in consultation with your ISP, and, again, this facility is not something non-corporate users should expect as a matter of course.

Organizations and business users who want to implement such a system, will need to discuss with their ISP whether such a facility is available before looking at the issues of how the system is implemented and maintained, and what it will cost. Some thought would need to be given to the technical aspects of any implementation:

• Who is going to keep the list of permitted users and passwords up to date?

• How do you make sure someone doesn't download your whole database,

• How do you stop someone giving access to others who are not entitled?

  You would certainly need specialist technical advice to get such a facility up and running, and if you are providing database searching then database expertise will also be necessary.

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