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Third item in the Family Trees General Admin page after the title and language is the Default Individual.
Maybe we all think we know who this person should be, but do visitors? My tree is a sprawling forest of individuals that many visitors comment about from divers branches so I wonder what any one of them makes of my personal choice of default individual? This random INDI forms the basis of charts and reports so is a bit of a V.I.P., except I think he/she is a nobody/anybody depending on ones point of view.
I moot the setting should be REMOVED or given open to user selection.
Debate
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I’ve always set the default to my grandfather for no other reason that it’s the lineage I started to follow. However, can’t say I’ve ever used the family trees and reports are too weak to be of value (kiwi – this is carried over from PGV days so not directed at you!!!)
I would think there should be someone set to be default so one could tell where you fit into the family. Not sure what impact removal would have on other aspects of kiwitrees.
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This random INDI forms the basis of charts and reports so is a bit of a V.I.P., except I think he/she is a nobody/anybody depending on ones point of view.
I moot the setting should be REMOVED or given open to user selection.I think you may have misunderstood, or over-simplified the issue.
The ‘default individual’ you refer to is the default for the family tree. So by definition it cannot possibly be set differently for each user. In fact it is irrelevant to your users. It only has meaning for every one who is NOT one of your (logged in) users, in other words, casual visitors to your site. I personally prefer that there is ‘someone’ designated in that default role, otherwise all charts, reports etc for casual visitors would be blank. That would include charts, for example, displayed on a front page with the “charts block”. Having “something” displayed on a chart page at least gives a visitor a starting point, and a view of what the charts look like before they spend (waste?) time working out how to find a person to display.
However, one big mistake a great many admins make is to set this to a living (private) individual, often themselves (I1 ??). So the charts and reports do worse than just display nothing, they actually report an error “This person is private and cannot be displayed”! Now that is (IMHO) worse even than a blank chart. Always ensure your family tree default person is public.Your registered / logged in users already have their own personal “default person” set in their account / profile details. This is the person they want, by default only, to be displayed on all charts and reports once they are logged in. In most cases, on my tree at least, this is the same person as the “Individual record” for that user, which in turn is usually (but in both cases not necessarily) the user themselves.
Nigel
My personal kiwitrees site is www.our-families.info -
Yes, I see this.
Perhaps what I am trying to say/ask is
“what is the best way of telling visitors who the default individual is … and why?”
An item on the home page, FAQ, or Favourites list? Either way it’s for me/admin to decide rather than a coding issue. I’m just tossing it into the air to see if anyone catches it 😉
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An item on the home page, FAQ, or Favourites list?
I can see where you are coming from, though it’s not an issue any user / visitor has ever raised with me in over 10 years of PGV/webtrees/kiwitrees use. I’ve always assumed they are generally just OK with whatever they get as a starting point and assuming as it’s my site I have my only logic for the choice.
But yes, those are all valid options to describe your choice of default individual. Personally I would probably go for a combination: a favourites block included inside an HTML block with descriptive text.
Nigel
My personal kiwitrees site is www.our-families.info
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