I have made several attempts over the years to research my family history, but other priorities and interests meant I never made a concerted research effort. In 2014 I started researching my family history with serious intent.

This research went through various phases, trying the online family history providers and eventually finding the 'The Next Generation of Genealogy Sitebuilding© ("TNG")' on which I now keep all my data and documents. I published my research on my website, but this was unsuccessful. I found that maintaining it distracted me from my primary purpose, the investigation of my family history. Probably because at one stage in my life, I was a software engineer and found it too easy to start tinkering with software to bend it to my personal needs and preferences.

At the beginning of 2017, I dipped my toes in the waters of modern online learning, far too many years after getting a distance learning degree from The Open University. I had read about the University of Strathclyde's "Genealogy: Researching Your Family Tree" online course, so I decided to try it. I would recommend it to everyone, new or experienced Genealogist, as it re-invigorated my research by reminding me what I should be doing.

I still wanted to make the results of my research available to others but was concerned about the privacy of living family members. Finally, I came upon WikiTree (again), which seems to meet my requirements.

My research database is still on 'TNG' along with all the supporting documentation. I am now going through the process of transferring all the data to WikiTree. However, I am doing it in tranches, validating my data and updating where necessary before adding profiles to WikiTree. Currently, there are 1596 individuals in my database in 448 families, all entirely sourced as is feasibly possible.

Trying to provide access to my WikiTree data without members of family having to get a WikiTree Profile to access our public tree.