Anybody Know Anything About the Web Site www.mykindred.com?

Question

I'm working on researching a line of ancestors with another WT member.  This site shows up a time or two in Google searches by name of ancestor.  It has a bunch of genealogy profiles and looks vaguely similar to something I've seen before, but I can't put my finger on it.  The site itself provides no identifying info, and when I search elsewhere for genealogy sites or reviews of sites, there's no mention of it anywhere.  Just curious, what is it and why is it so under-the-radar?

Answer 1

You made me look, Dennis!  I tried looking up who owns the domain name and was happily surprised to discover that information is no longer publicly available to anyone who looks up domain registrations - I say happily because I have been target of more spam than you can imagine, since domain registrations require valid contact information - snail mail, phone AND email, and I am registrant for a few dozen domains (I figure since my data is already out there for my own sites, I may as well protect my clients' privacy by using my info on their sites too).

Anyhow, I can't give you a real answer but from looking at the site, my guess is that someone registered the name to use for a website to store their own research.  It looks very nicely done.  As a personal site, it would tend to be "under the radar", not seeking to publicize its existence.  I had been working on my own genealogy data storage website and it was almost ready for prime time when my husband got sick 2 1/2 years ago - I haven't been able to get back to complete it since, but I doubt it would show up on any searches … if you're curious, it's at http://www.ancestors.space.

Comments

Yep; Gaile nailed it. It's an individually-owned site that has been around since 2001 and is run by...wait, I can't say his name, can I? Er, his initials are "TC" and the hosted webserver is operated by Chicago-based Steadfast Networks. It doesn't use "https" SSL encryption, which probably pushes it down for any search results unless you specifically look for it by domain name. That adds to its low-key presence.

MyKindred.com runs on an inexpensive but pretty robust genealogy-specific application called "TNG: the Next Generation of Genealogy Sitebuilding": https://tngsitebuilding.com/. It has a small learning curve, but all in all it's easy to setup and run. Most any decent shared-hosting service will support it (it's a PHP/MySQL app), it's GEDCOM compliant (mostly; at least it does clean imports and exports), and it's a good option for those wishing to have their own publicly-accessible tree in addition to WikiTree, either for backup purposes or as a way to customize certain presentations and formats. In fact, TNG is the application that the Guild of One-Name Studies uses for their members' website hosting program.

Oh, and MyKindred.com is running on TNG version 12.1. The most recent TNG release is v12.3. I know; I know. I just couldn't resist...

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Hi Gaile, thanks for answering and welcome back.  We have missed you in G2G and hope you're here for a while.

I did all the 'whois' and Googling about that site I could think of before posting, and came up empty.  Based on its links, the site appears to be somehow related to a "Cloud Family Association," which I guess would be a personal operation.  It appears to be modeled on something I have seen before, but I can't place it.  And, it claims to have nearly 200K profiles, including some we have here, and the ones I looked at seem to be fairly complete and backed by real research.  So, my impression, it's not something that was thrown together by a couple of family members a few weeks ago.  But hey, if they want to stay under the radar, OK with me.

And you did get my attention with the plug for your own site, but I'll pursue that a little later by private e-mail.

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Thanks for your response too Edison.  I was busy answering Gaile when you posted, so we crossed in the mail.  I saw the credit for TNG, but it didn't mean much to me, so I do appreciate that explanation.  I'm drawing a blank on "TC," and I guess you can't tell me if he's living, but in the absence of any better clues I'm going to put my money on the C standing for Cloud, as noted in my comment above.