Starting a family tree project

[Laanet]

I want to put together a family tree/some family history and I'm trying to work out the best way to do this. Basically, rather than doing research going back generations or finding out new information, I'm aiming to bring together information that we already know (or that is mainly held in various people's heads) about the last few generations of different branches of the family. So memories, anecdotes, maybe some photos. As well as an actual tree with names/dates etc.

The idea is not to embark on a big project all at once, but more to have a place to write down stories/new pieces of information whenever I come across them. And for it to become an accessible resource (so I can share it with members of the family and they can easily find and read everything related to certain parts of the tree).

Does anyone have any tips for the best way to do this? Do I need software? Or is there another creative way of doing it?

Thank you!

Well it's up to you... there are lots of ways.

What about a blog? Free to set up, you don't need any technical know-how. You could use it to write up what you find about each person and then other people can share. Ancestry and other websites offer tools for building your family tree which are great, but if you want to record the stories and anecdotes a blog might be the place to do it. Or even just word documents stores on your on computer. Or notebooks. Whatever way you prefer to work, really.

Thank you! I guess my issue with a blog is that I don't really want it to be public. For the family tree bit itself I guess I'd still need to use software? Do you (or anyone else) have a recommendation?

You can set up a wordpress blog to only be viewable by invited persons.

Id also recommend joining WordPress. As ellmau said you can make it private and give access only to those you invite. You can also revoke access rights at any time, or send only specific posts to specific people and not the rest of the blog.
For the tree part I'd recommend zoompast. It's web based family tree software and I like it because you can easily zoom in on a part of your tree. It's a bit like a Google maps family tree. Like the blog you can also set your tree to be private. They have some example trees so you can get an idea of what yours would look like.

Thanks all. Will look into these suggestions!

I highly recommend visiting FamilyTree, they have tons of beginner guides on starting your researches ( www.family-tree.co.uk/getting-started/how-to-start-your-family-tree/ ) or restoring old photos ( www.family-tree.co.uk/news/old-photos-dont-have-to-die-this-new-software-wont-let-them/ ), offer some researching tips etc. I worked on building our family tree for a while and their articles helped me to sort everything out a little bit

Look up gramps genealogical software. Free and open sourced.