Introduction

This Knowledge Base is intended to help users of Family Historian (ƒh) to get the best out of the programme, no matter their level of experience.

It contains:

• Information for first time users on how to start using ƒh effectively
• Targeted instructions on how to do specific tasks (e.g. Backup your data, Create a Custom Query)
• More detailed advice about specific aspects of ƒh for users at all skill levels
• Complementary resources:
  • A showcase of videos made by FHUG members and others, and Calico Pie
  • Downloads to help you customise ƒh
  • Links to third party Services & Utilities recommended by FHUG members
  • Links to websites produced by FHUG members as an example of what is possible
  • Code snippets for advanced users developing plugins
• Information about other sources of Help, including the FHUG forums  where your questions are always welcome.

There are also facilities to:

• Suggest improvements to the Knowledge Base
• Add or edit information within the Knowledge Base. Any member of FHUG is welcome to contribute their knowledge.
• Easily copy a link to a Knowledge Base page and insert it into a Forum post.

How To Navigate the Knowledge Base

There are a number of simple ways to move around the Knowledge Base to find the information you’re looking for.

The Menu Bar

The menu bar appears at the top of every page in the Knowledge Base; the items on the menu are explained below. All menu items have pop-up tips to remind you what they are about.

Knowledge Base	Articles about: Getting started with ƒh Carrying out specific tasks More detail about a specific aspect of the programme This is where you start when you arrive at the Knowledge Base.
Videos	A showcase of Videos made by members of FHUG Calico Pie and others, demonstrating or exploring various aspects of ƒh.
Downloads/Snippets	Downloadable files to help you customise ƒh; and code snippets for plugin developers.
Links	External services & utilities which may be of use to you; and examples of member websites.
Help	This Help page.
Forum	Takes you direct to the FHUG forums, where you can ask a question about anything you don’t understand or want more information about.
Contribute	Various ways in which you can add or edit content if you choose, and guidance about how to do it.
	Get the code to add a link to the page you’re viewing into a FHUG forum post — just copy and paste. Very useful if you want to point somebody else to relevant content, or ask a question about that content. It only works for the FHUG Forums — anywhere else, just copy the page address and insert it as you usually would.

Browse

Articles, Videos, Downloads and Links are all organised to help you narrow down the content you’re browsing.

• Knowledge Base articles and Videos are organised by Topic
• Downloads are organised by Download types
• Links are organised by Link types (Services & Utilities) or Website types (Member Websites).

So for example, looking at the Knowledge Base page:

Here, you can see two topics (Organising Your Research, and Other Sources of Help). Organising Your Research has three sub-topics, and you can see the current number of articles in each sub-topic.

Other Sources of Help has no sub-topics, but does have a number of articles important enough to be shown directly on the Knowledge Base page, such as Family Historian Documentation and the Family Historian User Group.

If you click on the topic header, or the entry “All” you will be taken to a page showing all the sub-topics (if there are any), plus all the items in the topic and its sub-topics (with a brief extract). Here, you can click on a sub-topic to narrow things down further, or an article directly.

If an article is important enough to be shown on the main content page, clicking on it will take you directly there.

Search

At the top of every page, there is a Search box, which searches:

• the contents of the Knowledge Base
• Family Historian Help (versions 6 and 7)
• Ancestral Sources Help
• the Plugin Store

It has two elements:

• A Quick search box where you enter your search terms. Search terms can be words or part-words, or an exact phrase enclosed in double quotes "". You can also exclude any results containing a particular term by prefixing it with a - . Typos and variant spellings are tolerated to a degree; if you enter a plural such as records, the search will also look for the singular (and vice-versa). All search terms are case-insensitive; the terms will be found whether they’re capitalised or not. And the search will take into account any synonyms that have been defined for words.
  • As you type, up to ten results will start to appear in a drop-down box based on what you have typed so far. If you click anywhere on a row in the drop-down box, it will take you to the entry on that row. This box scrolls with the page behind it.
  • If you enter more than one search term, the search will look for content containing one or more of those search terms, and return the results in order of relevance. Broadly speaking, the more terms that match, the higher up the list a result will appear.
  • For example, searching for restore backup will first return items containing both the words restore and backup, and then return items containing either restore or backup.
  • If your search returns too many results with all the terms, results with just some of the terms will be very far down the list of results.
  • Do chose your search terms carefully — searching for Family is not going to be useful, except as part of an exact phrase, given the focus of the Knowledge Base.
• An  Advanced search button that takes you to a page where you can modify or further refine your search, by filtering on any or all of: content type, ƒh version and skill level. (Hitting RETURN at the end of your search terms will take you to the same page.)
  • Content type — you may just wish to see results from the Knowledge Base articles or Downloads or Version 6 Help, for example. By default, all content types are shown but as soon as you tick one or more boxes, only content of the selected type(s) is shown.
  • Skill level — are you a Newcomer for ƒh? If so, you can choose to hide Intermediate and Advanced Level articles until you’ve found your feet.  If you’re an expert just checking on something you’ve forgotten, you should include all skill levels. By default, all content types are shown but as soon as you tick one or more boxes, only content of the selected skill level(s) is shown.
  • ƒh version — are you using a really old version of ƒh like version 4? Just select version 4. And if you’re using the latest version, choose just the version you’re using.
  • The numbers to the right of each filter value tell you how many items fall into that category that also satisfy the other filters you’ve set.
  • If you’ve filtered on any of the available fields, there’s a Clear All link below the filters that resets them all to the default state.
  • Note: If you filter on Skill Level you won’t see Help file results; if you filter on version you won’t see Plugin store results.

The Anatomy of a Page

On every content page, you’ll find one or more common elements (depending on the type of content).

The Top icon, which will take you back to the top of the page from wherever you are.

A Table of Contents for the page, which scrolls as you scroll down the page.  (For very short pages, or pages with no section or sub-section headings, the Table of Contents will not appear.)

At the top of a page, you may find:

• Details of the topics etc. to which the page belongs, and potentially the ƒh version for which it is applicable, and the skill level of the page (Newcomer, Intermediate, Advanced).
• Possibly, a link to the relevant section of an online version of the ƒh version 6 help file, which should be read in conjunction with the Knowledge Base page.

At the bottom of a page, you may find any or all of:

• A list of Related Content  within the Knowledge Base that you may wish to consider reading if you want to explore a subject further.
• A list of links to external websites that may be of interest in the context of the page.
• A list of links to relevant discussions in the FHUG Forums.

Within the page, you may find links to other pages within the Knowledge Base or external links; a special case is Glossary links which pop up a brief definition of a key term without forcing you to leave the page. You can click on the link if you want more detail (in another browser tab) — be aware this may take you to another part of the Knowledge Base or an external website; the link it will follow will be displayed (as for all links) in the status bar of your browser.