This page updated 5 May 2009
Version note: Applies to Second Site 3 & 4
This article describes how to personalize your site by adding icons that appear in Indexes and in the Person Page to identify people by their relationship to a focus person, to mark residents of specific countries or places, participants in military events, or most anything else one might imagine. Other articles in this group cover additional topics.
The Icons produced by Second Site can be used much as one might use Accents within TMG. The Icons are controlled by Flags in your TMG Data Set. My favorite is based on my "related-by" Flag, to mark direct ancestors, siblings of ancestors, more distant cousins, and spouses.
An example of how Icons can be used to demonstrate the relationship of the people in a set of webpages to a focus person can be seen in my Example set of webpages.
Before you start to set up Icons, the Flags which will control them must be created in the TMG Data Set. They may be either standard TMG Flags, or custom Flags you create. My article on Creating a "Related-by" Flag describes one way you might create that sort of flag, which can be used both for Accents in TMG and Icons in a site created by Second Site.
In this example we will use a somewhat simpler case, an Icon based on the Sex Flag to mark males and females. Once the Flag is created in TMG (this one of course already is) you set up the Icons in Second Site from the Data > Icons screen. To add a new Icon, click the Add button to open the Set Flag Icon screen:
On the Set Flag Icon screen, seen to the right above, select the Flag to be used from the drop-down list. In this case we selected the Sex Flag.
The Icons may appear either before or after the person's name in any or all of three locations:
For each person's section in the Person pages, at the name of the focus person
At the name of each child in the listings under the father and mother's narratives
The location to be used is specified with the drop-down below the Flag setting. Below that you can specify whether the Icon is to go before or after the name. In this case we have specified that the Icon will appear the on the Person Pages, before each subject's name.
In the screen shot above, the female Icon has been selected, as appears in the list in center of the Set Flag Icon screen, and now we click Add Icon... button again to add a male Icon. The Select Graphic File screen appears:
After selecting the desired icon graphic file and clicking the Open button the Add Icon screen appear (seen at the bottom above) appears. Enter the flag value you want the icon to represent, and click OK.
The Set Icon screen can set a number of different Icons based on different values of the same flag, and positioned at the same location. If other Icons based on a different Flag, or placed at a different location, are desired, close the Set Icon screen, and open another by clicking the Add button (on the main Data > Icons screen) again.
A variety of Icon images are supplied, or you can use others you have or create. When you select an Icon image, a copy is placed in the "-i" (input) folder for your site, and is copied to the "-o" (output) folder when you make your site. Probably the easiest way to create a custom icon image is to copy an exiting one and edit it in a graphics program. Most any program will do, even the simple Paint program supplied with Windows.
My book, A Primer for The Master Genealogist, is again available in the U.S. and remains available in Australia.
Details are can be seen here.
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