The “What’s New” page is a good place for visitors to your site to see what you have added or changed most recently. It lists the additions and updates for each of your media types first, then people and families.
Top of the “What’s New” page By default it shows at most 10 items from each category, and only items changed or added in the past 30 days are considered. You can change that from the TNG General Settings page, under Miscellaneous, with these values:
If you want to include items older than 30 days, increase the “Days” value there from 30 to something larger. If you don’t want to go that far back, make it smaller instead. And if you find you’re not making enough changes to keep this page populated, you could instead set the “Days” to zero (0). That will remove the time restriction altogether, so that you’ll always have something shown on this page, even if it has been a while.
Likewise, you can use the “Limit” value to increase or decrease the number of items in each category. So for example, if 5 items in each category is enough, change this from 10 to 5.
Finally, if you have some custom media types (or “collections”) and you don’t want to show all of them here, you can turn those off individually under Admin >> Media. Choose your custom media type from the Collections dropdown, then click the button there to edit that type. In the popup box, just uncheck the “What’s New” box near the bottom, then save:
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TNG’s GEDCOM import tool is a very complex piece of software in its own right, and it has to co-exist with a variety of different server environments. As such, there are a number of common problems. For example:
The import halts. Perhaps you were watching the progress bar and it just seemed to stop at some point. Two common reasons for that are 1) The server has a limit on how long a PHP script can run, and your import was taking too long; or 2) Something in your file threw the process for a loop and it didn’t know what to do, so it just stopped. The import is smart enough to try and start itself again when something like this happens, but it isn’t always successful. The complete progress bar just “pops” in at the end with the results. This probably means that your server is buffering the output. In other words, it’s saving what it has to put on the screen until it has enough of it to make the effort worthwhile. Until that happens, it could seem like it’s not doing anything. The import is actually finishing in this scenario, but the “progress” bar isn’t helpful. The progress bar never appears. This could also mean the server is buffering, but another possibility is that the import failed to start, maybe because the file is larger than what the server is allowing for uploads. For example, if the server says we’re not going to allow files larger than 2 Mb to be uploaded, the import might be allowed to go through the motions of uploading the file, but then when it finishes, the server pulls the rug out and deletes the file. The import finishes, but you’re left with zero records. I’ve only seen this a few times, and I’ve yet to be able to reproduce it, so if this happens to you and you haven’t discussed it with me already, I’d like to know. Basically the import looks normal until the very end, but when you go back to the menu, it reports zero for everything. It’s almost as if the import thinks it needs to start over and goes through the delete phase again. So what can you do if one of these things happens to you? Here are some possible aids or remedies:
Resume. If your import just halted and couldn’t restart itself, you could try doing it yourself. The progress bar window should include a “Resume” link, so if your import has gone more than a minute or so without doing anything, try clicking this link. Manual resume. If the link does nothing, or if you can’t see it for any reason (maybe the screen is blank or is showing you an error message), you can try resuming the import by “visiting” this direct URL: https://yourwebsite.com/admin_gedimport.php?tree=xxx&resuming=1 (of course you’ll want to substitute your own domain name, and switch out your own tree ID in place of “xxx”). This may “spin” for a while as the importing continues, but it might not provide any visual feedback. If the “page” finishes loading and the import still hasn’t finished, repeat this action. Open a different browser. In #2 above you might have been asking, “How will I know if the import is still going or not?” The best way is to open a different browser window. In other words, if you were doing the import in Chrome, now open Firefox or Edge. In the new window, browse to your Admin menu and observe the number of people, families and sources on your site. Now wait a few seconds and refresh the page. If at least one of the numbers changed, the import is still going. Refresh every so often as needed. Dev tools. If you right-click anywhere on the page, you should get a popup menu in which one of the options is “Inspect”. If you choose that, a new panel should open in your browser where you can see all kinds of developer tools and advanced data about the current page. For example, if an error has occurred, you may see that on the “Console” tab. You can also click on the “Network” tab to see communication between the import page and the server. Every few seconds TNG tries to ask the server for a progress report, so you can click on one of those events, then click on the “Response” column to see what came back (either data or an error). Old-style import. Years ago, the import reported progress by simply printing the number of imported records on the screen every time it passed a milepost (ie, every 10 records). Sometimes this still works better, usually because the increased output causes the server to fill its buffer more often and thus display the progress more reliably. If you want to try this, check the box in the lower right corner of the import screen before starting the import. Debug mode. If your server isn’t halting the import because it ran on too long, it could be that the program ran into an error. Perhaps a certain line caused a problem that threw the whole train off the track. In that case, running the import in debug mode might help. To do this, simply add “?debug=1 at the end of your import URL, like so: https://yourwebsite.com/admin_dataimport.php?debug=1. Once you load the page like that, select your file and options as usual, then start the import. Now if an error occurs, you should see it in an iframe in the bottom left corner of the screen. Ask your hosting provider. If the import can’t upload the file or can’t finish the process due to a server setting, you can always try contacting your hosting provider to ask if they will adjust the settings for you. For example, the setting that controls the amount of time allowed is max_execution time, and the ones that control how large an uploaded file can be are upload_max_filesize and post_max_size. View the full article

http://www.tngsitebuilding.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Screenshot-2025-05-27-at-3.46.01 PM.png
TNG lets you choose a particular thumbnail photo for each person that will then be shown on all charts and next to that person’s name at the top of all their pages. That is referred to in TNG as the person’s “Default” photo. So how do you do that?
First, make sure you have at least one photo linked to that person, and that a thumbnail has been created for that photo. You can do that as you upload photos one at a time, or you can create thumbs for all your photos using the Generate Thumbnails tool under Admin >> Media >> Thumbnails.
Once a person is linked to at least one photo, there are a variety of ways to select that person’s Default photo:
After searching for an individual to link to a photo, check the “Make Default” option next to that individual in the search results.http://www.tngsitebuilding.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Screenshot-2025-05-27-at-3.49.01 PM.png After the media link has been created, check the box next to that link under the “Default” column in the Media Links section of the Edit Media page.http://www.tngsitebuilding.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Screenshot-2025-05-27-at-3.53.12 PM.png Edit the media link, then check the “Make Default” option in the popup and save.http://www.tngsitebuilding.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Screenshot-2025-05-27-at-3.54.41 PM.png After searching for an individual under Admin >> People, click the box next to that name that says “Choose default photo”, then on the next page mouse over the entry for that photo and click the “Make default” option. If you don’t see that “choose” box, then the person has no photos linked to them, or the person already has a default photo (and you’ll see it there).http://www.tngsitebuilding.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Screenshot-2025-05-27-at-3.57.58 PM.png After editing an individual under Admin >> People, click the same “choose” box next to the person’s name. http://www.tngsitebuilding.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Screenshot-2025-05-27-at-3.58.48 PM.png On the Admin >> Media >> Sort page, enter the person’s ID or search for it, then click “Continue” and choose the default photo the same way you did in the previous options above.http://www.tngsitebuilding.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Screenshot-2025-05-27-at-4.00.05 PM.png Use the Assign Defaults utility to make sure everyone with at least one photo has a default (see below). But if you want to save yourself some time, you might investigate the Admin >> Media >> Assign Defaults utility first. That tool will automatically designate the first photo for everything individual as that person’s default photo (unless they already have one).
The Assign Default Photos utility The “OG” TNG users (those of us who have been here a while) will also remember an “old” method for designating defaults. That method is no longer mentioned on any of the TNG Admin pages, but you can still use it. Here’s how it works:
Create your own thumbnail for a person. Name it according to this convention: tree.personID.jpg. So for example, if your tree has an ID of “tree1” and your person has the ID of I12345, then you would name this image tree1.I12345.jpg. Now use an FTP program or your cPanel file manager to upload this photo to the “photos” folder on your site. So what if you don’t see any of the options to create thumbnails or assign default photos? If that’s the case, it means that your PHP has been configured without support for the GD image library. Visit your cPanel, then open the PHP version tool and look a the configuration page there. If the GD box is unchecked, simply check it and you’re good. If you don’t see it, you may need to ask your hosting provider if GD is supported and if they can enable it for you.
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