Has anyone successfully manage to move from Mac Family Tree to TNG

[Hoayun]

Has anyone successfully manage to move from Mac Family Tree to TNG ? I want to make the move since we have multiple contributors and want control over the software, where our data is stored and which server we run it all on.

[Philip Roy]

I went looking on their site for instructions on how to export a GEDCOM file, but the site is sparse on guidelines. Even the video on importing and exporting only has importing info. I think they don't want you to leave 🤣

So I don't use MFT, but if there's a way to export the whole tree as a GEDCOM that includes images etc in it, then that would be a starter for importing into TNG?

[Hoayun]

Thank you for answering my question. I have successfully managed to export GEDCOM from MFT and the GEDCOM does have the correct file names for the media which is exported with it. I had a go at setting up Gramps Web yesterday on a server and struggled with getting it find the media I exported from MFT hence my concern that TNG might have similar issues. Eventually decided that perhaps TNG might be better to try.

[Keith]

Can I ask if you're moving to TNG as your sole genealogy platform? Personally ( and this is just MY opinion ), I would keep using a desktop genealogy program for your "source of truth" and TNG only to serve it to the internet. That's what I'm doing at least.

If you don't love Mac Family Tree (and I wouldn't blame you ) I would give Reunion a try. It's a great program. It might not have as much polish as MFT, but functionality-wise wise it's great.

 

[Philip Roy]

I work with Reunion also. My private site is mostly as a publishing mechanism for family.

There are lots of posts about Reunion in this forum and some on the wiki also. If you do consider it, it might just first involve a bit of reorganisation of your image folder, documents folder etc. One nice feature of Reunion is it has a way of checking for broken links to images, which you can then fix…but it also has the ability to try and fix those issues for you, by scanning the image folder. It’s not always successful but I found it invaluable as I restructured my Reunion setup  when I took over from my folks, and also got ready to use TNG.

[Hoayun]

I was hoping to only use TNG as the real source of our family tree and probably just 3 or 4 people able to add new information or edit existing information only via the website.

Could you let me know why you feel this isn’t ths best approach ?

[Keith]

Please keep in mind I'm relatively new to TNG myself, but there are a few key things for me. 

1. Data Storage/Ownership - I prefer the idea of my data being local and in my control rather than being solely out on the web. With a TNG-based solution, you'll have to keep up with hosting and paying hosting costs.

2. Security - My local database is fairly secure aside from potential robbery or disk failure. This is secured by the existence of multiple backups, which I can store easily in other locations. I suspect TNG is more susceptible to hackers. While you can easily back up your TNG tables, they are typically on the same platform, so if you're hacked, you could lose all backups as well as your live data.

3. Feature set - While I love TNG's features, I think a dedicated desktop application has more features and flexibility. Whether you need these features, of course, is something only you can decide. 

 

TNG will win out, possibly if you need multiple editors, which is more difficult with a desktop application. 

As with everything, it's just personal preference so if you feel strongly that a pure TNG approach is for you then go for it. 

[GOGGS]

This is an excellent thread on the pro's/con's of local vs. public, etc., and I got some ideas from it! I wanted to weigh in on a few things as a former Corporate Global IT professional as well.

What @Hoayun is asking is essentially what I do - my TNG system is the only source (apart from backups) and I have about 40 users and only a couple might ever add any edits or suggestions.

From @Keith's bullets:

1. Data/Ownership - I've used AWS for TNG for about 4 years; at $6/month, there is some cost (which I see people might not prefer), but their security, etc. has been top-notch during my working career. There are other solutions that are much easier and more turnkey, but I couldn't vouch for safety/security.

2. Security - I run an automatic job nightly on my public facing AWS server that makes backups - a lot of peace of mind there, and these can be distributed locally or to other AWS regions. I would disagree on the points about hacking - Windows is by far the largest and most problematic platform in the world for hacking. Running TNG on a Linux system avoids most of this IF your PHP code and other practices are sound (I find TNG to be well-designed in that regard). In my last job, our Company had 2 complete business outages - one from a Windows ransomware attack that disabled every PC and server, EXCEPT the Linux ones that ran our ERP system, and the second from a local drive/controller failure that resulted in nonsense being written to our database (while the AWS systems ran perfectly in the cloud).

3. Features - good points as well. TNG is open-source, so in that sense it can be extended for any features or preferences that you can imagine (I did not have the same experience with a couple of desktop programs). I have been developing and modifying TNG to provide those extra features that I really wanted, and the community of "modders" that are doing the same is fantastic. Since I add a LOT of people/data to TNG, my most valuable and productive "add" has been input customizations to allow "scraping" from public internet sources to be automatically input (keyboard scripting) to TNG.

I realize that most of the feedback is from a developer perspective, but hopefully some nuggets are there for a few people. 

I really like the idea of running a local/desktop version of TNG as well as the public/hosted one (instead of some other brand of software), which I know tons of people here already do.

 

GOGGS

[Katryne]

Why buy software that builds an online site if you're not going to publish it and share it? Perhaps for the pleasure of bothering to manage a local server?
 Why buy one piece of software, keep the others that do the same job, and get bored making difficult transfers from one to the other?
 When I bought TNG, it was to get rid of all the other genealogy software and end my association with all the collaborative sites where I had posted my data.
 Now I manage all my research online, on the site that belongs to me, whose security I manage, and I only make regular backups. I don't even bother backing up the database itself at my host, I back it up via the dedicated tool in TNG's administration and when I download my site via ftp, it will be part of the batch, ready to be restored if need be.
 

 

[Keith]

Genealogy and research is full of choices that we all make for differing reasons. There is no one-size-fits-all approach because we all choose what works for us. Operating system, genealogy software, what sources we subscribe to (i.e. Ancestry), whether we undertake DNA testing and where we publish our tree (if in fact we do choose to share it all) etc. 

In my case (and I can only really speak for me), I bought TNG for the very first reason you suggest. To publish and share my research on an independent platform (not Ancestry, My Heritage etc.). Even that decision has its own implications that are probably for another topic. This publication is where I personally think TNG excels.

This does not mean though (for me at least) that TNG is my source of truth. That will remain within my desktop software, which I personally enjoy and suits my logic and approach to data input, as well as other tools I might use in association. 

TNG makes it very easy to import from my desktop software to TNG with little impact on a regular basis.

I am not trying to preach that this is THE way to do it. I am saying this is MY way and what works best for my needs and my goals for how I approach my genealogy. Your mileage may vary. 

 

 

 

 

[Hoayun]

What an amazing forum this is !! … and of course it is only amazing because of people like yourselves who have shared their experiences and thoughts … I am so impressed and this has really helped me make the decision to go ahead and begin the task of moving our family tree from MFT to TNG with TNG being the real source running on a cloud server, which gives me things like automatic off site backup, HTTPS and very important to us, we own the whole environment … although I do acknowledge that other approaches where TNG is more for sharing and the real source is in a local server are just as valid.

Again thank you all so much for helping me with this. I’m am of course new to this forum, but as I become more experienced in TNG and our particular way of using it, I hope to repay the excellent help you have all provided, by sharing my thoughts on other peoples questions.

Paul

[Philip Roy]

8 hours ago, Katryne said:

Why buy software that builds an online site if you're not going to publish it and share it? Perhaps for the pleasure of bothering to manage a local server?
 Why buy one piece of software, keep the others that do the same job, and get bored making difficult transfers from one to the other?
 When I bought TNG, it was to get rid of all the other genealogy software and end my association with all the collaborative sites where I had posted my data.

I’m not sure anyone said they weren’t publishing. I think many of us were discussing local work on data as opposed to online.

Everyone’s story is different.

I first used Reunion in the early 1990’s when I bought my first Mac when living in London. It was my parents who had an interest in genealogy, not me. I said if they’d pay for Reunion (then based on HyperCard) I would enter all their research and print off nice forms and charts to post back to them in New Zealand. When I returned here in 1995, I passed the app over to them for the next 20 years until dad passed away. At that time, I took ownership back and basically spend my time fact finding a lot of their research thanks to this new fangled thing that came along called the internet. I don’t consider myself as someone researching family at all, just fact checking.

It wasn’t until a few years ago at a funeral for an Aunt, that I sat in a restaurant later and a group of us started trying to figure out facts and figures about our family. I picked up my iPhone and used the Reunion app (synched by Dropbox…a great feature) and answered all their questions. I decided to then set up a site for family to access. After a brief flurry of family members accessing it and contributing to it, the site simply gets no use. I don’t think anyone has accessed it for over 2 years…but I’m not planning on giving up on TNG yet. Financially, I’d be better off just using the web publishing feature of Reunion.

But I like the way TNG orders and displays info…and I like having two similar but separate systems. Reunion will always be the one source of truth for all the research mum and dad did (that I’m still working through) which is why I was suggesting a similar approach. I like having both options in use…as if I need to move away from one or the other, it will be easy for me.

[omarquet]

1 hour ago, Philip Roy said:

Everyone’s story is different....
...But I like the way TNG orders and displays info…and I like having two similar but separate systems. Reunion will always be the one source of truth for all the research...

Each story is different, indeed, but your story and motivation bring back excellent memories: I also started with Reunion on my first Mac. (I almost forgot it was based on  Hypercard🙂). Today, having left Apple for Windows, I use a desktop program (Family Historian) as my main data center. ("the one source of  truth" I like your expression), because of its ergonomy and completeness. I use TNG only to publish these data through Gedcom transfer. And I think in one or two years, I will replace TNG with Geneanet, which has a much greater reach in terms of visibility and data exchange. It is also more sustainable in terms of the future and, incidentally, less expensive.

[tngrlkrz]

45 minutes ago, omarquet said:

incidentally, less expensive.

I too use Family Historian as my homebase.  Over the years I periodically subscribed to Ancestry, but the cost keeps me away most of the past years, and I wait for special discounted pricing to consider a 6-month subscription.  Since 2021, Geneanet is a subsidiary of Ancestry, and yes, less expensive but with a monthly subscription cost if you want the premium benefits.  TNG is a low one-time fee, with no subscription, with periodic low upgrade costs.  I see Geneanet has a 2.5 rating on TrustPilot, though with only 151 reviews. Ancestry, rated in various countries, averages 3.1-3.3 with many reviews.  Ancestry seems to be the Goliath of genealogy companies, having gobbled up a lot of the competition.

 

[Katryne]

Hosting on Généanet could be a solution for when the time comes when I'm no longer able to manage my websites. But it's now a subsidiary of an American company, and we Europeans are very sensitive to the threat to privacy and data security posed by the Cloud Act. When I'm no longer in a position to manage all this, I think I'll prefer to destroy all my 50 years of research. That's what I did 2 years ago for the village genealogy, when I stopped managing it and nobody wanted to take on the responsibility of guaranteeing the protection of personal data.
No one in my family wanted to succeed me. So, when I can no longer: destruction.

 

[omarquet]

22 hours ago, Katryne said:

No one in my family wanted to succeed me. So, when I can no longer: destruction.

 

Hello Katryne. I hope you are well It seems to me that destroying your work is a bit sad. (And regarding your village data, it is very sad) Personally, I prefer to leave it to posterity. It may come in handy for one or the other. And regarding data security etc: I agree for confidential data, But most of the data we collect in our databases are acquired through public archives etc, so personally, I am not very worried about confidentiality.
Kind regards!

[omarquet]

On 8/16/2025 at 5:02 AM, tngrlkrz said:

TNG is a low one-time fee, with no subscription, with periodic low upgrade costs. 

 

Hello Ron,

TNG is indeed cheap, but if I compare it with Ancestry or Geneanet, i need to add the subscription fees of my hosting provider (100 $ a year) and the domain name cost. And then Ancestry and/or Geneanet premium become much cheaper than a self hosted solution like TNG or Webtrees.
This being said, I stay with TNG since very long, and I will only abandon it once I have written my family history book (and that could take some years, I am afraid ☺️.
Have a nice day !
 

[Katryne]

Olivier, what worries me is the fate of the personal data of people living or recently deceased in my tree. I can't leave them out in the open without any protection. These are the people who make the link, who are the link between all the others. It's today's family that links all the others. Without them, the tree has no coherence, and therefore no value in my eyes.