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Administration and Settings

This page covers the settings a tree's owner manages, the keys that let other programs open your tree, and what's on the Help menu.

Administration (tree owners)

A tree's owner gets an Administration dialog from the user menu.

My Tree

The My Tree tab shows the tree's name and its usage against any configured people and media quotas.

Users

The Users tab manages the accounts on that tree.

Server-wide settings

Server-wide settings (e-mail/SMTP, BASE_URL, FRONTEND_URL) aren't edited in the app. Set them in the server's environment variables or config file (see Installing and Deploying).

gramps-web-api is phasing out settings stored in its database. If any are still there, Help → System Information lists them with a warning.

Tree preferences

Administration → Preferences sets how this tree's dates, names and places are written, for everyone using it in Gramps Connect. Only the tree's owner (or a site admin) can change them.

Dates

Choose a date format. Dates follow it across the app: tables, details, the Timeline, stories, search results, and the Tree, Fan and Family charts. Date fields in edit dialogs show and accept the same format.

Dates in your own language

Dates are written in your interface language, the way Gramps desktop writes them in that language: its month names, its words for "about", "between … and" and the like, and its own layouts (German "12. März 1854", French "12 mars 1854", British English 12/3/1854). Date fields accept dates typed in that language too.

The date format list is your language's own Gramps list, with an example of each, as in Gramps desktop's Preferences. Most formats exist in every language ("Day Month Year" and the like), and choosing one sets it for everyone, each in their own language.

A format only your language has (German "Numerisch mit führenden Nullen", French "JJ/MM/AAAA") applies only to people using that language. Everyone else keeps the shared format, which the setting shows underneath.

Every language Gramps writes dates in

This covers all 43 languages Gramps writes dates in, including those whose month names change form with the words around them. Russian writes "март 1789" but "до 4 марта 1789", and Czech, Finnish, Croatian, Slovak, Slovenian and Ukrainian work the same way.

Where Gramps desktop itself writes a date it can't read back, or fails on one, Gramps Connect writes it correctly instead. Only your own language is downloaded, when you first need it.

Lunar calendars

Dates in the Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese lunar calendars (new in Gramps 6.2) are shown and read too, written the traditional way in Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese ("2024年正月1日", "2024년 정월 1일", "Năm 2024 Tháng Giêng Ngày 1", with 闰/윤 for a leap month).

When the server runs Gramps 6.2 or later, a date's full editor offers those calendars, with a "Leap month" switch beside the month. An older server can't format or sort them, so there they're only offered for a date that already uses one.

Names

Choose a name format: the standard Gramps ones plus any custom formats saved in the tree. The default is "Surname, Given Suffix", as in Gramps desktop.

Names follow the format everywhere they're listed: the People list's Name column, a family's father and mother, details, pickers, Home, search results and the Map/Timeline subject. They follow Gramps desktop's rules exactly, including dropping a comma or brackets next to a missing part.

A few things keep their own layout:

• The People list sorts by surname, then given name, whatever the format, as Gramps desktop does.
• The Tree, Fan and Family charts and story text keep their given-name-first layout.
• A family's parents, spouses and event participants in search results and in Home's Recently changed list use the server's own name format, since the server's search can't be asked for another one. The people themselves still follow your format.

Places

Gramps' place formats are here too:

• automatic place titles on or off,
• which format to use,
• a list of formats you can add to. Each one chooses which levels of the place hierarchy to show, a language, how a house number joins its street, and whether to reverse the order, with an example of each on a place from your tree.

Place titles follow the format in the Places and Events tables, details, the Map, the Timeline, stories and search results. An event's place is named as it was on the event's date, using Gramps' dated place names and enclosing places.

The Places table sorts by each place's own name, then by its stored title, so it lines up with automatic titles that start with the place's name, as the standard "Full" format does.

The first time places are shown with automatic titles, Gramps Connect downloads the places list once more to pick up the extra information it needs.

Reports and exports

New reports start out with the same date and name formats. Exports, and a report's place format, keep the server's own Gramps settings.

Gramps IDs for new records

Under New records, set the Gramps ID format for each kind of record, like Gramps' own I%04d (I0001, I0002, ...). Use Gramps' default IDs fills in all nine.

Gramps Connect gives a new record the next number after the highest one already in use. Unlike Gramps desktop, it doesn't go back to fill gaps. If someone else takes the same ID at the same moment, it simply tries again. A type left empty gets standard Gramps IDs (I0001, F0001, ...) from the server.

These formats apply to records created in Gramps Connect, not to imported files. Imports keep the IDs in the file (a GEDCOM's @I12@ becomes I0012), and only an ID that's already taken is renumbered.

Importing settings from Gramps desktop

Import from Gramps desktop… copies the same settings, ID formats included, from Gramps on your computer:

1. Choose its gramps.ini (Linux and macOS: ~/.config/gramps/gramps60/; Windows: %APPDATA%\gramps\gramps60\).
2. If you've made your own place formats, add place_formats.xml from the folder above it.
3. Pick the language your desktop Gramps runs in, since Gramps numbers its date formats differently in each language.

A preview lists each setting found, what it would become and what it is now. Settings you never changed on desktop are marked "Gramps default" and left unticked. Nothing is saved until you press Save.

API keys

User menu → API keys… lists the keys that let Gramps on your computer, or another program, open your family tree, with when each was created and last used.

Creating a key

Create one with a name like "Gramps on my laptop", copy it once, and paste it where the program asks for a Gramps Web API key (GRAMPS_WEB_API_KEY). A key can read and edit the tree but not change your account.

Removing a key

Removing a key cuts off just that program or computer, e.g. a lost laptop. Keys that Gramps Web Sync creates for itself show up here too.

Older servers

On a server older than gramps-web-api 3.23.0, the dialog instead offers to copy your current session's key. That key has full access, never expires and can't be removed later, not even by changing your password.

The Help menu

Researcher information

Help → Researcher shows the tree's researcher contact info (name, address, phone, email), the details GEDCOM export headers conventionally carry. Anyone on the tree can view it; the Edit button only shows for the tree's owner.

System information for bug reports

Help → System Information shows the versions of everything involved (Gramps, Gramps Web API, Gramps Connect, Gramps Object Query Language) and the server features that affect what you see, such as whether email is set up and which files get thumbnails. A Copy button copies it all for pasting into a bug report.

A site admin, or the owner of a single-tree server, also sees a Warnings section listing any deprecated server settings and what to use instead.

Discussion forum

Help → Discussion Forum opens the gramps-connect category on the Gramps Discourse forum in a new browser tab. That's the place to ask questions, share tips, or talk over a problem before filing a bug report.

This wiki, inside the app

Help → Documentation opens this wiki's pages inside the app, with sidebar navigation, links between pages and images, rather than switching to a browser tab. An "Open on GitHub" link still reaches the real wiki page for anyone who wants to edit or comment. Help → About's "Read the overview" link opens this wiki directly in a new tab.

Searching the wiki

The search box at the top of Documentation's sidebar searches every page of this wiki, in the language you're reading it in. Results show the page and section with the matching words highlighted; click one to jump straight to that section, where the matches stay highlighted until you follow a link or go back. Search ignores case and accents, so "eintrage" finds "Einträge", and Chinese, Japanese and Korean phrases are matched as written. Press Esc to clear it.

Help before signing in

The sign-in page has three links under the form: Documentation, Discussion Forum and About. They open the same things as their Help menu entries, so someone who hasn't signed in yet, or can't, can still read this wiki, ask on the forum, or see what this site is and which server it talks to.

They show on every server, self-hosted ones included, and are kept deliberately small: the sign-in page is your server's front door, not a homepage for the project.

Translated pages

If a page has a translation for the app's current language, Documentation shows that instead, falling back to English for any page not yet translated. Translations are ordinary sibling wiki pages, e.g. Home.de.md. The sidebar is translated the same way.

The wiki has German, French, Spanish, Dutch and Simplified Chinese translations; more languages are planned.