County Coordinator's Helper

Getting Started

NOTE: This software and associated documentation are
Copyright © 1997 Patricia A. Lindsay.

Getting Started:

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Install CCHelper
- See Windows 95 and Windows NT install instructions.
- See Windows 3.1 install instructions.
Apply CCHelper fixes
Sorry for the inconvenience, but these fixes need to be applied by you until I can get an install package ready that includes these changes.
- Upgrade CCHelper to the 1.06 release. See the Upgrade page..
- Click on the CCHelper icon created by the install process. Choose "Manage", "Control Settings", select "AlphaSep" and then "Edit". In the "Value" box, add semicolons so that &nbspthru&nbsp is changed to  thru 
Execute CCHelper and Setup your county(s)
- Click on the CCHelper icon created by the install process.
- Choose "Manage", "Counties", select '(New)' and then "Copy" and follow the instructions. This will copy the '(New)' county definition to your county. CCHelper will ask you to assign a County ID for your county (eg OHGREENE). Then enter the county (eg 'Greene') and state names (eg 'Ohio').
  Make a note of the HTML Directory name (at the bottom "Edit County" window) for the next step. CCHelper defaults this directory to the CCH1 directory name and the county id (eg: C:\CCH1\OHGREENE). This is the directory where CCHelper will place the HTML when it is generated. You can change this directory to one of your choice but be sure to use a separate directory for each county, otherwise when you generate a county it may overlay the pages for a previously generated county.
  You do not need worry about the page definitions and where to break the pages at this point.
  Enter the file name of the home page for this county in "Home page" (EG index.html or shelby.htm). If you do not see this field, you probably need to install the 1.06 Upgrade.
  Note that CCHelper has copied the sample pages set up for the '(New)' county to your county. If you have a burning curiosity that can't wait till later, see information about the sample pages.
Create HTML directories
Using File Manager on Win 3.1 or Explorer or My Computer on Win 95, create the directory/folder for each county using the name you noted in the previous step.
Prep your data to be imported into CCHelper.
The normal procedure for loading new queries involves copying the query from e-mail and pasting it into a window in CCHelper. To get all of your queries already on your web pages into CCHelper, there is a similar process that allows you to import the files containing the HTML for your query pages.
If your queries are in the Autobot format, you will import the data directly from the text files which contain the HTML for your query pages. Skip to Import Your Data.
If your queries are not in the Autobot format, you have 2 options:
1. Copy your current query page HTML text file(s), and then massage the copied files using a word processor or text editor in a format that CCHelper can read. Very often a few find/replace commands will do the trick. See Prepping Your Queries for Import.
2. If you would prefer to load them in one at a time using the copy-and-paste method, see Posting New Requests and then return to Browse around your data.
Import your data.
Start CCHelper and choose "File", "Import" (alternately you can choose "Manage", "Postings", "Import").
Choose "freeform" (if you had to "prep" your data in the previous step) or "autobot". Choose "ASCII file" since you are importing a file, choose the appropriate county, and then "OK".
The next window, "Import a Posting", should display the first query in your file.
Repeat the following for each query:
1. Press "OK" to tell the import to process the query.
2. You may get a message about the researcher data if there is a problem with the researcher data in the first query. This happens when CCHelper can not detect either an e-mail address or a name for the researcher. You can press the "Explain" button to see how CCHelper has interpreted you query.
3. Next you will see the "Edit Posting Data" window. At this point the researcher associated with the query has already been loaded to the database. Here you have an opportunity to revise the query before it is loaded. You can change the date, the text and the surname list. You can also change which researcher to associate with the query. If you need to change the researcher data you will need to wait until the current query is loaded (see step 7 below).
4. You can use the buttons at the bottom to edit the query text, the action will be performed on whatever text is selected. If you double-click on a word in the text, the word will be selected.
5. Pressing the ">" button will extract any uppercase words longer than 2 characters in the query text and put them in the surname list. Duplicate surnames will be eliminated.
6. Press "OK" when the query is ready to be posted.
  Pressing "Cancel" on the "Edit Posting Data" window will not load the query and will take you back to the "Import a Posting" window. Here you can correct the data and continue, or skip the query and go on to the next one.
7. CCHelper will load the query to the database and present the next query in the "Import a Posting" window.
  At this point you can change the researcher data by choosing "Manage" , "Researcher" and "Edit" before proceeding with the next query.
Browse around your data, and do any clean-up as needed.
This is a good time to get familiar with how to navigate around CCHelper. There are some hints under "General Help" on the "Help" menu. Start by choosing "Manage" and then "Postings". From here you can double click on any text in blue to browse around. Use the "Edit" option on each of the windows to revise the data that is the primary focus of that window.
Set control settings.
Now that your data is loaded it is time to get things setup to generate your HTML. Start with "Manage", "Control Settings". Edit "CCeMail" and "CCName" and enter your e-mail address and name. At this point you can leave the rest of the control settings at the default values. Note that listed after the control setting entries in this window are the "Symbolic Field"s. You will be using these later if you choose to customize the HTML, for the present you can ignore them.
Setup links between your pages and the pages that CCHelper generates.
1. Choose "Manage", "HTML Sections", 'Common Return" and "Edit". Change the ______.___ in the HTML text to [[HOMEPAGE]] as follows:
  <hr>
  <h3><a href="[[HOMEPAGE]]">Return to [[COUNTY]] Co. [[STATE]] Genealogy page</a> </h3>
  
  If the county's home page is one directory above were the query pages will be stored, than add a '../' before the [[HOMEPAGE]], as follows:
  <hr>
  <h3><a href="../[[HOMEPAGE]]">Return to [[COUNTY]] Co. [[STATE]] Genealogy page</a> </h3>
2. Add a link to "qryindex.htm" on your home county page, for example: <a href="qryindex.htm"<Index to Surnames, Queries, and Researchers</a>
Generate HTML.
Depending on your learning style, you may want to review the description of the sample pages now. If you are a visual person and like to "see it" before "reading about it", you can generate the HTML now and read about it in the next step.
Generate the HTML for a county by pressing the "Generate HTML" button on the manage counties window for that county. Make sure you have entered a valid directory name and created that directory for the county (see Steps 4 and 5 above).
After you have generated the HTML, preview it by using your Web browser as follows.
- In Win 95, open the directory/folder containing your HTML (eg C:\CCH1\OHGREENE) and double-click on "qryindex.htm".
- In Win 3.1, start Netscape, choose File, Open File, and then the directory/folder containing your HTML (eg C:\CCH1\OHGREENE) and "qryindex.htm".
Note that if your home page is not in the same directory as the CCHelper pages, the "Return to _____ County Genealogy Page" link will not work. This should no longer be a problem once you place all the pages onto your server.
Required HTML customization.
If you haven't already done so, click here to learn about how the sample pages are named and organized, paying particular attention to the "howto" pages.
The sample pages will primarily work as delivered but you will need to revise the "how to" instructions. These are the pages that tell the visitor how to submit queries and surname registrations to you.
If you want to use existing pages, then choose "Manage", "HTML Sections", "common links" and then "Edit". Edit the links to point to your pages. Alternatively you can remove the links to the "howto" pages and place/retain them on pages not managed by CCHelper.
If you want to copy instructions you have already written into the sample pages, then copy your text into the clipboard using a text editor or word processor (just copy the instructions, you do not need to copy the title of the page, your e-mail address, return links, etc). Then in CCHelper choose "Manage", "HTML Sections", "howto___ body" and then "Edit". Now paste your text into the HTML text and remove the "(place your ...." comments.
If you do not have instructions already, the sample pages provides sample instructions for how to submit a surname registration and how to submit a change to the researcher information. Sample instructions for submitting a query are not included because this procedure varies depending on the state and whether you use the autobot system or not.
Optional HTML customization.
CCHelper was designed so that the county coordinator could control the appearance of the generated pages. You will probably want to use the sample pages as delivered to begin with. When (and if) you are ready to make changes, see Customizing the HTML for further instructions.
Posting new requests.
There are 2 methods for loading new requests to the data base.
1. You can "copy" the request from your e-mail program into the clipboard, and then go through the "Import" process as above, except choose "clipboard" instead of "ASCII file".
  If the e-mail was an autobot message from John Rigdon, choose "autobot".
  If the e-mail is a private e-mail to you, choose "freeform". Then use the "Tag list" to tell CCHelper what the text in the e-mail is. Place the cursor in the text before an item (eg the researcher's name) and then double-click on the appropriate tag (eg NAME:). The tag will be inserted in the text. Refer to the Freeform Format Requirements page. If you use a mailmerge process for query and surname registration requests, you can add the tags to your mailmerge template and then you can import the requests without making changes to them.
2. Use the add posting function. Before you add a posting, the researcher must exist. Use the add researcher function to add a researcher. These functions can be started with the "Add Res" and "Add Post" buttons on any of the "Manage" windows.
Tuning the sizes of the generated HTML files
The query, researcher and surname HTML files (eg query001.htm, resa.htm, sura.htm) can get rather big if you have many queries. I try to keep these files under 20k so that they will not be too slow to load. You have some control over the size of these files by using the query, surname and researcher break settings on the "Edit" county window (choose "Manage", "Counties", the county you wish to change and "Edit").
Query page breaks: You specify the query page size by specifying the minimum number of queries to put on a page. The default value is 10. The way this break works is that CCHelper starts with the first month for which queries exist and begins to build a page. If it encounters another month before it reaches the minimum number, it will add that month to that page. Once it exceeds the minimum number, it will start a new page once it finds a new month. The net result is that if you have a lot of queries per month, you will get one month on one page. If you have just a few queries in a given month, it will be combined with another month or two. CCHelper does not allow you to split a month across two pages.
Surname and Researcher breaks: You specify the researcher and surname page size by telling CCHelper which letters of the alphabet to go to a new page. (eg: The default value for the surname page is AM, which says the first page of surnames should contain all surnames beginning with the letters A through L and the second page of surnames should contain all surnames beginning with the letters M through Z.
CCHelper can help you determine which letters to break on. To do this, press the "Suggest Breaks" button on the "Edit County" window. Enter the number of pages you would like the researcher and surname pages to be split into and press "Recalculate Breaks". CCHelper will calculate what breaks it predicts will split the pages evenly in size (it's not perfect, pages will vary by 1-3k or so and the last page may be smaller than the rest). If you want to accept the proposed changes, press "OK", otherwise click on "Use Current" for either the Researcher and/or Surname breaks and then press "OK". For the changes to appear in your Web pages you will need to regenerate your HTML.
To determine the desired number of pages you can add up the sizes for all of the current pages and then divide by the desired page size.
For example:
- Currently your surname breaks for county "OHABCDEF" are AM. The sura.htm file is 35k and the surm.htm file is 40k. You would like to keep the files under 20k, so you decide to try for about 15k to give you some growth room.
- The total size is 35k + 40K = 75k. 75k / 15k = 5 pages. So you would enter 5 in the "Pages desired" for the Surname Page Breaks and tell CCHelper to recalculate. Let's say it recalculates the pages to ADHMS. You accept the changes.
- To reduce confusion, you delete the sura.htm and surm.htm files out of the HTML directory for OHABCDEF and then regenerate the HTML. Now your surname pages are sura.htm, surd.htm, surh.htm, surm.htm, and surs.htm and hopefully they will each be about 15k in size.
Note: The calculation is based on the data that is stored in the database for that county, so you may want to recalculate it periodically.
Alternate spelling of surnames.
If you would like your surname index page to have links between surnames that are alternate spellings of each other, you can do this from the "Manage", "Surname" window. Pick one of the surnames as the "primary" surname (I usually use the first spelling given to me by the first submitter). Then edit each of the surnames that are alternate spellings (each surname is created with a default of "Primary", so you do not need to edit the "Primary" surname. Change the "Primary" to "Alternate" and then select the "Primary" surname from the list of surnames.
Example: The primary surname is LINDSAY, the alternate spellings are LINDSEY and LINSEE.
1. Edit LINDSEY, change the Primary to Alternate, and choose LINDSAY.
2. Edit LINSEE, change the Primary to Alternate, and choose LINDSAY.
Backing up your database.
To backup your data you can copy the cchelper.db file to another directory or filename. The cchelper.db file is in your CCHelper install directory (eg C:\CCH1). In Windows 95 you can right mouse the CCHhelper.db file in the "My Computer" window for C:\CCH1, select COPY then right-mouse a blank area of the window and choose PASTE. Windows 95 will create a file "Copy of cchelper.db".

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