AP Family Trees

Keep your family history on your own WordPress site - self-hosted, with your data in your own database rather than locked inside a third-party genealogy platform. AP Family Trees is a versatile genealogy plugin built for family historians, authors, publishers and institutions who want to publish genealogical research on their WordPress websites. Import from GEDCOM, display interactive charts, and give every ancestor their own profile page. Insert family member profile 'cards' into other blog content to create lovely 'pull outs' linking to profile pages. The plugin includes multiple ways to access and display family history content and links on your site so you can integrate your genealogical information seamlessly - whether as a full-page family tree chart or a small profile linking box on longer text articles. Built by AncestorPress - tools for family history, built to last. What You Can Do With the Free Version

• Import GEDCOM files from any genealogy application (Family Tree Maker, Gramps, MacFamilyTree, Ancestry, and all standard GEDCOM 5.5 exporters)
• Export your data as GEDCOM - take your complete lineage back to any genealogy application at any time, at full fidelity (people, families, events, relationships, notes, and source citations). Your data is never locked in
• Display a Descendant Vertical chart - the classic top-down family tree, pan and zoom enabled
• Unlimited family members in a single lineage
• Living person privacy controls - living people are auto-detected and their details hidden on the front end (configurable; GEDCOM flags and manual marking are also honoured)
• Configurable chart boxes - show or hide photos, dates, spouses, and gender indicators; set name and date formats
• Gender colour indicators - customisable male/female colours in chart boxes
• Click any person to re-root the chart - visitors can make any ancestor or descendant the new starting point
• Embed on any page via shortcode or Gutenberg block

Pro Unlock the full publishing toolkit:

• Unlimited lineages - manage separate family histories or multiple GEDCOM files side by side
• Ancestor Horizontal chart - the industry-standard pedigree view, left to right
• Full profile pages for every person - photo, dates, relationships, notes, and custom fields, embeddable via shortcode or block
• Compact profile cards - inline photo, name, and dates card embeddable in any post or page
• Photo gallery on profiles
• GEDCOM notes displayed on profile pages
• Custom fields - unlimited per lineage (text, date, URL, select)
• Member search via shortcode or Gutenberg block
• Person box links to profile page - click a name in the chart to open their full profile
• Chart edit controls - add and remove people directly from the chart
• Generations control - floating panel lets visitors adjust how many generations are shown

Pro Plus The complete set, including every chart type and export format: Everything in Pro, plus:

• Descendant Horizontal chart
• Ancestor Vertical chart - youngest at the bottom, ancestors ascending
• Descendant Compact Text chart
• Hourglass chart - ancestors and descendants of one person in a single view; ancestors branch left, the person is in the centre, descendants branch right
• Custom chart colours - full control over boxes, borders, connectors, name text, and date text
• PDF export - print or save the chart directly from the viewer
• SVG export - download as a scalable vector file for print or design use
• Member directory - sortable by surname, first name, or birth date

All plans use the same plugin. Upgrade at any time by entering a licence key - no reinstall required. Multi-site licensing available on request.

Who It Is For AP Family Trees is designed for:

• Family history researchers who want to publish their tree online as part of a WordPress site or blog
• Genealogy societies and archives that need to present lineage data in a structured, professional format
• Historians and heritage organisations building public-facing ancestor resources
• Anyone who has been using desktop genealogy software and wants to move their data onto their own website

What Makes It Different Most genealogy plugins are either too simple (a basic chart widget with no data management) or too complex (requiring server configuration and database imports). AP Family Trees sits in the middle: a proper data-driven plugin that stores your family data cleanly in WordPress, imports from the standard GEDCOM format used by every major genealogy application, and renders interactive, publication-quality charts and profile pages. Your data stays on your server, stored in your own WordPress database - not uploaded to an external genealogy platform or locked behind someone else's service. Third-party libraries This plugin bundles the following open-source libraries. All are GPL-compatible.

• php-gedcom by Kristopher Wilson - MIT licence. Used for parsing GEDCOM files on import.
• Panzoom by Andrei Kashcha - MIT licence. Used for interactive pan and zoom on family tree charts.
• Select2 by Kevin Brown, Igor Vaynberg, and contributors - MIT licence. Used for searchable dropdowns in the admin interface.
• Freemius WordPress SDK by Freemius - MIT licence. Used for licence management on Pro and Pro Plus plans.

Privacy and data All family tree data is stored exclusively in your own WordPress database. The plugin never transmits your family history data: no person, family, event, source or media record leaves your site, and neither does the name of any tree. Two optional services can send other, non-genealogical information, and only when you choose to use them: the Freemius SDK, if you connect an account or activate a paid licence, and the AncestorPress Support Service, if you open the support assistant and accept its privacy notice. Both are described in full in the External services section below, including exactly what is sent and what is never sent.

1. Upload the plugin files to /wp-content/plugins/ap-family-trees, or install the plugin directly from the WordPress plugin repository under Plugins > Add New.
2. Activate the plugin through the Plugins menu in WordPress.
3. Go to AP Family Trees > Lineages and click Create Lineage to start adding members manually, or go to AP Family Trees > Import to create a lineage from a GEDCOM file exported from any genealogy application.
4. Once your lineage has members, go to AP Family Trees > Charts, create a chart, and note the chart ID.
5. Use the shortcode [APFTChart id="1"] or the AP Family Trees Chart Gutenberg block to display your tree on any page or post. Replace 1 with the chart ID shown in AP Family Trees > Charts.

For full documentation, visit ancestorpress.com.

1.3.2

• Housekeeping for WordPress.org compliance: five internal licence checks were written in forms that WordPress.org's plugin scanner flags. They have been rewritten to the standard form. No behaviour changes - free and Pro installations both work exactly as before.

1.3

• New: a Support Copilot. Every AP Family Trees admin screen now has a Help button that opens a chat answering usage and setup questions instantly, from documentation matched to your installed version. It is read-only and can never change anything on your site. It sends no family history data - no person, family, event, source or media record, and no tree name. Nothing is sent until you open it and accept its privacy notice, and there is a new AP Family Trees > Support screen where you can review the settings or withdraw consent.
• Fixed: PHP 8 fatal during Freemius opt-in on WordPress multisite - the bundled Freemius SDK now guards an unguarded count() when the plan list is not yet loaded. Network-admin activation could previously take down admin pages and, on some sites, the front end.
• Added an "== External services ==" section to this readme, documenting exactly what Freemius and the support assistant receive, and what they never receive.

1.2

• The shared AncestorPress data library moved to proper PHP namespaces with descriptive class names throughout, and its bundled GEDCOM parser is now vendor-scoped, preventing any clash with other plugins on the same site. Companion release for AP One-Name Studies, which requires AP Family Trees 1.2 or newer when both are installed.
• Database queries across the shared library now bind table names through WordPress identifier placeholders. Now requires WordPress 6.2 or newer.
• Admin screens no longer load fonts from an external CDN - typography now uses fonts available on your system, so admin pages make no third-party requests.
• Cleaner free/Pro separation: the member search feature, the premium chart styles with their floating chart controls, and the Pro+ appearance form now live entirely in files delivered only with the paid edition. The free plugin is unchanged in what it does - it simply no longer carries code it cannot use.

1.1

• GEDCOM export is now free for everyone.
• More complete GEDCOM import - notes and media are now imported.
• Rebuilt on a shared data engine for better reliability and performance on large trees.
• One-time database upgrade on update; your existing tree data is preserved automatically.

1.0.3

• GEDCOM export stays a free feature: export your complete lineage - people, families, events, relationships, notes and source citations - to any genealogy application at any time. The export engine now lives in the shared AncestorPress core.

1.0.2

• Licensing: Pro Plus detection now uses the immutable plan identifier, correcting an edge case where some paid customers could be treated as Pro Plus.

1.0.1

• Privacy: private people are no longer listed by the member-list shortcodes, and private relatives are shown as "Private" (unlinked) on profile pages, for non-administrators.
• Privacy: chart re-rooting now validates the requested person belongs to the chart's own tree.
• Security: hardened the admin "add child" dialog and import result messages against markup in imported names.
• Licensing: corrected Pro/Pro Plus gating for member search and chart types so premium features are enforced on the server, not only in the browser.
• Data integrity: deleting a person, family group or lineage now removes all related records (custom fields, images, links, events) instead of leaving orphaned rows.
• Import: uploaded GEDCOM files are stored in a protected directory, cleaned up after use, and a failed import no longer leaves a half-imported lineage behind.
• Options: fixed the Settings save button and the living-person year cutoff, which now drives import detection.
• Housekeeping: removed unused bundled libraries, corrected the Panzoom credit, fixed several display and database-compatibility issues.

1.0

• Initial public release.