Welcome, visitor!
My name is Darren Andrews, the creator of this site and your guide here on StartYourFamilyTree.net (“SYFT” for short!). Let me say from the outset: I am not some super-qualified professional genealogist. I am just an enthusiast who is eager to share with others what I have learned about how best to use the Internet to start your own family tree and build it up accurately with as little toil and effort as possible.
I have lived in England all my life, in fact the man in the header graphic at the top of this page is my great grandfather, William Clough, born and bred in County Durham. I’ve been researching my own family tree for quite some years, but it was not until fairly recently that I began to discover the full potential of the tools and resources now available on the Internet for genealogists.
I created this site to provide a starting place, a springboard if you will, for those new to using the Internet to trace their family tree. Whether new to genealogical research or not, if you are not familiar with how to use the Internet for ancestral research then you are missing out on a way to fast-track your family history research.
Over the coming months I will be posting detailed guidance which will provide you with the information you need to lay the foundations of your own family history. I’m going to assume you know nothing about tracing your family tree – so there’ll be no jargon and no assumptions. All will be kept simple, because life is complicated enough already! 
To begin, I have put together a short video to explain a little more about the site:
Oops, forgot to say in the video that you can also post comments below!
See you next week!
I found your guide very helpful and found some really useful tips. Also felt a bit less daunted by the “public tree” idea. Just one concern about changing information on the public tree. How easy is it? Look forward with interest to the next update.
Thanks Angelface. We’ll be taking a look at public trees very soon. There are a number of choices for hosted public trees, but changing information is easy on most of them.
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