AP Family Trees

Description

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. All within WordPress and without sending your data to a third-party service.

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)
• 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 – suppress details for individuals flagged as living in your GEDCOM data or marked as living in the plugin
• 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
• GEDCOM export – take your data back at any time
• 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. There are no third-party accounts to set up and no monthly subscription to a genealogy platform.

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 Timmy Willison – 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

This plugin does not collect or transmit any personal data from your site or your visitors. All family tree data is stored exclusively in your own WordPress database.

If you activate a paid Pro or Pro Plus licence, the Freemius SDK is used to validate and manage that licence. Freemius may collect basic site and usage data as part of licence activation. This is subject to the Freemius Privacy Policy. No licence activation is required to use the free plan.