Women's Legacy Project

Our Lives Change The World

content timelines

Timelines as Sequences of Time and Thought

A TO Z, A to Z of Personal History, Personal History

Previous Timeline Post

This post is an update to a previous post about timelines that appeared in April of 2016 as Timeline Templates The T of Legacy Tools. Lots of things have changed in those 6 years.

Timelines Within WordPress

I am quite happy that there is now a widget, for self-hosted WordPress sites, which allows for the easy creation of timelines. The Content Timeline is the most versatile option for timelines found within UAG Templates (Ultimate Add-ons for Gutenberg.) I recommend using the Add-ons if you create different purpose pages and posts with some frequency, or if you like to play with structures.

The additional blocks are accessed through the plus sign that shows at the top left of the web page when you are creating or editing a full post or page. Toggling this plus sign will bring up a side panel listing all the available types of blocks. Go to Ultimate Add-ons.

Content Timeline

The Content Timeline is the most versatile timeline. When you insert a basic content timeline it looks like this:

January 1, 2019

Timeline Heading 1

This is Timeline description, you can change me anytime click here

January 1, 2019
January 1, 2019

Timeline Heading 2

This is Timeline description, you can change me anytime click here

January 1, 2019
January 1, 2019

Timeline Heading 3

This is Timeline description, you can change me anytime click here

January 1, 2019

This is an example of a more personalized content timeline:

January 1, 1957

FAR PAST

The past I have been told about or about which I have read.

January 1, 1957
January 1, 2021

NEAR PAST

The past in which I am alive.

January 1, 2021
January 1, 2022

PRESENT

This moment in time of which I am aware.

January 1, 2022
January 1, 2023

NEAR FUTURE

The time for which plan and in which I anticipate being alive.

January 1, 2023
January 1, 2050

FAR FUTURE

The time in which I can visualize my descendants living.

January 1, 2050

Post Timeline

Another form of timeline that can be added as a UAG is the post timeline. I will use this when the A to Z for this year is completed. Post timelines do just that, they create a timeline of posts from your blog which you can select for different categories or tags.

Timelines Beyond WordPress

These above listed timelines are probably the easiest to insert into a post. But they do take up quite a bit of space and require readers to scroll through the post or page.

The timeline creator I mention in my 2016 post is still up and running, but two things I notice about the site are:

  • that it is http not a secure site, it is NOT https.
  • also the conditions listed at the page bottom are concerning to me. It states that “personalization and timeline association of events with timeline subject’s age are copyright © 1994-2022 ourtimelines.com, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED”. If I am reading this correctly the company is claiming that personalizations made using this online form belong to them. Seems grabby and over-reaching to me.

I now recommend using Cyndi’s List as a jumping off point (this has been a hub for genealogical information since the last millennium for timeline exploration and implementation. Go directly to Timeline – General Resources if you do not want to fall into an internet rabbit hole for several hours.

There is also a presentation (slide show) that is a great overview. Cyndi, of Cyndi’s List, links to Kathryn Grant’s 2014, 41 page slide show on cloud-hosted timeline grids.

An Excel® spreadsheet will work too. So will Google Sheets.

And if you want to get really spiff you can implement the specialized spreadsheet technique for genealogical relationships in this You Tube video by Family Tree Fanatics.

All in all, I cannot imagine doing personal history research without using timelines.