webtrees — online collaborative genealogy

webtrees is a web application for recording, viewing and sharing your family history. It imports and exports standard GEDCOM files, making it compatible with every major desktop genealogy application.

You host it on your own web server, so you stay in control of your data. Multiple family members can collaborate on the same tree at the same time, and you decide who can see what through fine-grained privacy rules.

Key features:

• Full editing of individuals, families, sources, media and other GEDCOM records
• Interactive charts — pedigree, fan, descendants, relationships
• Privacy controls per record, per user, per tree
• Multi-language interface (70+ translations)
• Theming support with several built-in themes
• Module system for extending functionality
• Multiple family trees in one installation

For user documentation, screenshots and demos visit https://webtrees.net/.

This software is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3 or later. See LICENSE.md for the full text.

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Getting started

Download

Download the latest stable release from github.com/fisharebest/webtrees/releases/latest.

Server requirements

Component	Requirement
PHP	8.3 – 8.6
Database	MySQL (recommended), PostgreSQL, SQLite, or SQL Server
Web server	Apache, NGINX, IIS or similar (URL rewriting needed for pretty URLs)
Disk space	~100 MB for application files, plus space for media and database

Required PHP extensions: ctype, curl, gd, iconv, intl, json, mbstring, pcre, pdo, session, xml.

Recommended PHP extensions: exif (auto-rotate images), zip (compress downloads and use the upgrade wizard), zlib (compress HTTP responses).

PHP memory and execution time should be scaled to your tree size:

Tree size	Memory	Max execution time
Small (500 individuals)	16–32 MB	10–20 s
Medium (5 000 individuals)	32–64 MB	20–40 s
Large (50 000 individuals)	64–128 MB	40–80 s

Installation

1. Upload and extract the release archive to an empty folder on your web server.
2. Navigate to the URL in your browser — the setup wizard starts automatically.
3. Create your first family tree and optionally import a GEDCOM file.

Full installation and upgrade guides are available at https://webtrees.net/.

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Technical architecture

Project structure

app/                        Application source (PSR-4 root: Fisharebest\Webtrees\)
├── Cli/Commands/           CLI commands (extend AbstractCommand)
├── Contracts/              Interfaces (*Interface suffix)
├── Enums/                  PHP enumerations
├── Factories/              Object creation (Registry pattern)
├── Http/
│   ├── RequestHandlers/    HTTP controllers (one class per route action)
│   ├── Middleware/         HTTP controllers (one class per route action)
│   └── Routes/             Route definitions
├── Module/                 Modules (charts, reports, sidebars, tabs, themes…)
├── Services/               Domain services
└── …                       Domain classes (Individual, Family, Tree, etc.)

resources/
├── css/                    Stylesheets (compiled by webpack)
├── js/                     JavaScript (compiled by webpack)
├── lang/                   Language files (*.po, compiled into *.php for release)
└── views/                  View templates (*.phtml)

tests/
├── Unit/                   Unit tests
└── Feature/                Feature/integration tests

public/                     Web-accessible assets (compiled CSS/JS, images, fonts)
data/                       Runtime data (config, GEDCOM files, cache — not in VCS)
modules_v4/                 Third-party module directory

Namespace and autoloading

Namespace	Directory	Standard
Fisharebest\Webtrees\	app/	PSR-4
Fisharebest\Webtrees\Tests\	tests/	PSR-4

Global helper functions are in app/Helpers/functions.php (loaded via composer autoload.files).

Coding standards

webtrees follows PSR-12 with these additional rules:

• Abstract classes are named Abstract*.
• Interfaces are named *Interface.
• Traits are named *Trait.
• Local variables and parameters use $snake_case.
• Nullable types are written Type|null, not ?Type.
• PHP function/constant calls never use named arguments.
• Variable names are full English words ($variables, not $vars).
• Comments and identifiers use US English ($color, not $colour).
• All PHP functions and constants are imported with use; unused imports are removed.
• No two consecutive blank lines.
• Unit test method names are camelCase, not snake_case.

For javascript, we use semistandard.

PSR standards applied:

PSR	Topic
PSR-4	Autoloading
PSR-6	Caching
PSR-7	HTTP messages
PSR-11	Dependency injection container
PSR-12	Coding style
PSR-15	HTTP request handlers and middleware
PSR-17	HTTP factories
PSR-18	HTTP client

Dependencies

All dependencies are pinned to exact version numbers (no ranges).

Main PHP dependencies (via Composer):

• illuminate/database
• symfony/cache, symfony/console, symfony/mailer, symfony/http-client
• league/flysystem
• league/commonmark
• aura/router

Main JavaScript dependencies (via npm / webpack):

• Bootstrap 5
• Font Awesome
• LeafletJs
• DataTables
• Chart.js, Tom Select, Sortable.js
• jQuery 4 (legacy shims; being phased out)

Building from source

Prerequisites: PHP 8.3+, Composer, Node.js with npm.

# Install PHP dependencies
composer install

# Install JS dependencies and compile assets
npm install
npm run build

# Create a .ZIP file containing a release
composer build

Quality and CI

Run the full local CI suite:

composer ci

This executes, in order:

Tool	Purpose	Config file
PHP_CodeSniffer	PSR-12 style enforcement	phpcs.xml.dist
PHPUnit	Unit and feature tests	phpunit.xml.dist
PHPStan (level 6)	Static analysis	phpstan.neon.dist

Individual commands:

# Coding style (fix automatically)
vendor/bin/phpcbf

# Tests with coverage
vendor/bin/phpunit

# Static analysis
vendor/bin/phpstan

Testing

Tests live in tests/Unit/ and tests/Feature/. Run a subset with:

vendor/bin/phpunit --filter=testMethodName
vendor/bin/phpunit tests/Feature/SomeTest.php

HTTP architecture

The application uses PSR-15 middleware and request handlers:

1. index.php boots the application and dispatches the request.
2. Routes are defined declaratively in app/Http/Routes/.
3. Each route maps to a request handler in app/Http/RequestHandlers/.
4. Middleware provides cross-cutting concerns (authentication, CSRF, etc.).

Module system

Most user-visible features are implemented as modules in app/Module/. Modules implement one or more interfaces (e.g. ModuleChartInterface, ModuleReportInterface, ModuleThemeInterface) and are auto-discovered by the ModuleService.

Third-party modules can be placed in modules_v4/.

Database

webtrees uses Laravel’s Illuminate Database (query builder and schema builder) without the full Laravel framework. Supported drivers:

• MySQL / MariaDB
• SQLite
• PostgreSQL
• SQL Server

Schema migrations are in app/Schema/. The current schema version is tracked in app/Webtrees.php.

Table names use a configurable prefix so multiple instances can share a database.