CCHelper was begun in December 1996 in private e-mail between the program's author, Patty Lindsay, and myself while trying to work out how I, as a USGenWeb County Coordinator, might easily index the queries at my site. I was already sorting my queries by the first/main surname in each query, but an index was needed to pick up the other surnames. Even in my rather small county where few new queries were added per month, it was becoming difficult to read through the whole output and, in order to sort by one surname, the queries were not presented in the order received. Repeat visitors to the county site were being forced to look at every query every time to find the new ones.

I feel especially privileged to have witnessed the 'birth' of such a gem of a program as CCHelper is becoming and to have played a small part in it's early development. I guess guinea pigs have their uses! Of course, the name for the program was originally meant to indicate its primary purpose to help County Coordinators of the USGenWeb project, but Patty and I both saw rather early on how the output could easily be modified for surname web pages and even non-genealogical uses.

The original plan that Patty worked out for me was a manually maintained data file run through WordPerfect's Sort function (to alphabetize the surnames) and MailMerge function (to automatically add HTML code for presentation on the web). Each record in the data file had the surname, submitter, and e-mail address, plus the file location where the query could be found. The system worked, but it only indexed the surnames in the queries and was somewhat labor-intensive. That is, an index was produced, but it took time to manually enter all the surnames and file locations into the data file. The advantages of this index were three-fold:

1. all surnames, regardless in which queries they were mentioned, could be in one index,
2. each surname index entry linked directly to the query, and
3. the surname index could double as a surname registry

Because of its size, loading and re-loading the every-surname index between reading queries made browsing my queries possible, but tiresome. The biggest disadvantage was that the routine Patty worked out required WordPerfect and all County Coordinators did not use that program. In addition, explaining the routine was tedious and often difficult to understand. A stand-alone program would be better to create this index if Patty and I wanted to share.

Since Patty had a programming background, access to programming tools, and was employed by an organization which encouraged personal development that could be later drawn on at work, she threw herself into writing a routine that automated much of the process she had created to work for me in WordPerfect. Then she added some features which greatly enhanced the output, such as automatically grouping queries into monthly files and retaining their chronological order, producing a researchers' profile index, allowing for cross-referencing different forms of the same name, using (without editing) the files from the USGenWeb Autobot, and permitting a wonderfully flexible way to control the content and general appearance of each web page generated by the program.

She soon began regularly using her program to produce her own Greene Co., OH pages. Response to her new presentation was good. She knew she had something worth developing for others. I'm not sure she was quite prepared for how well this would be received by almost all who tried it, but we should be grateful she continues the development. It would have been all too easy for her to have kept it to herself!

By April 1997 a beta version was being tested in Ohio. It worked so well initially that Patty released CCHelper in May 1997 to any that wanted to try managing their queries as she herself did. She established her own pages as the 'Sample Format' so those trying the program could use that until/while they worked out formats of their own. Patty mounted a CChelper Web Page where new users' instructions are currently being revised by Carol Haagensen. I started a CCHelper discussion list. Minor problems were discussed on the list, fixes were planned and implemented by Patty with revisions released through her web page, and other new features were suggested, most of which will appear in a later version.

Presently, only queries, surnames, and researchers are indexed. Queries are presented in chronological order, and surnames and researchers are sorted alphabetically. But there are now plans to use the program to automatically index places, marriages, obituaries, cemetery inscriptions, etc., by adding user-defined, indexable fields. The program can, essentially, be modified to produce entire web site surname indexes. The greatest feature of the program is its inherent flexibility to present genealogical materials in a logically-indexed fashion.

So what happens in a typical session while using CCHelper? How do the queries get into the program so those wonderful pages can be generated? Is there a trick? Is it magic? How much of and what kinds of 'manual labor' are involved? You be the judge.

An import session is usually divided into three phases followed by generation of new pages.

Phase 1: Preparing the query/registration for import
Phase 2: Importing the query/registration
Phase 3: Applying cross-references in the Master Surname File

Phase 1----- Preparation
A new USGenWeb AutoBot is under development so that aspect can no longer be decribed here. Previously, all the HTML coding provided by the Autobot was either used or removed. The date is read and converted to CCHelper format ignoring the time. The e-mail and submitter's name were picked up and automatically entered into the correct fields in the correct form. This was where Patty particularly tailored her program to USGenWebbers who were using the AutoBot to collect their queries. Only a few cosmetic changes are required to the text itself and those can be done during the import process. In other words, an AutoBot Query required no special handling before import.

CCHelper can also accept queries that are not acquired from the AutoBot. These queries take a bit more 'massaging', but that can be done mostly during the import process as well. It simply takes more time but is not especially difficult. Essentially, a CCHelper user needs to supply the various tags to help the program identify what is the query text, what is the date, who is the researcher, and what is their e-mail address.

Here is a typical query received in e-mail after preparation for inputting. All of this tag marking can be done during the import process to each individual query:

   NAME: John Anyone
   EMAIL: jany1@everyman.net
   DATE: 10-5-97
   URL: http://www.everyman.net/~jany1/index.html
   NOTE: 4747 People St / Anytown, CT
   SURNAMES: GERUND  EGGELY
   QRYTEXT: I need help researching the ancestry of Gerry Gerund
            who married Jenny Eggely in 1875 in Andover, MA.

Phase 2----- Import
Patty has really worked on this aspect of her program to accommodate various scenarios. For example, when you initiate the import process, the first screen presents you with various options, such as, which county the query is for, whether the query is from the AutoBot or what Patty calls 'freeform', whether the query is part of an ASCII text file or text captured in the Clipboard.

Once all options are correctly marked and, if necessary, a file name pointed at, the program presents the second import screen. This second screen is where you see the query for the first time and decide if you really want to enter this query at all into the database. If not, you can SKIP (if importing a file) or CANCEL. Nothing is really done to the database. If you see this is a query you want, then this is the time to add all the necessary tags and delete unecessary text from freeform queries. Once appropriate tags are added, or if the query was from the AutoBot, you click OK and go to the third and final screen.

At this time the submitter, e-mail address, and date are separated from the query text, and a researcher record is created or added to. Now you need to look closely at the query text itself making certain that all surnames are ALL CAPs so the program will recognize them as names and not plain text, and that there are no text errors like mistyped words or missing punctuation. A click on a special arrow to move the capitalized surnames into a surname field (so you can delete certain ones if they are NOT surnames), one more click that the surnames are OK, and the whole package is entered in the database.

Phase 3----- Fixing Surname Cross-References
This final phase in not mandatory. You can at this point, however, go through the Master Surname File and mark some names as alternate forms of another name. CChelper will then automatically create "see" references during the generation of the surname index pages. This is also the time to fix, if necessary, any errors in the researchers' file.

This ends the import process itself. All the data is now in the CCHelper database and you are a couple of clicks away from generating a set of pages which will present your queries, surnames, and researchers at your site.

But was Patty satisfied with merely indexing queries at individual county or surname sites? Absolutely not! We not only have CCHelper itself with major enhancements on the horizon. We also have the CCHelper Central Index!! The CCHelper Central Index is fairly new, but there are currently (late December 1997) many sites using CCHelper in this new surname index. [A caution about the above URL is that the CCHelper Central site will be moving after the initial development phase, so watch for its new name, Surname Helper, (new name still under discussion) and its new, more permanent home at the Rootsweb Data Cooperative.]

The index is accessed by a search engine. When results of a search are displayed, the type of entry is noted (whether a query or surname registration - other types of records will be added later) as well as the location. The most important advantage to Patty's CCHelper Central Index site is that the entire index is updated regularly based on what is actually available at each site, not what used to be or should be there. Links go directly to the query or surname registration where it is immediately viewed, rather than to a general site where the query must be then found again to view. When a query is archived or otherwise moved, the entry is automatically changed or removed from the CCHelper Central Index during the next update.

How can this regular updating of the whole index be accomplished? Special files are produced by CCHelper during the generation of new pages which, when loaded to the individual server sites, are automatically picked up and processed into the Central Index. In other words, after initial setup, the users of CCHelper have nothing special to do in the program as they use it. Loading a few small summary files to their servers is all it takes; everything else is taken care of by Patty and her progamming. The 'elegance' of this solution to the nagging problem of changing URLs is sensible and yet breathtakingly effective. Users of the CCHelper Central Index are already reporting successes in finding new cousins and leads for their research.

Such progress in less than a year! And so much promise for the future!! From 6 beta testers in April to in excess of 250 known users today is a great beginning. People are joining the CChelper Revolution every day. CCHelper Central Index reports at least 221 USGenWeb counties and 3 WorldGenWeb sites currently (late December 1997) indexed since it's beginning four months ago. Patty has devised a means whereby non-CCHelper users can index their sites in CCHelper Central Index and there are currently 20 of those sites. The new version of CCHelper will open up full-site indexing by making it possible to include other types of documents in the same index. Some other document types are already being included by visionary site managers who have 'tweaked' the normal CCHelper output to new uses. And, really, this is just the beginning of what is likely to be a most significant development in on-line genealogy.

To recap just a little (excessive Ohio listings are only reflective of where the program began):