How to Use This Site

How to Use This Site.

Welcome to Stuck in the Branches. This short guide is a tour of this site: where the free courses are, how to work through one, and how to use the client tools when you decide you want Susy's help with your own family.

Two Halves of This Site.

There are two halves here. The free side is the courses and the reference shelf, open to everybody with no account and no email address required. The paid side is professional research, where Susy works on your family directly, and that side has a portal of its own.

The Free Courses Live in One Place.

Every course sits on the guides page. They are grouped by what they teach, and the order on that page is the order they are meant to be taken, starting with your own family and ending with the judgement calls. Nothing is locked and nothing expires.

All the free guides

A Course Turns One Page at a Time.

Open any course and you get one step on screen at a time, with a picture and a short explanation underneath. Use the Back and Next buttons at the bottom to turn the page. The counter beside them tells you how far through the guide you are.

Jump Around With Chapters.

Every course is divided into chapters, listed in the panel beside the guide. Click any chapter to jump straight there, which is how you come back later to the one part you needed. Your place is kept in the address bar, so a bookmark returns you to the exact page you were on.

Play It, or Make It Full Screen.

At the top of each course there is a play button that walks the whole guide for you, hands free, and a full screen button that gives the slides the whole window. Both are useful if you would rather watch than read, or if you are working on a small screen.

Tick Off the Steps as You Go.

Each step has a mark this step done button. Ticking it saves your progress in your own browser, with no account, so you can close the page and come back to find your place. The progress panel beside the guide shows how many steps you have finished.

The Transcript and the Outcomes.

The panel beside the guide also holds the whole course as plain text, which is the fastest way to search a guide for the one line you half remember. The overview tab lists what you will be able to do by the end, so you can tell whether a course is the one you need.

The Reference Shelf at the Bottom.

At the foot of the guides page there is a shelf that opens up to every genealogy website worth knowing, twenty seven of them, with what each one is for, what it honestly costs, and the free lessons the site itself publishes. It stays shut until you want it.

The guides page, shelf at the bottom

Where to Start if You Are New.

If you have never done this before, start at the beginning of the series and work down. If you already have a tree and you are stuck, go straight to the brick wall course. If you took a DNA test and do not know what to do with it, go to the DNA course. Nothing has to be done in order.

When You Want a Real Researcher.

The courses are there so you can do this yourself. When you hit something that needs an archive, a language or a record that is not online, you can book a free consultation with Susy and talk it through. There is no charge for that conversation and no obligation after it.

Your Client Portal.

Once you are working with Susy you get an account on the portal. Sign in there and everything about your research sits in one place: the requests you have sent, the documents you have uploaded, the status of the work, and your finished reports.

Sign in to the portal

Sending a Research Request.

The request form asks who you are looking for, what you already know about them, and what you are hoping to find out. Fill in as much as you can, including the things you are unsure of, and say which ones are guesses. A request with context takes far less time to work on.

Uploading Your Documents.

The portal has a document upload for your own photographs, scans and certificates. They go into your private folder and attach to your request, so Susy opens them beside the work instead of digging through an email thread. Send the backs of photographs too.

Following the Work.

The tracker lists every request you have sent and where each one has got to, along with the note Susy has written on it. You are signed in, so you see your own research and nobody else's. Check there first rather than wondering whether to send a reminder.

Your Finished Reports.

When a report is finished it appears on your portal dashboard on its own, so you never have to hunt for a link in an old email. The emailed link keeps working as well. The reports are yours to keep, download and share with your family.

What Happens to Your Files.

Your uploads are private to your account and are used for your research, nothing else. The terms and privacy pages spell out how your information is handled, and they are linked at the foot of every page. If you ever want something removed, ask and it will be.

Privacy policy

Start anywhere, it is all free.

Pick any course on the guides page and work through it one page at a time. When you get stuck on your own family, book a consult and bring the problem with you. We are here when you get stuck.