I have been researching my family tree for a number of years now and I love filling in all the people, not just my direct ancestors. I was very lucky to be able to study for a Diploma of Family History online which has really helped. It is run by the University of Tasmania
I began by using Family Search which is free, completely free of advertising and very easy to use. You do have to register to view/use the site but I have used it for a long time and never had any problems. It is run by the Latter Day Saints but you would never know that because they don’t use it to promote their church or their beliefs.
The reason I like this site is that I can transcribe an entire supporting record and attach it to everyone mentioned in it. The entries of living people are completely invisible to anyone other than the person who entered them. This is a dual-edged sword because on the one hand, it protects the privacy of those people but on the other hand, once they are recorded as deceased they begin to show up as duplicate records. Those duplications can be extremely complicated to merge together. Also, because it is so easy to use, people just add records willy-nilly without any references or just because they find a record that has the same name as someone they are looking at. Consequently, there are many dubious records that get attached when you add a person who is already in the system. It can be a headache.
I have found the same to be true of ancestry.com where there are a number of trees that include different parts of my history but with various inaccuracies and missing information. I use these trees (FamilySearch and Ancestry) as clues to assist my research and as such they are helpful. Ancestry is very expensive but it contains many scanned and transcribed records not available elsewhere. I access these records through my local library which is subscribed to another portal called Ancestry Library, not all of the records are available through this portal but very few are excluded and I have yet to be stumped by this exception.
Much later I found WikiTree. This site is much less user-friendly. You can get by without it but it helps if you have a rudimentary understanding of HTML. The plus side of which is that the information there is much more reliable, it does not allow you to add people without a reference. It also actively discourages duplicate trees, the object of the site is to create one global tree. The records of living people are shown in square brackets as private brother/sister/etc with perhaps a birthdate but no name and while they can’t be viewed or accessed there is a link to contact the profile manager. The profile manager can easily grant access to another person by using an email link in the profile and/or can easily hand the management of the profile to a closer relative.
I’ve been slowly copying my tree from FamilySearch to WikiTree but only those parts about which I am absolutely certain. The process of transferring helps me to double-check the accuracy of any information I am entering.
Two other sites I am familiar with are Find My Past and My Heritage. Find My Past is a subscription service, it is available as a library version at my local library. It is expensive but it is possible instead to purchase credits as a “pay as you go” type option unfortunately, the credits only last for 90 days so it requires careful planning if you want to keep costs to a minimum. Many, but not all of these records are also available on Family Search and Ancestry. I accidentally purchased a year’s subscription to My Heritage because I forgot to cancel it before the end of a free trial. It was a complete waste of money and time because most of the search results comprised links to Family Search and Wiki Tree resulting in it returning my own records as results.
My ancestors are predominantly Scottish so my favourite site, which is also a primary source is Scotlands People. It is the home of the National Records of Scotland. Family history documents have been scanned and can be downloaded online for a very reasonable cost. It is a pay-as-you-go system like Find My Past.
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