Publish your one-name study on WordPress: surname variants to Guild definitions, a searchable occurrence index, distribution maps, and your data on your own site.
Keep your one-name study on your own WordPress site - self-hosted, with your data in your own database rather than locked inside a third-party genealogy platform.** AP One-Name Studies is built for registered one-name studies: manage surname variants and deviants to Guild of One-Name Studies definitions, index every occurrence of the name wherever it is found, map its distribution across the historic counties of Britain and Ireland, and publish it all as searchable pages on your own site - without needing TNG or any external service.
Your data lives in your own WordPress database and can always be exported in full as CSV. No lock-in, ever - a study should outlive its author, and it only can if the data is truly yours.
Built by AncestorPress – tools for family history, built to last.
Who It Is For
AP One-Name Studies is designed for:
- Registered one-namers who want their study published on their own site, in their own hands, rather than on a shared platform
- Guild of One-Name Studies members who follow the variant and deviant conventions and need them respected exactly
- Family history societies presenting a surname study in a structured, public, professional format
- Anyone tracking a surname across records who has outgrown a spreadsheet and wants a proper occurrence index, distribution maps and public pages
What Makes It Different
Most genealogy plugins publish a family tree. A one-name study is a different shape of work: it collects every occurrence of a surname wherever it appears - not one lineage but the whole spread of a name - and asks where and when it occurs. AP One-Name Studies is built for that shape. It keeps your spellings to Guild definitions, indexes occurrences without ever rewriting your originals, and maps distribution by the historic counties records were actually kept in.
Your data stays on your server, stored in your own WordPress database - not uploaded to an external genealogy platform or locked behind someone else's service. And because it shares a data core with AP Family Trees, the families you reconstitute from a study can be published through the tree plugin too.
Free
Functional but Basic$0
- A dedicated home for your study
- Variants and deviants to Guild definitions
- Occurrence entry built for record-taking
- CSV import with column matching
- Public study pages in one click
- Distribution analysis
- Privacy that defaults closed
- Complete CSV export
- Display styles
Pro
Extra Features$34.99/Annual
- Everything in Free Plus:
- The worldwide distribution map
- GEDCOM export
- Save your own import templates
- Coming to Pro: distribution over time (census/GRO period presets), Guild register-ready study reports, the reconstitution workbench, record-collection backing
Maps and Data
The county and country maps use openly licensed boundary data. UK county boundaries come from the Historic County Borders Project; Irish county and world country boundaries are derived from Natural Earth (public domain). These are the historic geographies GRO-era records were kept in, keyed by Chapman code - not modern administrative boundaries.
Third-party libraries
This plugin bundles the following open-source libraries. All are GPL-compatible.
* php-gedcom by Kristopher Wilson - MIT licence. Used to write GEDCOM files for the Pro export.
* Freemius WordPress SDK by Freemius - MIT licence. Used for licence management on the Pro plan.
Privacy and data
This plugin does not collect or transmit any personal data from your site or your visitors to us. All study data is stored exclusively in your own WordPress database. The optional public contact form emails enquiries to the study contact address you set, and nowhere else.
If you activate a paid Pro licence, the Freemius SDK is used to validate and manage that licence. Freemius may collect basic site and usage data as part of licence activation. This is subject to the Freemius Privacy Policy. No licence activation is required to use the free plan.