I know that there are a bunch of people on this forum interested in genealogy and the like. Many of you have referenced connections to distant relatives. My father...somewhere in his mess...has a bunch of research that goes back to the mid 1800s for my family...but I don't know that he has much dating back to my European connections.

I'm looking for advice from anybody that has done research into their family names and family trees. Have you used sites such as ancestry.com? How does one go about compiling a complete and lengthy family history?