Put a life in order: school, first jobs, houses, children, the moments between. Photographs date themselves, and the whole thing reads as a timeline or a story.
Most of a life is already written down somewhere — in photographs, in dates on the back of things, in what everybody remembers slightly differently. Putting it in order is the part nobody gets around to.
Drop in a folder of photographs and the dates come off the files: they cluster into events by day and place, and you name them. What you type is the part the photographs cannot say.
Each moment carries a date or a range, a place, a description, the people in it, tags, and as many images as it needs. A childhood address is a range. A birthday is a point. Both belong on the same line.
The River style is the one for a life: a meandering line with cards alternating either side, a shape you read rather than scan. Cards shows a decade at a glance. The Map shows everywhere you lived, in order.
There is a worked example on the site — six invented moments laid out the way the software lays them out — if you want to see the finished shape before building one.
Private by default: nothing is public until you say so, and there is no listing to opt out of. Advanced adds a read-only link for the people who should read it, and an embed if it belongs on a site.
River: The reading shape — a line with the moments alternating either side.
Cards: A decade at a glance while you are still filling the gaps.
Map: Every address and arrival, in order, on one route.