I would never have even thought of attempting something like this site without a computer and excellent source material. For a long time the software I used was Family Origins (FOW) on the Windows side, then edited for the Web on my Macintosh; that involved too many edits, alas, and updates were a major pain, so I switched to MacFamilyTree.
My source material is the Horlacher book (aka "the Red Book," but more formally Family of Hans Michael and Maria Veronica Horlacher) by Levi Jackson Horlacher and Vaneta Thomas Horlacher; and The Ryan Book by Frances Ryan Lamphere. These authors kept track of all the information (of which this site currently has only a fraction) using index cards and a dedication which amazes me. Their work made my job easy.
My cousin Robert Patrick (Pat) Ryan showed me a book on the Gillette family by Bertha Bortle Beal Aldridge, published in 1955 (Gillettes are ancestors through my Ryan side). I took photos of bunches of pages, but haven’t had a chance to get more than a few of them in here. Some day.
On my wife's side, I've been lucky to have several excellent sources of family oral history, including my father-in-law, the Rev. Robert Tanguy, and my sister-in-law's parents, Paul & Kay Reinhart. Plus a Paxton family history and other material.
I keep getting information from distant ancestors who stumble across this site, as well as relatives and in-laws, not to mention that I still have data from the Ryan and Horlacher books to enter. (And I’m happy to get more, so long as you understand how I use it.) So who knows how big all this will get eventually.