Since this is my first post to the Ancestry blog, let me start out by introducing myself.  My name is David Graham and I’m the product manager responsible for the community areas of the website, which include the different tools you use to connect with each other and to help each other on Ancestry.com.
My first [...]

Over the past year, we’ve taken a close look at the Ancestry search process and asked our customers what issues they face when trying to find content on our site. Based on this feedback, we’ve been working on some new search features that we believe will make searching for records [...]

You may have noticed that the “New content has been added to your family tree” emails haven’t been coming to your inbox lately. These are on hold while we’re ramping up new capacity for the trees service. The pause happens because we’re replicating the live data to an additional service system so we [...]

On occasion I come across enhancement requests or questions about features that are currently in Family Tree Maker 2008. Here is a short list of some of those items.
Support for all media files
Users can link to any type of media by selecting “All Files” under the “Files of type” drop-down. The default is set to [...]

I have great news for all the people who have been asking, “When I edit information in my online tree, why aren’t the changes reflected in my AncestryPress book?” This week we launched an update feature that lets you synchronize the data in your book with the data in your Ancestry online tree.
Please note that [...]

Starting at about 1:00 PM today (Mountain Standard Time) our Tree Service will be down—we estimate this will last about 30 minutes.
We’re doing this because we are adding increased capacity to the portion of our system that enables Ancestry Hints. We also expect this project to improve the speed of the overall trees service. [...]

For up-to-date information on family history books, please read my blog post from February 24, 2009. The post below, which was published on February 12, 2008, contains some obsolete information.
Several people have asked whether it’s possible to include more than four generations in an AncestryPress book. The answer is yes, you can include as [...]

I’ve received some additional information about the next patch and wanted to inform the Family Tree Maker community about the current status of this update. The internal development and QA teams have been testing the latest update extensively. We are just a few days away from releasing it to our Alpha test group for their [...]

In honor of Black History Month, we’ve expanded our collection of African-American family history records with two new collections: Freedman’s Marriage Records and Southern Claims Commission Records.
Freedman’s Marriage Records
From 1865 to 1868, plantation marriages of thousands of former slaves from 17 Southern states were legalized. Ancestry.com has digitized and made available online a collection of [...]