Just click the “Customize your homepage” button at the upper-right to customize your homepage.  This will let you move or remove sections you already have on the page, as well as add some new optional tools to your homepage.

You can still move sections up and down on the page by clicking the arrows or by dragging them to the desired location.  Click the “trash can” icon on each section to remove it from the page.  To add a new section, select one from the list at the top of the page and click the “Add to your homepage” button.  All of your changes are saved automatically, so when you are done customizing you can simply click “Exit.”

As part of this update, we have also introduced a few new optional items that you can add to your page. We will continue to add new ones in the future, so watch for the yellow announcement banner beneath the header to know when they are available.  The new items include:

Record Collections

Navigate quickly to key record collections including individual U.S. Census years, plus birth, marriage and death titles and the Ancestry.com Card Catalog. You can also quickly find special collections focused on U.S. Military records, African American family history and Jewish family history.

Message Board Favorites

Keep track of all your favorite Message Boards with this one handy tool.  View a complete list of your favorites and the most recent threads posted to each board.

Ancestry.com Blog

Stay up to date with informational posts from the people behind the scenes at Ancestry.com.

24/7 Family History Circle Blog

Enjoy an educational blog perfect for anyone who loves family history. View recent articles, family history columns, research stories, photos and how-to articles.

Quicker access to the Search box
 
Based on the feedback we received since my last post, we changed how we were planning to give you quicker access to the search box.  Several members suggested that that they would like to choose where each section appears on their home page- including the ability to move the search box up.  We agree that is a great idea and today we launched an improvement that allows you to rearrange the sections of the home page

To rearrange your page, look for the green “Customize this page” button in the bottom-right of the homepage:

Once you click the button, you can move the sections up and down within their columns by using the arrow or by dragging them into position. When you are finished, click “Save changes”. 

Making it easier to add the links you really care about

We launched another improvement today that you may have already noticed- the new “Add to Quick Links” link located in the header of many Ancestry.com pages.  This handy tool makes it quick and easy to add a Quick Link to a page on the Ancestry site. 

To use this tool, navigate to one of your favorite pages, and click the “Add to Quick Links” link located in the header:

and

You will be asked to name the link (optional) and save it.  The link will be automatically added to the Quick Links section of your homepage.

Additional links to commonly used content

As promised, we recently added some additional links to the Quick Links section to the Ancestry Card Catalog and the US Military Collection.  These links were added for everyone, so if you do not want them in your Quick links, you can remove them by putting your mouse over the link and clicking the trash can icon.

New Search Interface

In my previous post, I let you know that we identified a bug that switched some users into the new Search experience when they clicked on one of the Quick Links on the home page. This bug was fixed a couple of weeks ago. 

If you find that you are still in the new Search experience, and you do not wish to be, click on the Search tab, and click the link near the upper-right of the page called “Switch back to the old search experience”.  We are sorry for any confusion or inconvenience this may have caused you.

We really appreciate your feedback and patience as we made these improvements and as we continue to improve the homepage.

New Search interface

Thanks to your feedback we identified a bug that is making it so that if you click on one of the content Quick Links on the homepage like “Birth, Marriage & Death Records” or “U.S. Census Records” you will get switched to our new Search experience if you weren’t already using it. This was not our intention. We hope to be able to fix those links within the next week or so to prevent this from happening.

If you like the new Search experience, you don’t need to do anything. If you have gotten switched to the new Search experience and prefer the old Search experience, just click on the Search tab and then click on the link near the top of the page called “Switch back to old search experience.” We’re sorry for any inconvenience this caused any of you.

Some additional links to commonly used content

Since everyone has different content that they’re interested in, we won’t be able to automatically put all of the links you want into the new Quick Links section. Based on feedback, though, there are a couple links that we think will help most members. First, we’ll be adding a link in the Quick Links section to go to the Ancestry Card Catalog where you can quickly find and search any database you are interested in. Second, we’ll be adding a link to the US Military Collection, as that is the most-used record collection that is not already listed in the Quick Links section.

We expect to add these new links in the next week or so. They will be added for everyone, so if you don’t want them in your Quick Links you can easily remove them by putting your mouse over the link and then clicking the trash can icon.

Making it easier to add the links you really care about

We know that for many of you the links that are initially included in the Quick Links do not cover everything that you want quick access to. Right now you can add a link to any page you want by clicking on the “Add a link” button and then pasting in the URL, but we recognize that is a bit of work. To make this easier we are going to be adding a link in the masthead at the top of each page that will let you add any page you are on to the Quick Links section of your homepage. So you will just need to go to one of your favorite pages once, and then you can add it to your Quick Links with one click. We hope to be able to add this feature within the next 2 weeks or so.

Quicker access to the Search box

While a large number of our members have online trees on Ancestry.com (over 5 million currently) and want quick access to their trees, some members who do not have an online tree on Ancestry.com have expressed the concern that the Trees box at the top of the homepage is making it harder to get to get to the Search box below it. We are working on a design that would allow these members to switch to a smaller version of the Tree box that takes less space. This should move the Search box up on the page and make it easier to access. We hope to be able to add this within the next 2 weeks or so.

Thanks for your patience as we work to make these improvements for you. We’re very glad that some of you are finding value in the new page already. We really hope that the updated homepage can help you take advantage of the Ancestry.com site and further your family history research.

By combining the two pages into a single new home page, we’ve reduced the number of clicks it takes you go get to the features you use most.  You may have already noticed that since we combined the two pages, there is no longer a separate “My Ancestry” tab, or link in the header. All of the tools and features from the My Ancestry page can now be found on the new home page.

Through surveys and analysis of site activity, we found that Ancestry members want easy access to search and their trees (particularly the pedigree view) and they want information on the newest records and features being added to the site.   Based on this information, we designed a page that puts your trees and search in prominent, easy-to-access positions.

The new “What’s Happening at Ancestry” section informs you of new site features and records. In fact, the “New records on Ancestry.com” list is dynamically updated every time we add new records to the site.

We also found that smaller groups of people have certain areas of the site, like message boards or specific record collections, which they use frequently.  We created the new “My Quick Links” tool to help you quickly navigate to pages of Ancestry, or the rest of the internet, you use most - simply by adding the URL and link name.

Other tools and features we added to the new home page include your Shoebox, Recent Activity, and a new To-Do list to help you keep your research organized. Links to “People I’m Looking For” and Online Family Tree can also be found on the new home page for our long-time members who still have them.

We are really excited about this new home page and we hope it will help you more quickly navigate to the features on the site you use most.  I welcome any feedback on the new page either via the comments here, or please email me directly at mphilips at tgn.com.