Introducing a New Ancestry.com Home Page
Today we launched a brand-new home page for logged-in members on Ancestry.com. This new page combines the best of the old home page with all of the personalized features and tools that were once a click farther away on the My Ancestry page.
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.
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Family Tree Maker 2009 Beta Test
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If you are interested in being a volunteer beta tester please fill out the screening questions at the following URL:
http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/survey.zgi?p=WEB227Z3B5DELF
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Welcome to the Ancestry Blog!
Here you will find informational, and sometimes fun, posts from the folks behind the scenes here at Ancestry. We hope you’ll notice just how passionate we are about family history and about the products we're building to help connect families over distance and time.
