Customize Your Ancestry Homepage

Ancestry____logo.bmpA few weeks ago Ancestry rolled out a new homepage and with the help of customer feedback, they’ve made some improvements. You can now move the various boxes on the home page around within the columns so that the features you use the most are at the top of the page. They also made it easier to add your own Quick Links. You can learn more about these and other improvements that they made on the Ancestry blog.

17 thoughts on “Customize Your Ancestry Homepage

  1. The new homepage is an unwanted feature inasmuch as it takes forever to load. Frankly I am considering deleting any reference to family trees so the page will load more quickly. I don’t know why this change was made, nor do I think it is user friendly. Perhaps it is time to drop the subscription. Ancestry seems determined to do away with the goodwill it has established over the past few years. I don’t think it is worth my dollar any longer. And, if I was accessing Ancestry via a dial=up I would be bitterly disappointed.

  2. Time after time I’ve tried to access newspapers, books, and other documents on Ancestry, but I get an error message. Censuses, etc., come in perfectly. Is it me or is it Ancestry?

  3. ditto to Charles Saunders comments, and I have dial up, it is real work and time consuming to check anything-anymore

  4. I LOVE Ancestry.com!!! I think the new home page is a good improvement.

  5. I still prefer the old home and search pages. All the sections of the new home page takes a long time to load. Must we be subjected to the advertising on home and search pages, which also takes a long time to load? Customizing the page helps as I moved the unwanted and unrelated “My Family Tree” to the bottom of the page, mostly out of sight. Now if I could only delete it entirely, as it is not at all my tree but one I researched briefly.
    Ruth

  6. A comment to follow up Ruth’s comment: if the Ancestry tree is not yours, and you are not using it any more, why not open its homepage [called OVERVIEW], and under manage my tree DELETE it …

  7. There are many times I am researching outside of my family trees and this new homepage just slows me down. The earlier version was more useful for my research and I often have to track back to get to that setup. I know what is in my tree so I don’t need to see it everytime I log on. The new page has not helped in any of my research.
    P. Caverly

  8. First, I agree that the new homepage takes too long to load. My computer’s fan sounds like a jet engine trying to keep its processor cool in the download with my family tree and all of the animated ads. Second, in the past week I am also seeing more error pages than ever before. Third, will there be Family Tree Maker software available for a Mac? Fourth, to be positive, I am pleased with all of the new resources, blogs, and newsletters.

  9. I have to agree that I prefer the old home and search pages. I don’t want to see the family tree there all the time when I open Ancestry. I am now constantly having problems downloading census forms etc & then when I try to download them again after the page closes down,the original pops up to be opened as well with a ‘do you still wish to open last session’ message. Sorry, but I prefer the old homepage.

  10. I, too, prefer the old home page. I could get where I wanted to be with fewer clicks.

  11. I also still prefer the old home and search pages. The new one is too time-consuming to reach anything you’re looking for.

  12. Yes, I thought I would like the new search page better, but I don’t and thought it was a matter of getting used to it. I keep finding myself going back to the old search option. It’s easier to read.

  13. I had already stated how I felt about the new page but last nite was it. I was ready to concede my defeat when I saw a
    small notation about using the old way to look up census
    records. i clicked and lo and behold there was the way I
    had used in the past. When i put a name into the new way to
    do census records everything came back as not able to find it.
    Now I know we are in the census since I had seen it before so
    what goes? Forget the upgrade. It must be for someone else
    because I don’t plan to renew when my subscription runs out
    unless something is done.

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