You will find that it is quicker and easier for you to get where you want to go on the site. We also made changes to ensure that the navigation stays consistent throught the entire site (although please bear with us as there may be a day or so delay in getting all pages up-to-date).

Use the new drop-down menu links to jump to frequently-accessed areas of the site with one click.  For instance, you can jump from a record page to one of your trees with one click.  To use the drop-down menus, simply hover your mouse over the tab and it will open.

You can now also access your To-Do list and Quick Links on every page. Click the “Quick Links” link in the upper-right and you will have instant access to the links you use most. You can add new links to all of your favorite research resources- on or off Ancestry by using the “Add a Quick Link” button when the list is open, or by clicking the “Add to Quick Links” link in the upper-right.  You can access and add To-Do’s the same way, just look for the “Add a To-Do” button.

Note: As part of the new navigation changes some tabs have been renamed. The “Community” tab is now called “Collaborate” but it still the home of the Message Boards, Ancestry World Archives project, Public Profiles and the other great community products. 

“Print and Share” is now called “Publish” and it is the home of MyCanvas and all of the great family tree books, posters and other projects. “Store” is now called “Shop” and you can still find books and our other great products there.

Washington, D.C.
National Archives Genealogy Fair
April 22-23, 2009
Learn more

St. Louis, Missouri
St. Louis Genealogical Society’s Annual Conference
May 2, 2009
Learn more

Raleigh, North Carolina
National Genealogical Society Family History Conference
May 13-16, 2009
Learn more

Burbank, California
Southern California Genealogy Jamboree
June 26-28, 2009
Learn more

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
International Conference on Jewish Genealogy
August 2-7, 2009
Learn more

Salt Lake City, Utah
Salt Lake Family History Expo
August 28-29, 2009
Learn more

Little Rock, Arkansas
Federation of Genealogical Societies Annual Conference
September 2-5, 2009
Learn more

Las Vegas, Nevada
AARP presents Vegas@50+
October 22-24, 2009
Learn more

Mesa, Arizona
Mesa Family History Expo
January 22-23, 2010
Learn more

1. Compression:  Across the site we’ve compressed the code that has to be downloaded with each page.  Our initial tests show that this has reduced “page weights” (or number of bytes you download when you hit a page) by almost 50%.  The improvement is more or less on a given page but it appears to be roughly 50% in aggregate across the site.  We have begun this process with our javascript and stylesheet files.  We are continuing on to our images and HTML files.

2. Photo Serving:  We’ve moved the serving of member-contributed photos to a set of beefier, dedicated servers to ensure this system is getting sufficient resources.  This system comes into play anytime we display member photos like in the pedigree view or on person pages.

3. Reducing Duplicate Calls:  On a few pages, we have reduced the number of times where key software libraries (code used to construct the site) are downloaded more than once.  Fewer requests to download libraries means faster page load times.  We are working our way through more pages like this on the site.

I’ll repeat — we are by no means done.  The Site Performance team is working on a number of further optimizations.  To summarize it, we are working on other ways to reduce the size of the data that is being transferred between us and you and improving our server response time.

We’ll report back as we make further improvements.  Have a good weekend.

regards

Eric Shoup

If you look at this snippet from a search for my great uncle Ashby:

You’ll notice the green check next to records you’ve already saved to that person, which I truly love. If you have more than one tree, make sure the person you are searching for is in the your active tree, otherwise you won’t see the green check.

The person card is set up to follow you down the search results so that you can compare what you have in your tree to the search results. A few people love it, and a few seem to hate it’s floating capability. Weigh in with your thoughts so we can pick a good solution.