Family Tree Circles Blog

Recent spam

2012-02-05T13:28:00+01:00

I'm quite sorry about the recent spam posts.

Fortunately, the more we get, the more I can identify patterns and eliminate them before they appear.

I've been working hard for the past several days to eliminate the latest class of spammers, and I think I've made some good progress.

Thank you for your patience.

Announcing: New User Profiles on FamilyTreeCircles

2011-11-23T18:09:56+01:00

FamilyTreeCircles.com has been around for over 7 years now, and has been in a constant state of development.

I'll be the first to admit that most poorly crafted area of FamilyTreeCircles has been the user profile pages. And as I've been making improvements to the platform, I'd also say that it's been the most neglected.

This week I've taken steps to resolve that with an entirely newly designed user profile.

Your Own Home Page

Your user profile on FamilyTreeCircles is now your genealogy homepage. Your own journals and posts are featured prominently in chronological order, newest first. Until now, your own journals were relegated to a list, and reading them was an exercise in clicking around a lot.

Now your homepage is a very easy-to-read list of all your journals. As you post journals, your latest ones appear at the top.

This makes it very easy for other FamilyTreeCircles members, and even people searching the Internet for the information that you write about, to find and read your journals.

That means more people see your journals, which means that your information and your own queries are seen by more people, resulting in a higher chance that you'll connect with distant cousins and researchers looking for the same ancestors.

Here's what the new profile page looks like:

Hey, This Sounds and Looks Like a Blog

Essentially, your FamilyTreeCircles profile page is a blog. Blog comes from the words Web Log. A blog is quite simply a web page containing a log of your writing. Web log...weblog...'blog.

The writing activity that you do posting Journals on FamilyTreeCircles is no different than that of "bloggers" that we hear so much about.

Now in addition to how your journals were seen before in the activity lists, your information is organized like a blog and you get all the benefits of blogging:

Research: By getting your and your genealogy research out there, people who are researching the same ancestors will find you. You may even break down some brick walls just by posting them for others to find and help you out.
Sharing: Posting your genealogy information helps others, and many times it comes back
Connecting: There are countless connections that people make with distant and lost relatives through publishing a blog.
Community: The genealogy blogging community is a friendly, helpful group of genealogists, professionals and hobbyists alike. By starting a blog of your own
Fun: Writing can be a fun, creative way to express yourself. Some people even think it's therapeutic.

The good news is that just by signing up for FamilyTreeCircles, you now have a blog.

How cool does that make you?

View your new profile here. Or click on the "Your Home" link in the header.

Examples?

Here are a few great FamilyTreeCircles profiles to take a look at for inspiration:

Getting Help on Using FamilyTreeCircles

2011-11-23T12:48:00+01:00

Check out the FAQ page.
Use the contact us form. This is best for issues like password problems, since you cannot use some of the other options without logging in.
Send me a private message.
Drop into the FamilyTreeCircles campfire chat. You can not only chat with me, but with other FamilyTreeCircles members, if they're in there.
If you have a question that you think someone other than the owner of FamilyTreeCircles can answer, comment on this post. That increases the chances of getting a quick answer AND allows other to benefit from your question.

Getting ready for some pretty major changes. And a chance at a Sneak Peek...

2011-11-22T22:29:09+01:00

I've been hard at work on some pretty significant changes here on FamilyTreeCircles, big enough that I want to roll this out a little more carefully than I usually do.

For now, the only noticeable change is the header.

If yours doesn't look like that with the black bar at the top, try holding down the shift key while hitting the reload (or refresh) button on your browser. Or just wait and it'll update eventually.

So what's changing?

I've completely redesigned the user profile page. My goal is to make your user profile the hub of your activity, a much nicer home for you here on FamilyTreeCircles. The default view will be a full view of all your journals, formatted much like a blog. That way, anyone who follows your every post can easily see what you've been writing. If you organize your posts into categories, that will be much more visible. And your Assist! locations and surnames will be featured prominently as well.

In fact, it's going to be a lot like having your own blog, which is where I am headed with this.

And speaking of following, I'll be reintroducing he concept of "follow"ing. By following someone, you will be able to keep track of their new stuff.

When's it coming?

I'm still testing it out, but if you would like a sneak peek, just comment here on this post and I'll turn it on for you.

I'll probably grow impatient and make it available in the next few days, but I'd love to get some feedback first.

Again, just comment below if you'd like to try it out and give me some feedback.

Thanks!

Announcing FamilyTreeCircles Locations

2011-11-17T01:31:17+01:00

Unless you are brand new to FamilyTreeCircles, you should recall that a few weeks ago we launched the phase 1 of the new FamilyTreeCircles Assist! program.

Phase 1 was geared toward getting members to volunteer to assist other researchers in their physical location, helping with local activities like cemetery visits or local document requests. Without volunteers, the program would be useless, of course!

The response far exceeded my expectations and as of today, we've got hundreds of locations volunteered for. And that number is growing every day.

Of course, we need several thousand to get good coverage, but I'm encouraged by the response. I'm counting on members like you to adopt a location.

And today, I'm pleased to announce we've launched major new functionality that brings along with it the other half of the Assist! program, requesting assistance.

FamilyTreeCircles Locations

The new feature is called FamilyTreeCircles Locations, which is a massive database of just about every location in the world. In this section of the website, you can drill through continents, countries, and states down to counties, cities, and towns -- even cemeteries!

At any location, you can either volunteer to assist with that location or you can request assistance. In each location, with help from volunteers, we will also build a rich resource and repository of genealogy information.

See it here: FamilyTreeCircles Locations

As a volunteer, you may choose to assist someone with a local lookup or photography, or help in editing the information on the page for that location. Further, as we build on this functionality, it will allow you to better filter the content on FamilyTreeCircles related to your interests.

As a requester, you can post a query that's assigned to a specific location. This query is like any other FamilyTreeCircles query, except it is also listed in the location where volunteers for that location will be sure to see it, increasing the chances that you'll find someone to help.

This is a big day for FamilyTreeCircles as it greatly expands on our goal of connecting genealogy researchers who can help each other in their family tree search.

I hope you'll be able to particpate as both a volunteer and a requestor.

See it here: FamilyTreeCircles Locations

As always, if you have any suggestions or questions, please don't hesitate to ask in the comments below.

Update

I'm getting some great feedback from people who are digging into their own countries that there are some strange regions and cities, or some less than great naming conventions. I knew this going in and will be developing methods to fix these going forward on a case by case basis. Please understand that there are more than 7.9 million locations in the database and this one guy can't possibly go through even a small fraction of them. As you do find problems with the data, please do let me know. That's the first step in identifying the right process to get these things fixed.

Announcing the Assist! Program

2011-11-07T16:21:35+01:00

We're finally recovering from the debilitating snowstorm here in the Northeast United States. We had many massive limbs and even a few trees drop in our garden and on our cars. And we were counted as lucky because we only lost power for several hours. There are some neighbors who are still without power 5 days later. We helped out however we could, providing helping hands to clear debris and bring buckets of water.

This brings to mind the outpouring of responses that I received from the survey I emailed about a last week about whether I should create a volunteer local genealogy lookup service.

Frankly, I'm overwhelmed by the response. As of right now, there have been ~~898~~ 910 replies, most of which are filled with thoughtful comments and feedback. I've been reading each and every one of them. I wish I could reply to them all.

Here are just a few of the many hundreds of responses I got in the survey:

"It is so nice when people that live in an area are willing to help out. Most of us cannot travel to these locations to do the research ourselves and it is so important to those of us that are trying to build our family trees. It is so aggravating when so many websites claim to be 'free' then ask for a credit card number to give you the needed information. Thank you for what you are doing with this website. I've only just discovered it recently."

"I think it is a very good idea and we should all work together to uncover these hidden or missing info."

"I would love to participate in a service like this. I have never volunteered, but I am great at photographing gravestones or going to a place of records to find info for someone."

What about privacy?

By far, the biggest concern expressed was privacy and interacting with strangers. I'm happy to say that on FamilyTreeCircles we've had that problem pretty well handled for many years now thanks to a messaging system that has now had more than 22,000 private messages sent through it without exposing email addresses or other personal information.

Announcing the Assist! Program

So today I'm pleased to introduce the formation of the FamilyTreeCircles Assist! Program, a free service that will connect volunteers who would like to help out with local assistance at town halls and cemeteries, and to provide access to the vast amounts (or even small bits) of knowledge that they have collected.

There are thousands of individuals who are willing and able to perform lookups and document requests at local town halls or take pictures at local cemeteries on behalf of those without the means to travel to those locations.

Further, we have all obtained at least a small bit of knowledge that very few others have, like local knowledge of libraries, town halls, and other resources, information about the surnames that we're researching, and other rare books and information.

Therefore, there is not only a need for people to get help locally, but there exists a huge need for people to simply help out online in very specific areas of expertise.

We just need a way to make ourselves available to those who are in need of that knowledge.

By identifying yourself as someone who can help out in a specific location, or as someone who is knowlegable in certain surnames or areas of interest, you can help provide information to people seeking help in those areas.

And even if you cannot provide local lookups or you don't get specific requests from people, you can share your knowledge by helping us edit our location and surname information pages.

This Won't Be Easy. I Need Your Help...

This whole project hinges on our ability to get good coverage with a large number of volunteers. The first step is building up this strong network of people who are willing to make their knowledge and assistance available to others.

So I'm asking you to go to our Assist! page and identify the locations, surnames, and other areas in which you may help out.

To do so, go here: Assist! program registration

We'll follow up with how people will be able to get in touch for assistance.

Thank you for your participation. If you have any questions, please feel free to post comments.

Best,
Scott

p.s. This is not a major commitment on your part. We will ensure that people do not get overwhelmed with requests. How much assistance you give and effort you expend will always be entirely up to you.

Again, simply register your areas of knowlege here: Assist!

New Journal Type: Query

2011-09-06T11:06:12+01:00

FamilyTreeCircles is growing and in an effort to better organize the large volume of journals that get posted here, I've added a new Journal type: Query.

Queries are simply a request for information on a particular ancestor or family. These get posted all the time in both the existing regular journals and questions, so I thought it would be worthwhile to try to get them separated out into their own types.

You'll notice them as the highly recognizable magenta-colored posts.

I've also made the Journal Type field available in the journal edit page, so you can change the types of your own journals if you'd like.

I'll be actively changing journal types as people get used to the new classifications.

This is another small step toward making it easier to scan through the growing list of journals at FamilyTreeCircles. Questions and the new Query types are posts that are specifically looking for help, and hopefully this will ensure that they get seen and hopefully get answered.

Policy Reminder: Don't Post Other People's Content Publicly

2011-09-03T11:58:55+01:00

Please let me remind you that it is wrong to post other people's content on FamilyTreeCircles.

We state this simply in the terms of use

8. You will not post any copyrighted material on this website.

But maybe this isn't clear enough, so let me explain a bit further.

If someone has a website or a webpage posted somewhere on the Internet, the information they post there (unless they copied it from somewhere else) is theirs. You are not allowed to copy it and post it elsewhere without their permission.

I am not an intellectual property or trademark attorney, so I won't get into the legalities of this, but as the owner of this site, I will remove content that I believe has copied someone else's property. This can and will be just a judgement call by me.

Genealogy data gets copied around all the time, so I'm not talking specifically about names, dates, etc. I am talking about written prose, and larger collections of information that someone else has created.

As a general rule, if you find yourself copying and pasting large amounts of information from another website to post it on FamilyTreeCircles, and you don't have the permission from the original author, it is probably wrong. Please don't.

If you have any questions about specific cases, please just ask.

thank you.

Where Do FamilyTreeCircles Visitors Come From?

2011-09-02T03:32:37+01:00

A lot of people ask me questions like...

"I'm from the UK, is FamilyTreeCircles a U.S. site?"
"I see a lot of talk from people in Australia. Do any Americans use FamilyTreeCircles?"

And the list goes on and on...

Here's a breakdown of the top visitors by country in the 2011 calendar year, and a graph of the top several.

The United States 45.2%
Australia 16.5%
The United Kingdom 13%
New Zealand 11.2%
Canada 6.2%
Ireland 1.4%
South Africa 1.1%
India 0.6%
Germany 0.4%
The Philippines 0.4%
France 0.3%
The Netherlands 0.3%
Pakistan 0.2%
Spain 0.1%
Italy 0.1%
Switzerland 0.1%
Malaysia 0.1%
Sweden 0.1%
Brazil 0.1%
Hong Kong 0.1%
Russian Federation 0.1%
Poland 0.1%
Singapore 0.1%
Belgium 0.1%
Denmark 0.1%
Norway 0.1%
Mexico 0.1%
Israel 0.1%
Japan 0.1%
Czech Republic 0.1%
Thailand 0.1%
The United Arab Emirates 0.1%
Indonesia 0.1%
Turkey 0.1%
China 0.1%
Jamaica 0.1%

As you can pretty clearly see, it a pretty diverse group of English-speaking nations represented here, with strong representation from Australia/New Zealand as well as the UK.

Spam update

2011-09-01T13:00:18+01:00

This is a quick update to the spam situation that I'm wrestling with here on FamilyTreeCircles.

As mentioned a few days ago in this post, Spam Spam Spam Spam, I put in some checks to prevent blatant spam from getting posted to FamilyTreeCircles.

In just 4 days, 535 messages that appear to be spam were put into the manual review queue.

I've reviewed all of them (fun, fun) and only one well-meaning, legitimate user was negatively impacted. His posts have been approved. The rest deleted (that part really was fun).

I have to say that I'm pretty pleased with the results so far. I will be refining the algorithms to reduce the false positives going forward.

Here's to a spam-free FamilyTreeCircles.

FamilyTreeCircles.com as Cousin Bait

2011-08-31T12:23:47+01:00

Note: This was originally posted on the FamilyTreeCircles blog over a year ago. As I'm pulling that content into the new FTC blog, I've been post-dating them. But this one I think is worth reading again, so I'm setting the dates to today.

Catching up on my blog-reading, I came across Randy Seaver's post about "cousin bait".

Here's his overview...

Greta Koehl used the term "Cousin Bait" last month in her post Online Trees about the purpose of posting online family tree data. At least, that was the first use of the term I've seen published - an excellent term! Her point was that putting a family tree online in a database or on a web page may help induce distant cousins, who share your ancestry, into contacting you and perhaps provide more information about the common ancestral families.

While I've also never thought of it as "cousin bait", this is exactly what I had in mind when I created FamilyTreeCircles.com.

I've always described the concept as "casting a net" for other family tree researchers to find your posts, and then connect via FamilyTreeCircles.com.

And it's true that you can set some very effective bait with some simple posts on FamilyTreeCircles.com.

I wish Randy's example produced a FamilyTreeCircles.com result, but alas. Let's take a look at some recent posts and how they rank on Google.

Starting with the most recent FamilyTreeCircles.com journal, William SPINLEY + Emily WILHAM - Auckland 1800s, posted about an hour prior to writing this blog post.

A Google search for [William Spinley] produces a number one search result on Google just an hour after it was posted...

Here's another example of a more popular search result, [white family dna], 17MM results.

The author of this entry about a White family DNA project posted it here on FamilyTreeCircles as well as on Genforum at about the same time.

Her FamilyTreeCircles post is #3 on Google.com. The Genforum post is at #6. While not all posts make it to the first page of Google's results, both are a very effective way of getting some search engine exposure of your genealogy work.

If you're not doing so already, you should consider adding FamilyTreeCircles.com to your toolbox for getting your "cousin bait" out there on the search engine result pages.

New Feature: Private Messages OUTbox

2011-08-29T14:58:32+01:00

When I built FamilyTreeCircles so many years ago, I had no idea how popular the private messages feature would be.

As of today, there have been over 18,000 messages sent through the private message system. I never would have guessed.

One of the most requested features that I get is for people to be able to see the messages that they have sent to others. Did I contact so-and-so about such-and-such? What did I say? Did she open it?

I'm happy to announce that I have added a new feature allowing you to view your outbox. In it, you can see all the messages you've ever sent.

Where is it? You'll see conspicuous links to your "Inbox" and "Outbox" in your private message area.

Here are a few notes about the new feature:

You can view them, but you cannot delete them. (They don't belong to you any more!)
You can see if the recipient has opened them
You can still see them if the recipient has deleted them.
I haven't structured the messages in any sort of "conversational" view.

Like me, you'll probably be a bit surprised at the number of messages that have gone un-opened. Honestly, I was quite disappointed at some of them. But at least now I know, and maybe I'll follow up again with some of them.

Enjoy, and please let me know if you have any questions.

Spam Spam Spam Spam

2011-08-27T17:02:47+01:00

It's like a Monty Python skit around here!

I know that there has been a lot of spam here lately, and I thank the moderators who have been playing whack-a-mole trying to keep them at bay.

I've made a few small changes that I hope will thwart the majority of it.

If you see that something you post gets caught in a spam trap, please don't take it personally and know that I'll be keeping an eye on it. I apologize in advance for any false-positives that may happen.

Announcing: Favorites - More new features on Family Tree Circles

2011-08-14T06:18:04+01:00

Hello. Your great feedback on some of the new stuff that I've been adding has inspired me to add more.

I've just added a "Favorites" feature.

Here's how it works...

You can add any post (journal, article, question) to your list of favorites by clicking the "Favorite" link. This link appears at the top of every journal. (give it a try, click the star at the top of this post):

and also in the journals lists (see callouts #2 and #3 in the image below)

You can view all your favorites under the "Journals" page. Look for the link on that page called "Favorites" (see callout #1 in the image below). You have to be logged in to use this feature.

Here's a direct link: Favorites

This is something that I've been wanting to add for a long time, to help keep track of journals that I want to get back to, or reference later, or just to mark as a "good one".

I hope you find it useful.

Admin stuff: Moving Servers

2011-08-11T14:27:03+01:00

If you were here in the past half-hour, you know that FamilyTreeCircles was in maintenance mode for about a half hour.

I moved FamilyTreeCircles from one server to another so I could decommission a very old and very expensive server.

Things should be just fine (famous last words), but if you notice any strangeness at all please do let me know either by commenting here, or via email to scott at familytreecircles.com.

Thank you and sorry for the inconvenience.

Family Tree Circles Updates

2011-08-11T00:25:35+01:00

Hello All.

I've just posted some updates to Family Tree Circles, that I hope will start us on the road to making this a better place for everybody. Here's what I've done...

The Family Tree Circles points system has been removed. I believe it has been broken for a long time, but in any case, the feedback that I've been getting is that it is encouraging a quantity over quality approach for some. I originally put that in place to recognize the top contributors, and I think it did serve a purpose for many years. It seems it is time to move on from that model. Instead, I do plan on doing some sort of user scoring/reputation system going forward. More on that in a bit.
Block/Unblock Users: A a sort of pressure relief valve, I've implemented a "block user" feature. This will hide journals for any blocked user in the places where journals are listed. You can still view individual journals or the profile of a blocked user. And you can always unblock a user from your own profile.

To block a user, click the "block this user" link in the bio section of a journal or that user's profile.

To unblock a user, you can click that link again (it'll change to "unblock"). Or you can view all the blocked users in your profile and unblock them from there:

Yes, you can block yourself. :-)

I don't love having to add this last feature, but it'll be interesting to see if it gets used.

What's next?

I know that neither of these solutions solve the difficult problem of someone flooding the active journal page with many posts, or lots of comments on their own posts. You can clean up the view for yourself with blocking, but most people won't do that and the flooding can continue. This is a difficult one to solve because some people who post great stuff may also post a several journals in a row. So, simply putting basic flood control in (ilke to limit posts to a certain number per hour) would hurt users who don't deserve it.

As I indicated above, I plan to implement an algorithmic scoring/reputation system that will take peer feedback into consideration when deciding which journals will be displayed in the journals lists.

Many of you have surely noticed back in the spring that I introduced "Thank" and "flag" links on journals. To those of you who have been using those, thanks. I'll be using that information in a future update.

In the meantime, I hope these two short-term changes help some.

New Features on Family Tree Circles

2011-03-23T20:47:38+01:00

If you’ve been reading the FamilyTreeCircles newsletter, you know that I’ve been working on some new features on FamilyTreeCircles.

If you don’t currently subscribe to the newsletter, you can sign up here.

I’m happy to say that a number of them have gone live today.

Here’s an overview of what’s new.

New Journal and Comment Views

You’ll notice a new menu item called “Journals”. That brings you to a new series of pages that give different views of journals and comments:

Newest: All of the new journals
Unanswered: Any journal that does not have a comment
Last Activity: All journals sorted by last activity (either a new journal or a comment added)
QuickSearch: search in all journals, more on that below

Latest Comments: View just the latest comments, not journals

This functionality replaces the old tried and true “Active Posts” page, which remains available if that is what you’re comfortable with.

Take a look through these menu items and see if these offer you any improvement in how to view the journals on Family Tree Circles

Quick Search

While you can use the search box in the upper right, the new Quick Search gives you a fast way to quickly sift through journals in the system to find keywords that you’re looking for. Looking for a surname? just start typing it in to the quick search box and you’ll immediately see any journals matching your search term.

Note: You can also search in just your own journals by accessing the quick search link from your own Journals page from your profile.

Journal “Thanks” and “Flag”

In order to reward people who are writing great journals, I’ve added a “Thank” button to the bottom of all journals.

If you like what someone wrote, just quickly click “Thank”. I’m quietly keeping track of these for now, but soon I’ll be exposing these numbers in the form of “popular journals” or people who get the most thanks. For now, just feel free to use it!

If you have any questions about these features, please drop a comment.

What to do about a member who is upsetting the community?

2011-03-22T13:16:58+01:00

As communities grow there will be people who disagree, and people who upset the community with their behavior, whether it is intended or not. It is inevitable.

It seems we have ourselves in this situation. I won't name names, but you probably know what I'm talking about. I had hoped this situation would have resolved itself, but it came to a bit of a head over the past several days.

While quietly addressing the situation yesterday, I disabled this member's ability to post comments. I didn't feel it was necessary to publicize that action, but maybe it would have prevented some more misunderstandings.

I learned that later last night this particular member was subsequently deactivated by one of our admins. This is a decision that I understand and respect, but the technical ramifications of that were such that I decided to reverse that -- especially since I had already prevented him from posting comments and been in discussions with him to resolve the problems. More on that in a bit.

Apparently some people noticed both the deactivation and the reversal and are troubled by the apparent lack of action, or worse, the appearance that I'm sticking up for this member.

I want to explain that.

Account deactivation is something that is for the purpose of quickly removing a spammer from FamilyTreeCircles. This action removes all posts and all comments for a particular user. Deactivating a member like this who has posted a large number of posts and comments makes a big mess and fills the site with thousands of "account deactivated" messages. Worse, it potentially took away good information from the comments in some members' journals. I feel that we can address this in other ways. It is also a last resort that I hope to avoid.

I do recognize that there is an issue to be dealt with and I'm committed to getting it resolved.

Here's what I am doing:

I've indefinitely disabled this member's access to make comments, as it seems this is the primary source of the behavior that is offending others. The only way I will reinstate that access is if I'm convinced that the member will participate in a way that does not offend other members.
I have not disabled his access to posting journals. I don't see the harm in him doing that unless he uses that as a vehicle to address others or this issue, in which case I'll take further action. I don't anticipate that will be necessary.
I have been in communication with this member to start a conversation about what has happened and what changes we can make if he wants to continue to participate in this community.
I will be investigating ways to improve FamilyTreeCircles to allow the community to better self-manage and deal with these issues better before they get out of hand. For example, voting on comments up or down, so that offending comments can be flagged and hidden. This is something that I'll work on in the coming weeks so the next time this happens, well, hopefully we'll prevent it. (I've already done this on journals with "Thank" and "flag". More on that in another post.)

I care deeply about FamilyTreeCircles. It is something that I've been working on as a passion project for several years and it is distressing to me when there are issues. I hope that I can have your support in getting through this bump in the road.

Pulling your posts and going away is your prerogative, but I hope you will not do that. Instead, if you ever have any comments or feedback about this or anything else, please do not hesitate to contact me at scott@familytreecircles.com. Heck, call me: +1 617-910-0055. That's how much I care about this.

Thanks for your help, support, and understanding.

Scott Jangro
FamilyTreeCircles.

New Feature: Genealogy Articles and Answers!

2010-05-20T04:04:00+01:00

We're on a roll on FamilyTreeCircles, adding new features. We're really trying to round out the types of information that are available on FTC and I'm happy to say that there are now three types of postings available for everyone from new family researchers to experienced genealogists.

Look on the homepage and you'll see the following explanation of the options.

The last thing I want to do is introduce any confusion or uncertainty with more options and I've tried to make it as simple as possible. All three types of entries end up in the same places in the list on the homepage and in the active posts page, color coded so you can tell the difference at a glance.

Journals

There is still the same, old, tried and true Journal entries. Nothing has changed there. Use a journal entry for posting all your great family research. As a general rule, anything family or surname related should go in a journal. For the time being, only journals can be associated specifically with surnames and therefore show up on the surname page for any given surname.

Answers

If you've got a question about any genealogy topic, this is the place to ask. Maybe you're wondering about what sort of resources are available in Cork County Ireland. Or maybe you're stuck with a problem in Personal Ancestral File software. Ask about any genealogy topic, technique, method, or technology. Keep an eye on the open questions to see if you can answer a question for someone else. You can read more about this on our announcement of Answers from a few days ago.

Articles

Everybody is an expert about something. Maybe your experience has made you an expert on genealogy research in the state of Vermont, or researching slave ancestry in Virginia. Maybe you're an expert user of certain software or websites. Write an article and you'll not only provide the community with some great information, but you can establish yourself as an expert and direct people to your own blog for more information.

I've got some exciting ideas of where the Articles feature can go...more on that soon.

So there you have it. Something for everyone. It'll take some time for people to get used to the new features on FamilyTreeCircles. If you're one of our more experienced users, please give them a try and show folks how it's done!

New Features: User Search, etc.

2010-05-11T22:46:00+01:00

Here's a quick update on some changes I've made to Family Tree Circles recently...

User Search - I've added a user search section to the search results page. So if you're looking for a user whose username you can't quite remember, put a partial name in the search box. Like this search for "ally" turns up our favorite FTC editor Allycat, and 74 others.
Email Address protection. We can warn and warn and warn, and people still put their email addresses in journals. This is a bad idea in general because spammers scan the web for email addresses to send horrible email to. I've coded things up so that if you're not logged into FTC, you won't see the email address. Just some indication that there's an email address there and that you must log in to read it. It is too much trouble for spammers to create an account just to get a few email addresses, so it should be effective.
Disappearing Newsletter Signup Box. You've probably noticed me experimenting with lots of different newsletter signup form designs in the right margin of the site in the past month. I've now set it up so if you have ever subscribed to the newsletter (and even subsequently unsubscribed), the form no longer shows on every page of FamilyTreeCircles (except on the blog).

If you have signed up for the newsletter, thanks! If not, and you'd like to, there's a signup box right over there to the right. And you won't have to look at that form any more on FamilyTreeCircles. :)