Updated Site Now Available; More Improvements to Come
SALT LAKE CITY–FamilySearch announced several changes today for its family history website, FamilySearch.org. Online patrons will find millions of new records and images, over 40,000 helpful articles, over 100 interactive courses of instruction, and a dynamic forum to ask personal genealogy questions. The changes have been in testing for some time. FamilySearch will continue to implement the new website in phases to ensure all critical elements are functioning as desired. Once complete, the website will be promoted more broadly.
The new site offers the following free benefits to FamilySearch patrons:
- Millions more scanned, historical documents and indexes that are published more frequently.
- An improved search experience that looks through more content and gives more accurate results.
- A thriving online genealogical community where patrons can give and receive help.
- One user name and password for all FamilySearch products and services.
- Responsive, reliable, and scalable hardware and software that will allow the site to grow and improve.
FamilySearch has published a helpful document called “Adjusting to the New Version of www.familysearch.org” and a video tutorial that summarizes the changes to the new site. These new guides can be found under the “Changes at FamilySearch.org” link.
The prior version of the site will still be available through the transition period.
Actually, some of these records are available now. If you click on the link for the Beta site (at the top of the Familysearch.org homepage, you might find dozens of new hits for your ancestors when you search. I did this last week and was able to take my family tree back several generations, due to transcriptions of thousands of marriage, birth, and death records from Belgium that had not been available previously.