Monday, November 11, 2013

Creating an Honor Wall Page on Fold3.com

Ancestry.com Unveiled the Fold3 Honor Wall late in a blog post last week - see the announcement at http://blogs.ancestry.com/ancestry/2013/11/07/the-fold3-honor-wall/

For Veterans Day, I wanted to honor my grandfather with a place on the Fold3 Honor Wall.  I also wanted to see how easy this was to do, and hoped that writing about the experience would encourage my readers to do the same thing.  So here's how easy it is:

1)  The Fold3 Honor Wall page is http://www.fold3.com/wall/ - users will have to register for a free account or log in if they already have an account:


I typed my grandfather's name into the search field titled "Help Honor Veterans From Ever U.S. Conflict."

2)  I hit "Enter" and this screen appeared:


The Fold3 record collections found my grandfather in their records.  If they had not found him, I could have added him to the Honor Roll by clicking on the red button above.

3)  I clicked on the link for Lyle Carringer on the screen above, and his page opened on the Honor Roll:


Apparently, the persons known to have served in the military already have an Honor Roll page created by Fold3.com.

In the center of the page above is "Summary" information for birth date, death date and "Conflict Period."

In the box on the left side of the screen above, there are links for "Summary," "Pictures & Records," "Personal Details," "Stories" and "About."

Users can click on one of the items from the list or click on the Orange >> button on the right side of the page to advance to the next section.

4)  In the "Pictures & Records" section, I clicked on the "Add a photo or record..." frame and added a photograph of my grandfather in his U.S. Marines uniform:


After clicking on the "Add" button, the user has to find the photograph from his computer files, or from another memorial already on Fold3.

5)  I added five more photographs, as shown below:


Adding each photograph or document takes 20 to 30 seconds.  The images at the top of the flag, the rifle, and the family were provided by Fold3.

6)  The next section is for "Personal Details" and is shown on the screen above (on the right side).

Advancing to the "Stories" section, I was able to copy and paste information about my grandfather's life, from previously written material, into the "Stories" field:


I could add a location, a date and a tile by clicking on the links below the entry field.  Don't forget to click on the "Add Story" button!  I did the first time around.

7)  The "About" section shows a link to the "Department of Veterans Affairs BIRLS Death File, 1850-2010" on Fold3.com:


8)  So I'm done with this, right?  Here's the "Summary" screen again:


Down in the lower left-hand corner are links for "Bookmark," "Share" and "Save to Ancestry."

9)  Okay, saving to Ancestry sounds good - I can add this to his profile on one of my Ancestry Member Trees.  I clicked on the green "Save to Ancestry" button:


I selected the name of my Ancestry Member Tree and named the person to attach it to.  I selected the right person and clicked on the "Save" button.  I checked Ancestry.com and did not see the Honor Roll memorial.  Perhaps it takes some time to show up there.  I'm so spoiled, I expect to see it before I click the Save button!

10)  There was also a "Share" button on the Fold3 Honor Roll page, and clicking that shows me that I can share my memorial on Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Pinterest and many more social networking sites:


I chose to put a post on Facebook and the entry field is shown above.  Hopefully, my brothers and my daughters, and maybe my grandchildren, will read it there on go read the Honor Roll memorial.  I also added the link to the memorial on Google+.

11)  The Fold3.com Honor Roll Memorial for Lyle Lawrence Carringer is at http://www.fold3.com/page/629759983_lyle_carringer_1891/.

This whole body of work took less than 15 minutes because I had the story text already written.  Now I have a memorial to my grandfather to honor his service.  I have several more of my military veterans to do today.

It may be best to add several stories for different phases of your ancestor's life.  I chose to put in an entire biography, but I could have broken it up into childhood, military service, family, and inspiration or something similar.

How have you honored your military ancestor on this Veterans Day?  I encourage you to create a memorial for them on Fold3.com.

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2013/11/creating-honor-wall-page-on-fold3com.html

Copyright (c) 2013, Randall J. Seaver

5 comments:

Colleen G. Brown Pasquale said...

Randy, thanks for this tutorial! I definitely want to make memorial pages for the veterans in my family. Just one more thing to add to my Genealogy To Do List!

treetracker said...

Randy, a noble effort on the part of Fold3. But... I wish that the site could combine duplicate pages instead of connecting them. It looks like a separate page is made for each military source. I connected the two profiles but I'm not sure if the delete function deletes the page or the relationship. Guess I'll just leave it as is and complete one page.

T said...

My father had a prefilled profile but my two uncles and one aunt did not so I made them from scratch. You can use a photo you've uploaded in place of their silhouette. There's a button somewhere, I looked and looked for it and finally found it. I had a lot of trouble getting my entries just right. Must be old age or impatience.

T said...

Duh! Now I see it! on the silhouette it says add a profile picture.

Jana Iverson Last said...

Randy,

The Honor Wall on Fold3.com is awesome!

I was also able to add links to Find A Grave and my blog at the bottom of the Personal Details section of my ancestor's Memorial Page. Cool!

I want to let you know that your blog post is listed in today's Fab Finds post at http://janasgenealogyandfamilyhistory.blogspot.com/2013/11/follow-friday-fab-finds-for-november-15.html

Have a wonderful weekend!