Tuesday, December 14, 2010

The new www.FamilySearch.org is live!

I was alerted to this by James Tanner's post Beta FamilySearch replaces old FamilySearch and soon saaw Paul Nauta's post FamilySearch.org Website Changes on the FamilySearch Blog

I typed http://www.familysearch.org/ in my browser address line and saw:


Okay.  So where are the old sites that were useful, like the International Genealogical Index and the other databases?  I found that the URLs I had in my Favorites still work and take me to the old FamilySearch Search,  News, Library, Education, etc.

But there's a link on the new FamilySearch.org home page at the top right - see the "Changes at FamilySearch.org" and "What's New" button?  Click on that, and you go to Paul Nauta's post on the blog (two screens below):




On the blog post are links to some of the old FamilySearch.org sites, including:

Go to Prior Version of FamilySearch.org

* Go to Popular FamilySearch Downloads
* Search the IGI (International Genealogical Index)
* Search Ancestral File
Search Historical Books
Search Community Trees

 Here is the screen for the Go to Prior Version of FamilySearch.org link:


Everything seems to work as before, although the screens have changed a bit, and there are links to the FamilySearch Beta site (and http://beta.familysearch.org/ still works).

The Record Search Pilot site is still active, but has only 402 databases at this time.  The http://www.familysearch.org/ site has 508 historical collections listed today.

3 comments:

Audrey Collins said...

Your tweet announcing this couldn't have arrived at a better time! See http://thefamilyrecorder.blogspot.com/ for details! Thanks Randy

Geolover said...

Randy,

There have been URL changes and the old ones no longer work:

Dead: http://beta.familysearch.org/
---there is no 'redirect'
Live: https://www.familysearch.org/

Dead: http://www.familysearch.org/
Live: https://www.familysearch.org/
---which is the the former beta.familysearch.org site

To get to the former www.familysearch.org site one must use the URL with extensions, as in your link:

http://www.familysearch.org/eng/default.asp

The formerly-"beta", now familysearch.org site cannot be used by older operating systems and browsers (blackness and graphics cover the search results, some links are dead and search pages hardly work).

MerRhosyn said...

Don't know if you use Chrome as a web browser, but a 23andme user just posted this tool in the online community:

https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/iahjgikepkkgkinlhipagkkdgfbobphh

It integrates FamilySearch.org search capability directly from an individual in your Ancestry tree. I added it to my browser and it's certainly a fun feature to play around with.