Wednesday, November 15, 2017

Creating "We Remember" Memorials on Ancestry.com - FREE, Easy?

Ancestry.com announced their newest product, called We Remember on the Ancestry.com blog today - see Introducing We Remember – Free Online Memorials.

I have wanted something like this for decades - full featured, easy to use, easy to share, easy for family and friends to contribute to, and FREE.  After my first experiences, I think that We Remember ticks all of my boxes.

But how easy is it to use?  I tried it out, by making a memorial for my mother, and then creating one for my father.  First, though, I had to create a Login and provide an email and a password.  After I created the first memorial, I received an email to verify my account.

I will use my father's memorial as the example:

1)  On the We Remember page, I clicked on the "Create a Memorial" link:


2)  On the new memorial page, I added content to the First Name, Middle Name, Last Name, Birth Date and Death Date fields, and then to the fields for where they last lived:


I clicked the "Next" button at the bottom of the screen (not shown above).

3)  The next screen starts the memory portion of the memorial.  I added a photograph (I chose him as a young married man), and added a Tribute headline (which has a 250 character limit):


Further down the page is the field to add an obituary of short biography.  I chose to copy the biography that is in my Person Notes in RootsMagic, and pasted it into the field.  There is a 10,000 character limit on this field.


I edited the biography a bit, and when I was finished I clicked on the "Next" button.

4)  The last step is to identify "How did you know Frederick Seaver?"  I selected the "Family" icon and added "eldest son" to the field to identify the relationship.


I clicked on the "Create Memorial" button.

5)  The memorial appeared with the content I had entered.


The memorial for my father is at https://weremember.com/frederick-seaver/7e8-n6u/memories.

On the page above, I, and also guests, can add questions and memories to add to this We Remember page.  Below the text above, there is a button for "Sharing Options" which include sending me an email with a link to the memorial that I can forward, a link to post it on Facebook, or copy the memorial link to my Windows clipboard.

6)  There is a list of options on a dropdown menu under the username (top right corner of the page), which enables me to:

*  Edit Memorial
*  Privacy and content settings
*  My account

7)  I needed to edit the profile to add more detail to the "Profile" and "Obituary" sections.  I clicked on the "Edit Memorial" link on the dropdown menu:


 I edited the Headline" section on the "Profile" page above.

I clicked on the "Obituary" link on the screen above (next to the underlined "Profile" link, and edited the "Obituary:"

I'm done for now, so I clicked on the "Save" button and the profile was saved.  I received an email that said the memorial was activated.

8)  I clicked through, and was able to see the entire memorial:


9)  I have not worked with the Sharing, Guestbook and other options yet.  I may report on it in a future blog post.

10)  All in all, this was very easy to create, add content, edit content, and post.  

I will wait a while to create more memorials.  I will add more memories to the memorials from the photos I have of my mother and father over time.

I have already sent links to my daughters and my brothers to encourage them to ask questions and/or add memories themselves.

If this works out well, I can add tributes for many of my ancestors - that's why I'm doing the 52 Ancestors biographies!

11)  I wonder if Ancestry will eventually permit digital audio or digital video clips for memories of persons. I would also like an option to save the memorial page as a PDF so that I can save it to my own computer system and back it up so that I don't lose it in case Ancestry decides to remove this feature in the future.  A mobile app would be nice to have also to show the grandkids about their ancestors.  Hopefully, Ancestry will eventually add a search function so a user could search for specific persons to determine if there already is a memorial for their ancestor.

Since it is FREE, I encourage other users to try it out.  This may be something of interest and use to you.

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Disclosure:  I have always had a fully paid Ancestry.com subscription.  Ancestry.com has provided material considerations for travel expenses to meetings, and has hosted events and meals that I have attended in Salt Lake City, in past years.


Copyright (c) 2017, Randall J. Seaver

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1 comment:

Jeff Jahn said...

Going to be interesting to see, when they add the ability to search how it will work and what effect it might have on duplicate memorials. I like it but alas also not getting family to participate in it like i was hoping. If i remember correctly I didnt have to created a acct. I just had to log in with my ancestry email and password.