Hurley's World

My sister Christel has never been comfortable using a computer. An experienced pediatric nurse, she works in the neonatal intensive care unit of a hospital that handles the toughest cases in a five-state region. She can resuscitate a two-pound preemie without breaking a sweat, but she doesn’t know how to use Google. Occasionally she calls to ask me for some random piece of information and I say, “Well, you know, there’s this brand new invention called the Internet…”

Every year about this time she starts collecting photos to make a family calendar — or rather, nine family calendars, since she always makes different versions for her siblings, parents and in-laws. For the past couple of years, she’s been using a popular photo sharing site that that offers rigid templates and a rather convoluted user experience. Creating the calendars is a painful process for both of us, since she demands that I sit next to her the whole time to provide technical and moral support.

So I was excited this week when I tried out the new MyCanvas calendar utility, which is so easy to use that I think even my technologically-challenged sister can manage it on her own. Best of all, the creative possibilities are endless. Our creative director, Chris Trainor, has designed a lovely template with a different layout for each month. If you stick with the template, you can build a calendar from start to finish in just a few minutes. But it’s more fun if you think of the template as a starting point for your own imagination.

Here’s the default layout for January. I can just drop a couple of photos into the image boxes and I’ve got a nice looking page.

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But let’s say I want to keep the portrait (vertical) orientation of this particular photo instead of auto-cropping it to fit a landscape (horizontal) image box. I can just extend the image box by dragging the bottom edge all the way down, and then resize the photo to make it fit better on the page. If I’d wanted to, I could have deleted both image boxes and designed my own page from scratch.

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When I get to April, I decide to keep the default layout, but I want a different background.

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No problem. MyCanvas has a large and growing selection of page backgrounds — almost 400 the last time I checked — and I can use any of them in my calendar.

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Notice that when I changed the background, the white leafy image in the bottom right corner of the page stayed put. That’s because it’s an embellishment, not part of the original background. I can either leave it there or delete it and add some new design elements to the page — in this case a couple of butterfly embellishments.

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Now let’s look at the bottom portion of the calendar. By default, the bottom page has a white background.

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If I want to jazz it up a little, I can apply a background to the bottom page, too. Here the background essentially functions as a border, since most of the page consists of a block of dates.

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If you want to make your calendar a little more personal, you can use one of your own photos as a background — just as you can in a MyCanvas photo book. Go to the My Photos tray in the left-hand side of the main workspace, right-click on a photo and then click “Use as background.”

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If you look at the top toolbar, you’ll see a Calendar transparency icon, which lets you adjust the opacity of the block of dates so that the background shows through. In the example below, the calendar section of the page is 62% transparent.

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Remember to pick a background for the bottom page that coordinates with the top page for the same month. You’ll get a chance to preview your calendar, so if you end up with two pages that look goofy together, you can always go back and edit that month before you place your order.

For September, I decide to apply a warm background called “Autumn Yellow” to the bottom page. Now I’m ready to add some special events. You can add up to three events per date. When I click on a date, a little black bar appears with the words, “Add/Edit Events.”

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When I click on that bar, a box pops up with spaces for up to three events, such as holidays, birthdays, anniversaries and any other day that you feel like celebrating. The calendar is pre-loaded with standard U.S. holidays, but if you live elsewhere you can easily delete those and add holidays that are relevant to you.

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After entering a birthday I can even add a photo of the birthday girl. Each date is a self-contained image box. I just drag the photo onto the page and drop it into the box for the right date.

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Using the zoom and pan tools, I can enlarge and reposition the photo so that the birthday girl’s face fills up the whole box.

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Then I just click anywhere on the page to crop off the rest of the photo.

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As always, you can insert text anywhere on any page. Note that if you enter events using the pop-up box, you will not be able to change the typeface or font size for that particular bit of text. You will be able to change the font color and alignment, however. You can also apply a different background color to the text box and even adjust the transparency of the background. If you don’t like the default typeface, you can simply create a new text box (by clicking the “T” icon in the top toolbar) instead of using the pop-up. That way you’ll be able to access all the options in the text editing toolbar — including the new feature I just mentioned that lets you change the background color and transparency of the text box.

If you’ve used MyCanvas to create a book or poster, you know that I’ve touched on just a few of the many ways that you can manipulate photos and other design elements in MyCanvas. If you’re new to MyCanvas, you might want to check out some of my other recent blog posts to get a few ideas. Anything you can do on a photo book page you can also do on a calendar page.

If you have any comments about the calendar utility, feel free to post them on this blog or send us a message through the “Give Feedback” link in the top right corner of the main MyCanvas workspace. I’d love to hear what you think!

P.S. We had a miscommunication that resulted in some mixed messages about our holiday promotion. The correct discount is 20%. If you saw a message that said 15%, just ignore that number and go ahead and use the code provided: ANHOLIDAY. Sorry about the confusion! The 20% discount applies to all MyCanvas products ordered before midnight PST on December 24. However, if you’re ordering holiday gifts you’ll want to get your order in by December 1 for premium books or December 11 for all other products…unless you want to pay for expedited shipping, and I know you don’t want to do that unless you’re truly desperate. The expedited shipping deadlines are December 4 for premium books or December 16 for everything else.

Ancestry.com now helps you visualize where important events occurred in the lives of your ancestors by placing their events on a map.

How to use it
We’ve updated the family tree so that just about anywhere we show a place, you can click on that place and see the link on the map.  When we display the map we’ll also show all the events for the person.  It’s been fun for me to start visualizing these places in my tree that I’ve been staring at for so many years.  The map let you see the streets and roads, or select an aerial view to get satellite images.

We’ve worked hard to make this easy to use, but for any who want a fun tutorial, we’ve created a pretty great tutorial that walks you through all the map’s features. Just click the question mark in the green circle at the top right hand corner of the screen.

In addition to viewing the important places in your family members’ lives, you can also find places to help you in your research efforts.  We have links to show local cemeteries and courthouses, and “Other Places” link displays a list of additional display options where you can find historical information—churches, historical sites, libraries and archives, and government buildings.

If the locations in your tree aren’t found by our mapping tool, we’ll help suggest possible matching locations to display. If you have no location entered for some of your events, the map feature allows you to enter in location information which will then be stored to your tree.

Got Suggestions or Feedback?
We have lots of plans for the future on how to make this feature even better than it is.  Your feedback is a crucial part of the improvement process; please let us know what you think of the map feature and what improvements you would like to see.  Add a comment or send me an email (kfreestone at tgn.com).

Many resources are available to help you effectively use Family Tree Maker 2009. Here are some commonly asked questions and their answers.

Q. I’m new to Family Tree Maker. How do I get started?

Here are some options for becoming acquainted with Family Tree Maker 2009.

Option 1: The Family Tree Maker Getting Started Guide is a great place to start. It provides installation instructions, and a step-by-step tutorial.

Option 2: The New Training Tutorials provide an overview of each of the Family Tree Maker Workspaces. To access the tutorials from Family Tree Maker 2009, select Training Tutorials from the Help menu.

Option 3: In addition, Family Tree Maker Help is always available. Select Help for Family Tree Maker from the Help menu.

Option 4: Many helps are available at www.FamilyTreeMaker.com.

Q. I prefer to watch a live demonstration. What options are available?

Option 1: Family Tree Maker Webinars are attended by thousands of people who enjoy live demonstrations. The next webinar is scheduled for November 19th and 8:00pm EST. To attend, you can register here. The past webinars are also available online, and are helpful for both 2008 and 2009 users.

Option 2: Family Tree Maker classes are taught at genealogy conferences throughout the year. Some examples are FGS, NGS, and Southern California Jamboree. While you’re at a conference, you can stop by the Ancestry.com booth and talk with one of the representatives there. As conferences are scheduled, you’ll find information about them here on the Family Tree Maker blog.

Q: What if I have a detailed question that isn’t answered in Family Tree Maker Help?

Option 1: The Family Tree Maker Knowledge Base has the same questions and answers that our Technical Support Consultants use. A big project is underway right now to increase the depth and helpfulness of this resource. Check out the latest Knowledge Base here. For instructions on how to use search, check out this Knowledge Base article. Articles written about Family Tree Maker 2008 almost always apply to Family Tree Maker 2009 as well.

Option 2: A strong community of advanced users is available to answer questions. For example, see the Family Tree Maker topics on the GenForum presented by Genealogy.com.

Option 3: Another excellent source of FTM help is the FTM-Tech list

To Join FTM-Tech

send mail to FTM-TECH-L-request@rootsweb.com with the single word subscribe in the message subject and body. To join FTM-TECH-D, do the same thing with FTM-TECH-D-request@rootsweb.com.

or
• Subscribe to FTM-TECH-L
• Subscribe to FTM-TECH-D (digest)

This list was started in 6 April 1995 http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/read/GENCMP/1995-04/0797195495 and has been operating more or less continuously since then.

(Thanks to John Donaldson for this information.)

Q: I like reading step-by-step instructions and explanations from a manual. Is there one available?

Yes. The Family Tree Maker Official Guide is available for purchase from the Ancestry Store.

In addition, many people find answers to complicated questions in  The Little Book of Answers, also available in the Ancestry Store.

Q: I need to talk with a Technical Service Representative. Is that an option?

Yes, Technical Support is provided free of charge for registered users of Family Tree Maker 2009.  You can email Technical Support here.

You can also call Technical Support at 1-800-Ancestry.

Q: What other resources are available?

The Family Tree Maker Program CD has additional resources. Insert the Family Tree Maker disk in your computer drive and an install screen similar to this displays:

Click the Extras tab to see additional resources:

Q: I’m an experienced V16 user transitioning to Version 2009, and the interface is new. What helps are available? 

We’re in the process of creating a feature mapping guide that will be helpful for V16 users as they transition to Version 2009.  In the mean time, here are two links that can be very helpful:

Version 2006 keystroke mappings to Version 2008

Keyboard shortcuts in Version 2008

I hope these options are helpful to you. Family Tree Maker 2009 is a powerful program, and it takes time to become acquainted with all its features. Please let me know if there are other resources you’d like to see us provide.

Thanks!

Recently, we released the Ancestry.com World Archives Project - our new community keying tool that gives you the opportunity to help create free indexes at your leisure. We would love to hear what our members and the community thinks of the idea and of the new tool. We’re interested in feedback from people who have used the tool, as well as people who may have heard about it but haven’t had a chance to try it out yet.

If you have a few moments, we invite you to click here to take a brief survey. Your feedback will help us improve the Ancestry.com World Archives Project. 

If you haven’t yet tried out the World Archives Project and are interested, click here to learn more.

Once again, thank you for being an active part of the genealogy community!

Was there ever a more perfect day than Halloween for a cemetery shot? This photo was forwarded to Ancestry magazine by Ancestry.com subscriber, Lisbeth Schoenfeld Rogers. “I was visiting my sister in New York and I took a drive to the cemetery in Orange [New Jersey] because I have ancestors buried there by the name of Jones. When I saw the tree growing around the headstones I thought to myself that these people really want to be part of a tree. I’ll look them up on Ancestry.com when I get home and find out whose tree they belong to,” says Lisbeth.  

Putting on her family historian hat, Lisbeth took the following notes:

Cemetery: Old Burying Ground at the First Presbyterian Church of Orange, New Jersey

Names and dates on tombstones (L-R): Ebenezer Canfield, b. 1712, d.; 1785; Deborah, wife of Ebenezer Canfield, b. 1716, d. 1791; Ebenezer Canfield, b. 1761, d. 1831.

Lisbeth, who has been tracing her own family tree for two years, was able to find a family tree for the Canfields at Ancestry.com. With a stroke of good luck and some savvy research, she also found a connection between the Canfields and her own tree: Ebenezer’s grandmother Sarah Ward shows up in both.

Think you have a photo that tops Lisbeth’s or one that takes family history in a whole new direction? I’d love to see it. You can forward it to me directly at jcroasmun@ancestrymagazine.com. And if you’d rather look at photos than take them, be sure to check out the latest issue of Ancestry magazine—our Backstory for this issue shows commanders of the 17th Bomb Squadron receiving the Croix de Guerre in World War II.

We welcome all of our Ancestry.com DNA users and friends to our new home.  Ancestry.com’s DNA BLOG is now a permanent resident under the umbrella of the Ancestry.com BLOG.  Our look and arrangement are slightly different but our functionality and goal remains the same.  Our objective is to provide answers to your questions, keep you informed of the evolving Ancestry.com DNA service and build a community of active Ancestry.com DNA users. 

DNA adds a powerful dimension to genealogical research.  Ancestry.com DNA is another way Ancestry.com will provide service in helping people expand their family trees and connect with family across distance and time.

Specifically, Ancestry.com’s DNA service was created to help users:

• Validate existing research.
• Break through genealogical dead ends.
• Discover and connect with genetic cousins.
• Collaborate and expand their family trees.
• Learn about ancient origins.
• Review, decipher and save test results safely and conveniently online.

My name is Tabatha Erickson and I have been involved in the family history arena professionally for nearly 8 years.  I’ve worked at the National Archives, the Family and Church History Dept. of the LDS Church, another DNA testing company, and am now with  Ancestry.com DNA.  I have a great interest and passion for discovering my own roots and learning more about my family.  I first began doing family history research to discover Cajun or Jewish ancestry.  Nearly 2 decades later, I am still researching.  I will work hard to provide product detail and updates, feature insight, and answers to your questions.  I hope you will share your thoughts and insights freely as we collaborate together on Ancestry.com DNA.

In our new environment, we hope to gain new readers and encourage you all to submit comments about the blog posts.  If you have a technical or customer service-related comment, please send these in an email to our DNA Client Services team at dna@ancestry.com instead of to the blog.   If you are new to Ancestry.com DNA, please visit our site at www.dna.ancestry.com. 

We’re excited to introduce a new tool which will help you find information from across the web and organize it back inside your family tree on Ancestry.

What is it?
It’s called the “Ancestry Toolbar”.  It’s a toolbar you can install and add to your browser (If you use IE or Firefox), adding an instant connection to Ancestry and your family tree from where ever you wander in the great wide web.

Here’s a picture:

What does it do?
Primarily the Ancestry Toolbar lets you save photos and stories you find on the web to a person in your tree.  It creates a link pointing back to the website you found the image, which acts as a sort of source citation for the photo or story.

Here’s a quick recap of the features of the toolbar:

•    Save Photos and Stories and attach them to people in your family tree
•    Save links to web pages to people in your family tree
•    Access your Ancestry Quick Links
•    Quickly access your family tree(s)
•    Google Search tool (for both Ancestry and the web)

How does it work?
Well, lets suppose you’re out on the web looking for something about Franklin Van Valkenburgh.  You may find a page with some photos you’d like to add to your tree, or a story.

.

Just click the “Save…” button on the Ancestry Toolbar to launch the toolbar’s features.

Then choose to quickly save a link to the page, or instead to select photos or text to save.

If you choose to save pictures and text, the toolbar will let you click on the pictures or text items to select which ones you want added to your tree.  Now, remember: only items in the public domain should be selected–you’ve got to be judicious about what you save, just like you would be about what you upload.  Fortunately there is a wealth of information in the public domain that you can save and attach to your tree.

After selecting the items you like, click on the orange “Save selected items” button (top right) and the toolbar will guide you through choosing which person to attach the items to.

A link is preserved
For the photos, stories, and web pages you save to your tree, a link back to the original is always preserved–so you and others can always click through to see the item in its original context.

Ready to try it?
Download the toolbar now and check it out!

Comments or Feedback?
We’d love to have your comments on this blog, or also please feel free to email me directly (kfreestone at tgn.com).

Today Ancestry.com introduced the world’s largest online collection of Jewish family history records, with more than 26 million records documenting Jewish life. Ancestry.com has partnered with two leading organizations committed to the preservation of Jewish heritage – JewishGen, an affiliate of the Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust in New York City that maintains the world’s premier Jewish genealogy website, and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), an overseas humanitarian aid organization committed to providing relief for Jews in more than 70 countries.

These partnerships will make millions of important Jewish historical documents available on Ancestry.com, including photographs, immigration records, Holocaust records, maps memorials, and more. All records from the JDC and JewishGen included in this release are searchable for free on Ancestry.com. Two collections from the JDC are available for the first time online on Ancestry.com, including:

• Jewish Transmigration Bureau Deposit Cards, 1939-1954, a collection of records showing the amount of money paid by American Jewish citizens to support the emigration of friends and relatives from European countries during and after WWII.
• Munich, Vienna and Barcelona Jewish Displaced Persons and Refugee Cards, 1943-1959, a collection containing records of displaced Jews who were provided with food, medical care and clothing and emigration assistance by the JDC.

Above: Sample Displaced Person and Refugee Card from JDC 

More than 300 databases from JewishGen will also now be available on Ancestry.com. These JewishGen databases represent 14 different countries and contain more than 5 million records, such as:

• The JewishGen Online Worldwide Burial Registry, an invaluable collection with more than 1 million names of Jews represented in nearly 2,000 Jewish cemeteries around the world.
• Yizkor Book Necrologies, a list of the names of those murdered in the Holocaust which directs users back to the Yizkor Books themselves – memorials which offer vivid, first-hand accounts of the Holocaust and its aftermath.
• The Given Names Database, which enables one to learn possible European, Hebrew and Yiddish translations of an ancestor’s given name.
  A Holocaust Database of 2 million names such as Schindler’s List, which includes names of 1,980 inmates in Oscar Schindler’s factories in Plaszów, Poland and Brunnlitz, Czechoslovakia..
• Jewish Records Indexing (JRI-PL) Poland and All Lithuania Database, representing more than 2 million indexed names from databases in Lithuania and Poland containing vital information on the regions.

To search these collections and other records documenting Jewish life on Ancestry.com, visit http://www.ancestry.com/JewishFamilyHistory.

We have over 26,000 collections of data and records that we search every time you press a search button. By choosing a specific nationality or ethnicity, we will give the collections that we know to have data pertinent to that nationality or ethnicity a little more weight.

So if you are searching for someone you know lived in Canada his entire life, you can tell the search engine to give more weight in ranked search for records that have been specifically identified as Canadian records. This includes Census records, newspapers, various vital records as well as others.

In addition to prioritizing collections, choosing a value helps us know whether to apply a different soundex algorithm or use different name dictionaries to better find approximate matches for the names you entered.

For example, let’s say you are searching for Robert Jones, and you know he was born in England about 1830, but he lived most of his life in Canada. Our search engine will find many matching records for Robert Jones in England, Canada, the US and elsewhere. If you choose to prioritize Canadian collections, we know that those will be more likely to contain records you want. So if multiple records match your search equally well, we will list records from our Canadian collections first.

If you ancestor has lived in multiple places, I would suggest you do multiple searches, using a different set of collections that might contain your ancestor with each search. It never hurts to check anywhere that might be even remotely possible. You never know where that elusive record you are looking for might be.

If you are not sure which collection to use, choose the “All Collections” option, and we will look at every collection equally.

We don’t have enough data sets to form a good collection for all countries and ethnic backgrounds. As our collection of data sets grows, we will continue to add more collections.

To find databases that cover a specific topic, the best place is to start with the Ancestry Card Catalog, which you can find under quick links on the ancestry home page. When you are at the Card Catalog, type a word into the Title or Keyword field and press Search. You will see a list of data set titles that pertain to that topic. From there you can click on a data set title and search it individually for your ancestor.

Today we rolled out an update to the logged-in homepage that we are really excited about. You can now add and remove sections from your homepage, as well as re-order them.  So you can create a page that is customized to how you use the site and to your style of research.

Just click the “Customize your homepage” button at the upper-right to customize your homepage.  This will let you move or remove sections you already have on the page, as well as add some new optional tools to your homepage.

You can still move sections up and down on the page by clicking the arrows or by dragging them to the desired location.  Click the “trash can” icon on each section to remove it from the page.  To add a new section, select one from the list at the top of the page and click the “Add to your homepage” button.  All of your changes are saved automatically, so when you are done customizing you can simply click “Exit.”

As part of this update, we have also introduced a few new optional items that you can add to your page. We will continue to add new ones in the future, so watch for the yellow announcement banner beneath the header to know when they are available.  The new items include:

Record Collections

Navigate quickly to key record collections including individual U.S. Census years, plus birth, marriage and death titles and the Ancestry.com Card Catalog. You can also quickly find special collections focused on U.S. Military records, African American family history and Jewish family history.

Message Board Favorites

Keep track of all your favorite Message Boards with this one handy tool.  View a complete list of your favorites and the most recent threads posted to each board.

Ancestry.com Blog

Stay up to date with informational posts from the people behind the scenes at Ancestry.com.

24/7 Family History Circle Blog

Enjoy an educational blog perfect for anyone who loves family history. View recent articles, family history columns, research stories, photos and how-to articles.

Change can be painful, as I was reminded last weekend when an early snowstorm abruptly ended a stretch of lovely fall weather. As a new homeowner, I was surprised to learn that turning on a gas furnace is more complicated than pushing a button. I was so afraid of blowing myself up by tinkering with the furnace that I spent four hours huddled under a quilt on my living room sofa…until I remembered that the owner’s manual for the furnace was in the kitchen, in a big envelope full of useful information that the previous owners had thoughtfully left behind. I followed the somewhat arcane 14-point instructions, and within half an hour the house was toasty warm.

Life had been so much simpler in my tiny apartment in Manhattan, where the landlord activated the steam heat for the whole building every October. The downside was that I couldn’t control the temperature, and on most winter days my apartment had been too warm, since it absorbed the heat from the floors below. Now that I can adjust the thermostat in my own home, I realize how empowering it is to get the temperature exactly where I want it — definitely worth the 10 minutes I spent figuring out which switches to flip.

If you’ve used Ancestry.com’s publishing service recently, you’ve noticed that we’ve made some rather dramatic changes. For starters, the service is no longer called AncestryPress. The site has a new look. And the project creation process is slightly different. Do not panic. The publishing software, which I will refer to as the Project Editor, is still the same. You can still access all of your AncestryPress projects by clicking on “My Projects.” Best of all, as you explore the site you’ll see that we’ve added lots of new content and output options.

Once you start using the new site, I think you’ll find the transition to be relatively painless. Even more important, I hope you feel empowered by all of the new products, features, backgrounds, themes and embellishments. It may take a few minutes to get used to the new site — although I hope the new layout of the My Projects page is less confusing than the gas valve diagram in my furnace manual. But our goal is to give you more control, more options and more creative freedom so that you can get your projects exactly how you want them.

One change that may be slightly confusing to previous users is the new cover selection process. On the old site, you chose your cover as part of the checkout process. Now you select and customize your cover while you’re editing your book. The level of customization depends on which product you choose. If you’re making a book with a leatherette or bonded leather cover, you can enter a two-line title. If you’re making a premium book with a velvet, nubuck or genuine leather cover, you can add a photo and a two-line title. If you’re making a photo book with a custom cover, you can edit every element of the cover (if you’re using a template) or even design your cover from scratch.

For example, here’s what you’ll see if you’re making a standard 11×8.5 family history book with a leatherette cover:

Click to enlarge image

If you type in a title and then decide you’d rather word it a little differently, just click the first page thumbnail (far left) at the bottom of the main workspace. You can go back and edit your cover as often as you wish.

If you’re making a custom cover photo book based on one of our themes, you’ll get a cover template that coordinates with the other pages in that theme. The screen shot below shows the cover template for the “Very Squary” theme.

Click to enlarge image

It only takes a moment to drop in a couple of photos and type in a title on the front and a photo caption on the back.

Click to enlarge image

But you don’t have to stop there. Because this is a custom cover, you can also manipulate the photos, edit the text, and add frames and embellishments. You can even wrap an element around the book — from back to front — as I’ve done with the blue box in the example below.

Click to enlarge image

I’d love to hear what you think about our new site. Please take a few minutes to explore the site, learn about the new products and experiment with the new content and features. We will of course do some fine-tuning over the next few weeks, and we’re counting on your feedback to help us focus our efforts.

To learn more about Ancestry.com’s online publishing service — powered by MyCanvas — please read my interview with Kelvin Hulet, who oversees the development of new features.

Change can be painful, as I was reminded last weekend when an early snowstorm abruptly ended a stretch of lovely fall weather. As a new homeowner, I was surprised to learn that turning on a gas furnace is more complicated than pushing a button. I was so afraid of blowing myself up by tinkering with the furnace that I spent four hours huddled under a quilt on my living room sofa…until I remembered that the owner’s manual for the furnace was in the kitchen, in a big envelope full of useful information that the previous owners had thoughtfully left behind. I followed the somewhat arcane 14-point instructions, and within half an hour the house was toasty warm.

Life had been so much simpler in my tiny apartment in Manhattan, where the landlord activated the steam heat for the whole building every October. The downside was that I couldn’t control the temperature, and on most winter days my apartment had been too warm, since it absorbed the heat from the floors below. Now that I can adjust the thermostat in my own home, I realize how empowering it is to get the temperature exactly where I want it — definitely worth the 10 minutes I spent figuring out which switches to flip.

If you’ve used Ancestry’s publishing service recently, you’ve noticed that we’ve made some rather dramatic changes. For starters, the service is no longer called AncestryPress. The site has a new look. And the project creation process is slightly different. Do not panic. The publishing software, which I will refer to as the Project Editor, is still the same. You can still access all of your AncestryPress projects by clicking on “My Projects.” Best of all, as you explore the site you’ll see that we’ve added lots of new content and output options.

Once you start using the new site, I think you’ll find the transition from AncestryPress to MyCanvas to be relatively painless. Even more important, I hope you feel empowered by all of the new products, features, backgrounds, themes and embellishments. It may take a few minutes to get used to the new site — although I hope the new layout of the My Projects page is less confusing than the gas valve diagram in my furnace manual. But our goal is to give you more control, more options and more creative freedom so that you can get your projects exactly how you want them.

One change that may be slightly confusing to previous users is the new cover selection process. On the old site, you chose your cover as part of the checkout process. Now you select and customize your cover while you’re editing your book. The level of customization depends on which product you choose. If you’re making a book with a leatherette or bonded leather cover, you can enter a two-line title. If you’re making a premium book with a velvet, nubuck or genuine leather cover, you can add a photo and a two-line title. If you’re making a photo book with a custom cover, you can edit every element of the cover (if you’re using a template) or even design your cover from scratch.

For example, here’s what you’ll see if you’re making a standard 11×8.5 family history book with a leatherette cover:

Click to enlarge image

If you type in a title and then decide you’d rather word it a little differently, just click the first page thumbnail (far left) at the bottom of the main workspace. You can go back and edit your cover as often as you wish.

If you’re making a custom cover photo book based on one of our themes, you’ll get a cover template that coordinates with the other pages in that theme. The screen shot below shows the cover template for the “Very Squary” theme.

Click to enlarge image

It only takes a moment to drop in a couple of photos and type in a title on the front and a photo caption on the back.

Click to enlarge image

But you don’t have to stop there. Because this is a custom cover, you can also manipulate the photos, edit the text, and add frames and embellishments. You can even wrap an element around the book — from back to front — as I’ve done with the blue box in the example below.

Click to enlarge image

I’d love to hear what you think about our new site. Please take a few minutes to explore the site, learn about the new products and experiment with the new content and features. We will of course do some fine-tuning over the next few weeks, and we’re counting on your feedback to help us focus our efforts.

To learn more about MyCanvas, please read my interview with Kelvin Hulet, who oversees the development of new features.

Kelvin Hulet is principal product manager for MyCanvas (formerly AncestryPress). In this interview, he explains how Ancestry’s online publishing service has evolved — and how you can make the most of it.

Q. AncestryPress was just relaunched under the name MyCanvas. How will the change from AncestryPress to MyCanvas affect current AncestryPress users?

What the user will see is a new site called MyCanvas, so you’ll see the MyCanvas logo. When you order a book, you’ll see emails coming from MyCanvas. But the application itself — the functionality — is basically the same. It’s presented a little bit differently, so users will need to get used to the way it works, but they can still create a book in the same way they did before by selecting a tree, selecting a starting person and picking the type of book they want.

Another thing that’s different is that there are a lot of new photo book themes that aren’t family history related, on topics like weddings, photography and family.  

Q: What was your vision for Ancestry’s self-publishing application when you started developing it two years ago?

We felt that we had a great site for people to come and research their family history — to find records, to connect with other people, to build a family tree — but we didn’t have any output options. People had all this information that they’d collected over the years, but they couldn’t really show it to anyone. So the vision was to allow users to put their research in a book format that they could share with their family.

Usually in a family there’s one person who does all of the work and they’re really excited about family history, but the rest of the family has a hard time getting excited about it. So we thought if Ancestry users could put their research in a format that’s more visual and that brings these ancestors to life, the rest of the family would get excited as well.

We wanted a format where it would be very easy to create a book from an Ancestry tree and the records attached to that tree. Users could auto-generate the skeleton of a book, and then beyond that we wanted to allow them to completely customize it. The auto-generated book would pull all that information from the tree, organize it, and then let the user add photos, text and embellishments to make their family history come to life.

Q: Why did you build an online application instead of expanding the desktop book building tool in Family Tree Maker?

The reason we went with an online application is so that users can easily take advantage of all of the records they’ve found on Ancestry and attached to their tree. That way they don’t have to download all the records and then build from an application on their desktop.

We also wanted to take advantage of the ability to share and to collaborate. With the Internet, you can share your book digitally and allow other people to come view it. On a desktop application you’d have to upload the book to share it with other people.

In addition, there are people who are interested in family history but haven’t done a lot of research. On Ancestry.com they can easily start a tree. We wanted to encourage them to search and find records and upload photos to their tree. We felt like an online application was a great place for them to do that because they could do it for free and not have to purchase an application and then download and upload.

One advantage is that maybe they’re in a library doing research and they don’t have their computer with them. They can go find records and attach things to their tree even when they don’t have their own computer. It’s very mobile, so there’s a great benefit there.

Another advantage is that if they had a hard drive crash, the online application works great as a backup. If they had everything on their computer and didn’t have it also stored on the web, they would lose all that information. So we wanted to allow the collaboration, the backup and the mobility of having an online application.

Q: You get dozens of enhancement requests from users every month. How do you decide which features to implement?

I read every single request that we get through the “Feedback” link. We actually create spreadsheets and categorize the information we get, and then we look at the volume of requests for a particular feature. We try to determine how many users will be impacted by a change, and we also bounce the requests off of our existing plans for future features.

Q: What new features can MyCanvas users look forward to in the next few months?

One of the major things we’ll be working on is a custom calendar. Users will be able to pick a starting month and then the calendar will go a year from that month. It won’t be fixed to a calendar year from January to December. What we would like to do eventually is tie the calendar to their online tree so that it automatically pulls the births and marriages of individuals in the tree.

In conjunction with the change to MyCanvas, we just released a number of new features. We have a new line of premium bindings and covers. Users can now modify their book cover from within the Project Editor. Before this change, they would enter the title when they ordered their book. Now they can do it while they’re editing the book. In addition, we now offer custom covers, so users can add photos and text and whatever else they want. There’s also a new book format — the 8×8 photo book.

Q. So the cover becomes another page to design.

Yes. If you look at the page thumbnails at the bottom of the main workspace, the first page is actually the cover. It’s got the front and back in one page.

Q: Tell me more about the new binding and cover options.

We used to have only two cover options: bonded leather and nuba (leatherette). Those both have stitched bindings. Now we also have genuine leather, nubuck, velvet and silk covers. As far as the bindings go, we have a new board book binding for the 8×8 format. Those are really stiff, heavy pages that lie completely flat. If you wanted to, you could actually have images go across from one page to the other — so that’s an exciting, very upscale binding. In addition, we have what’s called a hinge binding for the 8½ x 11 landscape format. That one also lies fairly flat. We are also offering a padded leather book in the 8½ x 11 format.

Q: What binding and cover options might be appealing to a new MyCanvas user?

I think padded leather for the family history market. We’ve gone to trade shows and people have really liked the padded leather book because it’s less expensive than the velvet or nubuck books, but it looks nice. For people who are just interested in a photo book, I think the 8×8 custom cover will be very popular.

Q: What advice would you give to Ancestry customers for making the most of their MyCanvas projects?

Don’t be afraid to try things. There’s an undo feature. Try something — you can always undo it. You can always start another project or make a copy of your project, so don’t be afraid to experiment. We found out that some people have no idea that you can resize a picture, that you can crop off the black edges from census records, that you can add text, or that you can move things.

Every MyCanvas project is totally customizable and editable. I would suggest taking a few minutes to understand the capabilities of the software. Browse the Help section — it’ll give you an idea. We also have a number of help videos. Take the time to watch those and look at the sample pages on the site to get a vision of what you can do.

You might find these useful as your searching in the new search interface:

If you press ‘n’, you will see a brand new search form pop up over your browser.

If you press ‘r’, you will see a search form pre-populated with the data you just searched on.

You can also walk through the previews on a search, by first pressing ‘p’ and then pressing ‘>’ to
move down the list and ‘<’ to move back up. (’j’ works for forward and ‘k’ works for backwards as well)

We may have some template changes to show you next week, that I’m guessing some of you will find quite interesting.

On Thursday, Oct. 23rd, at 8 pm EDT, Ancestry.com will be sponsoring a webinar on its new World Archives Project. Learn more about Ancestry.com’s new community indexing program that gives people around the world the opportunity to save historical records important to them. Register for the webinar here.

Hi,

We’re planning a webinar on Family Tree Maker 2009, and we’d like to answer as many questions as possible. Please post the questions you have regarding the new version. Thanks!

I grew up in a family that never volunteered for anything that didn’t have a paycheck attached to it. I always attributed this to the fact that my parents were children of the Depression, and any time or money they had to spare was to be saved—just in case. Now that I have a family of my own, I’ve changed my mind about that former no-volunteer credo: it was probably more closely linked to my parents working, running a house, and raising three daughters. They were simply too exhausted to try to give anything else.

This may be why I was so impressed by Maddy McCoy, a parent whose one-woman volunteer project creating a slavery inventory database of Fairfax County, Virginia, itself is impressive. On the surface, the project seems small, just a single county in a single state. Its impact, however, is much larger. A database of enslaved and free black individuals in Fairfax County before and after the Civil War, the identification of significant area landmarks, and the potential the project has to inspire similar projects elsewhere are all coming courtesy of Maddy, who is doing this on her own time, with no impending financial gain.

But family historians, I’m learning, are like that. They volunteer their time for projects like the World Archives Project at Ancestry.com so more people can freely access information about their family’s past. They answer questions on message boards to point other researchers in the right direction. They photograph cemeteries, return lost heirlooms, and preserve the history of hometowns their families never even lived in.  

Why? Because everyone has the right to learn more about his or her past. The hundreds of ways to get involved in grassroots preservation projects are a testament to that. We’ll be featuring a dozen or so of our favorites in the November/December issue of Ancestry Magazine—ways, big and small, that anyone can help out, often with very little effort. But I’d love to hear more about what you’ve done or what you dream of doing that could make a big difference to even one family’s history. Make your comments here or send them directly to me at jcroasmun@ancestrymagazine.com. And keep up the good work.

Starting at about 11:00 PM tonight (Mountain Daylight Time) our Tree Service will be down—we estimate this will last about 30 minutes.

We’re doing this to accommodate the tremendous growth we’re experiencing.

This tree service downtime will affect Member Trees, OneWorldTree, some portions of Ancestry Press, the sections of the Home Page that are related to Member Trees, and the sections of MyFamily.com 2.0 that are related to Member Trees.

We apologize for the downtime.

Ancestry.com CEO Tim Sullivan explains the new Ancestry.com World Archives Project. In this podcast, Tim discusses how the project works and the many benefits available to individuals and societies that choose to get involved.

Listen to the podcast on DearMYRTLE’s website here. (The segment with Tim begins 37 minutes into the podcast.)

I think the first thing that I learned was that I may be a bit of a history geek. I snuck away from the festivities for a couple of hours and visited the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall. Standing in the same room where the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were partially crafted and signed was awe inspiring for me. I love stepping through the doorways of history … that may be why I love genealogy, huh?

I also learned that if you can’t enjoy the thrill of breaking through your own brick walls, watching someone else do it is pretty fun. At our booth, we had 4 computers logged into ancestry, and people would come up and do searches. This one guy found a Canadian Census, with what I believe were his great grandparents on it. He was giddy…hopefully all of you know that feeling as well. (And no, I don’t know if he was using old search or new search. )

The third thing I learned, as I watched people use new search, by far the most interesting and useful piece to most people I worked with was the ability to turn exact on for different types of fields. And as I watched many people do many searches, it would appear that you will get the most mileage on your searching if you choose exact date ranges and exact locations. Toggling between different combinations of what is exact and not exact is also useful in bringing up different sets of information. My anecdotal evidence shows that choosing all exact fields is just not all that great.

Meanwhile, back here at the ancestry.com ranch, we’ve been digging and working on some issues around the new search user interface:

• Marriage records. Many of our marriage record data sets are, to be technical, quite foobar-ed in the new search user interface, as some of you know. And we know why. Some of these data sets were created many years ago, in ways that we don’t store our data sets anymore. And while we hacked around it back in the old search interface, we don’t hack too much in the new one. And yes, I know what some of you are thinking or muttering, well just go back to the old way and it’ll all be fine. No. Not the answer. I truly believe that fixing the data and standarizing is the way to go. No word on when things will be reformatted…you have no idea what goes into (that would probably make an interesting post), but I’ll keep you up-to-date. And remember, you can always go through the old search ui for now.
• Soundex and matching algorithms. We are currently working on the back end pieces to bring you that option back..stay tuned.
• State and country pages. We are working on bringing those up-to-date and giving you a way to easily access those. For example, try looking at the Virginia Database Page or the Italy Database Page. Also check out the Sources pages and the How To’s pages. Now would be a really, really good time to tell me what you think is a must have on those pages and what you really don’t care about. So start voicing your opinions now!

I’m still too tired from all of the traveling and the hot muggy weather to finish commenting on my previous post. I’ll finish it off before the week ends.

And if you have civil war ancestor’s in your past, I recommend the previous post by Jeanie Croasmun : Why So Many Names?. I know I learned something new.