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Ancestry Daily News
6/13/2001 - Archive
Coming Soon. New Message Boards at Ancestry.com and Rootsweb.com
In upcoming weeks, Ancestry.com and RootsWeb.com will be unveiling
a new integrated message board system. The new system no longer requires users
to post messages on multiple sites at once. In addition, the new message boards
will be "indexable" by the major Internet search engines, and as a result queries,
discussions, and helpful suggestions from the genealogical community will reach
the widest possible audience.
In addition to new messages posted, the collection will contain over fifteen
million messages from researchers who have shared their experience and expertise
over the last two decades.
Other enhancements include:
Cleaner, intuitive user interface
Improved search functionality with hits ranked by relevance
New personalization features like a "MyFavorites list" and auto- notification
New infrastructure allowing for faster access, and larger traffic loads
Users will be able to view the e-mail address of message authors and respond
to them easily and privately. However, the message boards cannot be "crawled"
by unscrupulous third parties to gather e-mail addresses for spam mailings.
The new message boards will be able to handle attachments to e- mail messages
in the form of uploaded pictures (scanned documents, family photos, etc.) and
GEDCOM files.
A "preview message" feature will help users see what a message will look
like once posted (and make any appropriate changes).
The new message boards also feature centralized and simplified administration
capability for the benefit of the thousands of volunteers who monitor and administer
individual boards. Administrative improvements include:
Each message board has a special "administrator" page, where administrators
can supply information about themselves and/or the topic. They may even add
helpful text and links to appropriate resources elsewhere on the Internet.
URLs in messages are automatically recognized and hyperlinked so that users
can visit referred sites on the Internet with one simple click.
Administrators can take advantage of a convenient "recycle bin" feature
which allows them to delete inappropriate messages (spam, inappropriate content,
etc.) or even restore such messages if deletion was inadvertent.
Users may choose to access these new message boards on either RootsWeb.com or
Ancestry.com, and message board access will remain free on both sites. Look
for the launch announcement in an upcoming issue of the Ancestry Daily News!
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