Are you frustrated with the 'new look" at American Ancestors?

Question

Recently (yesterday or the day before) the pages at American Ancestors changed their "look."  They now seem to spend all day searching and I am finding it totally frustrating. Are others experiencing this or is it just me?

Comments

I don't yet find a reason for the new look. I think I have found that once you get past the new look the links go back to most, but not all, of the same search pages. It does appear that you can no longer find a TAG reference by looking up vol and page which is crazy if true...I had to search by name and then find the result which matched the vol and page I already had. Hopefully more use will help me figure out what is now where. Like a lot of website updates, leaves me scratching my head for the most part...

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I totally agree Anne and Todd! I have had numerous problems, and searches that just "hang".

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I'm aggravated. Enough to send them my "thoughts." Why organizations need to constantly "update" their look is beyond me. If it works, leave it alone! (Chris... are you listening? )

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T,

I got it to search TAG by volume & page. It came back with a list of names on the page, and then I could click & view said page. Glitch perhaps?

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While not always, I usually search a "favorite" database at American Ancestors (TAG, Thwing, NEHGR, New England Marriages prior to 1700, etc.).

I keep a single link to my collection of favorite databases in my WikiTree scratch pad.

Those links are all working fine for me.

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Bobbie, may well have been a glitch...had a lot of those of various kinds with my first adventure at the new and improved (maybe) site.

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They seem to have added this functionality again, i now have a box on the right to key in volume and page.  glitches for sure

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From correspondence with the webmaster, there are a couple of known issues (30 November 2021)

(1) Using the arrows to page forward or page back in a particular selected item causes the corresponding URL to "break" (inserts "app" in the URL). They thought this had been resolved, but realized it had not after the rollout. They are working on it. The URLs do not break if you type the page number in the box (rather than use the arrow)

(2) After I link to a particular database, The American Genealogist, from my personal link to "favorite" databases, I am not able to search by volume in the main shaded search query box (the Volume dialog box appears, but it is not functioning). The temporary and just-as-easy workaround for this is to use the "Browse This Database" query to the right of the main query box--the Volume dialog box there works just fine.

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I have the same issues that Anne and Todd voiced. It is so time consuming to figure out this new system that it literally takes time away from writing profiles with sources on WikiTree...time that I really done have to spare. I wonder if their IT people who are 'upgrading' the software actually try to search after they are done. Oftentimes IT folk have no idea what it is like for users to 'use' the site...a site that I and other pay for with our dues.

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Thanks to GeneJ X for the insight on how "app" got into some of the URLs I acquired from the website. The URLs were useless, and I thought I must have done something very stupid...

Answer 1

I watched the roll out webinar on the new site. The changes were needed because the software used for the old site was becoming obsolete so they needed to migrate to new site management software. The site contains many databases so it may take some time to work out the bugs.

Comments

Bill, is there any way to search all of the Great Migration Study Project at one time? What I am seeing is that I must now search each volume individually, unless these records are going to be included in a general search.

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You can set the Great Migration databases as favorites and search your favorites

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Hi T,

"Great Migration Study Project" also shows up on the main search page as one of the "Search by Category" options to the right of the shaded search query form/box. --Gene

Answer 2

Your browser caches information about a website including page layouts and such. When a website changes its organization, your cache might still contain old information which contradicts the new organization. Try clearing your browser cache.

Comments

That did help, but certainly did not eliminate all the hangups and odd responses.

Answer 3

I have found one positive change. The new site configuration makes it much less likely that I will start a search when I am not logged in. When my login has expired, the LOG IN link in the upper right is very visible, and after I log in, it gets replaced with the prominent word ACCOUNT.

Other than that, the changes are mostly annoying. And there definitely are some glitches on the new site. I am very sure that NEHGS does not intend the "Back to Results" button to go to a page that shows "1 - 50 of 979787372 records for all results" (i.e., all possible results in the entire database).

Answer 4

I started having problems about a week ago.  I would log in, and find myself right back on the page that said "You have been logged out."  I re-set my password once and that fixed it.  Once. Then it was back to the same problem.  I finally figured out that in spite of what the screen said, I was actually logged in, and I could proceed to the Search page.

P.S.  I'm using Safari for Mac.

Answer 5

I was on it today for the first time in a while and it seemed to work fine for me.

Answer 6

This morning I find the site nearly unusable for my simple search purposes. Maybe they are trying to rectify the many problems. In a first attempt to bring up the Torrey database, no result is found [as in the Torrey database is not found]. Then on a second attempt it comes up. In NEHGR I do a search, get my results, check one result, then click Back to Results and am taken to a baffling page entirely unrelated to my search and showing 979 million results mentioned by Ellen above. And, all of this leaves me very uncertain as to what is actually being searched in the general search function. That feeling does not inspire confidence in research here until they can work out some of the myriad kinks.

Comments

The "Back to Results" buttons do not work at this time. That is a known bug mentioned in the webinar. You simply use the "back" button on your browser for now.

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I gave up on it this morning also.

Thanks Bill, I'll try that.

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I am not a subscriber so I rarely use the site.

Answer 7

Web Site Designers are in a constant quest to make their pages "cutting edge" with dynamic graphics that catch and hold readers, but that don't really do much besides slow everything down.

By extension, I am not a big fan of the "new look" on FamilySearch.org either, because I am primarily interested in seeing the documents, not somebody's reading of those documents. (after all I know what the spellings of names should be, and can make my own editorial readings)

But ..... Get used to it - even WT made some changes to the editing process that can slow down update (and kudos to whoever thought of the "edit in progress" button, because that is why I used to save every 2 or 3 edits).