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There’s one simple trick you should do to customize your Ancestry homepage, and if you’re not doing it you’re wasting time. It’s a simple way to unlock the power of your Ancestry homepage in your favor and remove the clutter of unwanted blips and blobs overwhelming you every time you log on.
So what is it? Well, the one simple trick to do is use the CUSTOMIZE YOUR ANCESTRY HOMEPAGE option to create your own personalized landing page. Give your Ancestry account homepage a HOME renovation!
UPDATE: As of JANUARY 2022, Ancestry has disabled the ability for individuals to customize their homepage! The customize button is now gone, along with the ability to drag and drop each menu item. The upside of all of this is that the new homepage looks way cleaner!
The only thing that you can customize on your new Ancestry homepage is the Quick Links, and ironically that’s going away. You can delete any of the items on there by using the trash can icon to the right of the feature you want to eliminate. That’s it. Oh, gosh, wow great.
The new Ancestry homepage is actually nice in my opinion and doesn’t need much customizing, although I would like to be able to reorder the blocks myself. The blocks on the left-hand column include:
- Family Tree
- Make Discoveries
- 1950 Census Finder
- Family Photos
- School Lists and Yearbooks
- Explore Records
- My DNA
- Matches
- Ethnicity Estimates
- Traits
- Products
The right-hand column includes:
- Search
- Quick Links (which is going away)
- Special Records Collections
- Tools and Resources
- Services
- Download the App
It’s all pretty handy I suppose, but I do miss the “What’s happening at Ancestry” tool which featured the most recently-released datasets. I’d look forward to logging on to find random collections like a Brown County Texas Marriage Index being updated or added which was always interesting to find. I also miss the ability to delete certain tools that I really don’t need or care about out of my view. Well, those are my thoughts on the matter and I know others feel the same as I do.
Read on through rest of the article if you would like to dreamily remember the past. Oh the good old days!
The remainder of this article is the original version which is based on the version of Ancestry prior to January 2022 in the hopes that one day you will be able to customize your Ancestry homepage once again soon!
Here’s how to customize your Ancestry homepage if you need step-by-step instructions.
- Use the “Customize Your Homepage” widget
- Choose the options you would like
- Reorder your menu
- Customize your sidebar
You’re Ancestry account homepage (HOME in the menu) is where you inevitably jump back to in between research or toggling between your family trees (TREES in the menu). The layout that Ancestry gives you when your first sign up for an account is by no means the layout you need to keep if you don’t want to.
In fact, there are stuff in there that gets old to look at and can be a distraction to your research. I, for one, like to keep it simple and efficient. My homepage widgets consists of my Recent Family Tree Activity, What’s Happening At Ancestry (all the new records), and then Recent Member Connect Activity. On the sidebar the only 2 widgets I use are the My Quick Links and the My To-Do List.
1. CUSTOMIZE YOUR HOMEPAGE
First step, log into Ancestry.com. Find the Customize your homepage widget activator! It’s in the upper right-hand corner. Go ahead and select it.
2. CHOOSE YOUR OPTIONS
Choose from among the options that you would like to use. There are many options so just choose the ones that apply to you the most.
3. REORDER YOUR MENU
Once you have all the widgets you would like, reorder them from top to bottom! Notice the UP and DOWN arrows in the upper-right corner of the widget field, use those.
4. CUSTOMIZE YOUR SIDEBAR
Don’t forget to customize your sidebar! There’s no real list to choose from for the sidebar but you can reorder them using the arrows or simply removing them with the trash icon. Easy peasy!
My recommendation is to customize your Ancestry homepage widgets in order of importance from top to bottom. Those things that you look at or use with the most frequency, place on the top; the other stuff, rank them in descending order down. All the things you don’t use, trash it! For me, the Family Tree Activity is my most used function followed very closely by the New Records (What’s Happening At Ancestry) thingamadoo.
Set it up, check it out and I’m sure you’ll find that you will save so much time and headache on Ancestry with this one simple trick. Find more to read about how to research your genealogy like a pro with my “Ultimate Beginners Guide to Mastermind Genealogy Research Online” here at the Family History Foundation.
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