RootsWeb Newsroom

After ten long years as a text-only newsletter, the RootsWeb Review is finally in HTML. What does that mean? For one thing, it looks a whole lot prettier. It is also easier to jump between sections of the newsletter (i.e., from the table of contents straight to individual sections of the newsletter). Plus, we can now add images. Because of that, we have also introduced a new section to the newsletter called “The Darkroom,” where we showcase readers’ favorite family history photographs.
 
We hope you enjoy the new format. We also hope you will also send us your favorite family history photos for the new section.

To subscribe to the RootsWeb Review, our weekly e-mail newsletter with 200,000+ subscribers, go to http://newsletters.rootsweb.com/

The text version of each week’s RootsWeb Review is archived here: http://rwr.rootsweb.com/

Last night we moved the message boards to a new server!  Many of you have experienced errors and slowness over the past few weeks when using the message boards; this was due to our running out of space as the boards continued to grow.  The upgrade last night has increased the capacity we have to manage the message boards and has solved many of the issues you have experienced.  When using the boards today, and in the future, you will notice an increase in response time of the message boards, whether you are searching, browsing or using the administrator tools–you will also see a drastic decrease in errors.  We are excited for the new hardware and for the better experience you will have using RootsWeb!

We will continue to work on the message boards as there are still a few issues we are encountering.  If you experience difficulties while using the message boards please send an email to our message board staff, messageboards@rootsweb.com.

The RootsWeb Guide is a great resource for newbies as well as more experienced family historians. The 31 online lessons provide a comprehensive overview into understanding the use of various record types, and how to effectively research and locate records in various countries and ethnic groups. There are even lessons on how to effectively search for names that are spelled differently and the ins and outs of using the Internet in your research. These lessons provide both a discussion on each topic and links to valuable web sites with additional resources and instructions.

We want the RootsWeb Guide to remain a great resource for the family history community and the dynamic nature of web sites has made it necessary to replace or remove the broken links in these lessons. To date we have finished updating the first 20 lessons.

Good luck in your research.

Recently Ancestry.com updated their Learning Center.  The Learning Center is a free resource with a lot to offer – video tutorials, how-to guides, community information, a lot of great articles and much more!  As we all know, whether you are just starting your family history research or you are a seasoned researcher there is always more to learn.  If you aren’t familiar with the Learning Center we think it’s worth taking a look to see what tidbits of information you can find.