Customize Your Ancestry.com Homepage

While catching up on my genealogy blog reading this morning, I discovered that Ancestry has added some customization features to the new Ancestry home page design. It's not quite everything that I and other users have been asking for, but it is a good start. If nothing else, I'm very happy to have my search box back up at the top of the page where it should be! And it does show that Ancestry.com is making an effort to listen and respond to customer feedback.

The green "customize this page" button has apparently been on Ancestry.com for almost a week, but I never saw it as it is buried down at the bottom of the page, past the point that I can see without scrolling. One you select the customize option, you can drag the various sections around the page. It's not completely flexible - you can't seem to delete sections you don't use regularly such as the family trees, and you can't move boxes between columns - but at least it's a start in the right direction.

With this update, Ancestry.com also added the option to customize your Quick Links by clicking on the "Add to Quick Links" link located in the header of most pages on the Ancestry.com site. You will be asked to name the link (optional) and save it. The link will be automatically added to your Quick Links. You can also add a Quick Link to any web page by clicking on the "add link" button. Then enter a web address and name the link.