Multiple changes to FamilySearch websites

FamilySearch websites continue their evolution from multiple individual "Beta" sites into a unified structure under the umbrella of FamilySearch.org. The individual sites still maintain, to some extent, their own identities, but the interface continues to incorporate more links and changes to make them all word together as a single website. With the exception of New.FamilySearch.org, most of the sites are now pretty well incorporated into FamilySearch.org.

In case you have missed the very recent changes, here is the line up so far:

The former Record Search Pilot is now completely incorporated into a newly named heading called simply "Records." See this screen shot:

You can click on the image to enlarge it. You will see that the names of the links have been shortened. Records, instead of Historical Records and Trees instead of Family Trees and Catalog instead of Family History Library Catalog and so forth. These are more than merely cosmetic changes since the idea is to integrate those formerly disparate sites into the main website, cutting down the names reduces the association with the former sites. I don't really know if that is what they were trying to do, but that is the result anyway.

FamilySearch added a link called "Books" that goes directly to the Brigham Young University Family History Archive, which, by the way, when you get to the startup page is no longer identified as being from BYU except in the URL. 

There is still some streamlining that needs to be done. There is an extra page for going the FamilySearch Research Wiki, which shows a very out-of-date total for the number of articles. I might also mention that the counter on the Books page hasn't worked for over a year. We have no idea how many books are online or scanned.

There was an issue of the startup page for FamilySearch.org changing when you logged in. Some of the menu items changed. But that has been corrected and Indexing has now replaced Give Back which has moved to the bottom of the page. Several of the links at the bottom of the page have also changed.

Some of the websites are still obscured by the structure. For example Forums.FamilySearch.org is invisible and FamilyTech.FamilySearch.org is still hidden on the Learn page.

FamilyTech.FamilySearch.org has been undergoing a complete facelift. I will have to go into that in another post. All of the changes seem to work to integrate the separate programs, but I am sure that there will be more changes as we go along. Most of the changes are occurring unannounced, by the way.