Classic FamilySearch is No More

Many of you are familiar with the ongoing changes at FamilySearch and the following will be no surprise.  The following is extracted from a recent posting from The Ancestry Insider blog, dated June 24,  outlining the demise of the classic familysearch site.   For Family History Consultants and Family History Center staff, you may want to remind your patrons of the changes.

Once again, our sincere thanks to Peter and Linda as we move through this transition.  We’ve decided to not publish any articles on the blog for the summer with resumption of postings in September.  We wish you a marvellous summer !

Don & Glenda

Classic FamilySearch is No More

Posted: 24 Jun 2012 11:05 PM PDT

Without fanfare last Monday FamilySearch turned off the home page of its Classic.FamilySearch.org website, redirecting traffic to the current www.familysearch.org home page. (The old catalog remains available, however.)

Some users are not pleased with the retirement. Elaine Lee said, “Please can you tell me WHY you have RUINED a perfectly good website. I have used this website for 12 years and now find it so confusing.”

First released to the public in May 1999, the site was an instant success. The traffic load in the first few days was overwhelming and crashed the website.

FamilySearch.org, May 1999

For many years, site navigation was enabled via four color-coded menu pages; the home page was green.

FamilySearch.org, June 2001

In later years, a search form was added to the home page and color coding was eliminating. This home page design continued until it was shut down Monday.

The original FamilySearch.org as it appeared in its final years

In December 2010, this original FamilySearch.org website became classic.familysearch.org. (See “Beta.familysearch.org Replaces www.familysearch.org.”) It was replaced with the current FamilySearch.org (not to be confused with new.familysearch.org, which will be replaced by FamilySearch Family Tree).

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