FLHERNAN-L Archives

From: "D. W. Byrd" <>
Subject: [FLHERNAN] changes at rootswebs urls
Date: Sun, 16 Mar 2008 10:48:53 -0400

There are changes coming at Rootswebs in the URLS. So when you go to find
pages located at Rootsweb, the URLS will look different. The pages for the
Genweb counties located on rootsweb will look different.

'


The following was written by Tim Sullivan, CEO of The
Generations Network,
Inc. and is posted here at the RootsWeb blog:
http://bigfile.rootsweb.com/newsroom/?p=111



As you know, The Generations Network has hosted and funded the
RootsWeb
online community since June 2000, thereby maintaining RootsWeb
as the
world's oldest and largest free genealogy website. TGN remains
committed to
this mission and believes that RootsWeb is an absolutely
invaluable and
complementary resource to Ancestry.com, our flagship commercial
family
history site. We believe in both services and want to see both
communities
prosper and grow.

As part of this goal, we have decided to "transplant" RootsWeb
onto the
Ancestry.com domain beginning next week. This move will not
change the
RootsWeb experience or alter the ease of navigation to or within
RootsWeb.
RootsWeb will remain a free online experience. What will be
different is
that the Web address for all RootsWeb pages will change from
www.
rootsweb.com to www. rootsweb.ancestry.com. Again, the RootsWeb
experience
is not changing.

The decision to host RootsWeb on Ancestry.com is being made for
one primary
reason: we believe that the users of each of our two main
websites can be
better served if they have access to the best services available
on both.
Simply stated, we want to introduce more Ancestry.com users to
RootsWeb and
vice versa.

Today, despite the fact that Ancestry.com and RootsWeb.com are
the two most
frequently visited family history sites on the Web, only 25
percent of
visitors to Ancestry.com visited RootsWeb in January 2008, while
only 20
percent of visitors to RootsWeb visited Ancestry.com (according
to Comscore
Media Metrix). We think we will serve our users best by doing a
better job
of letting them know what is available on both Ancestry.com and
RootsWeb.
Hosting RootsWeb on Ancestry.com is the first step towards
making this
happen, but we will absolutely look for more and better ways
down the road
to advance this goal.

Hosting RootsWeb on Ancestry.com will also make it easier for
us to make
changes and improvements to the RootsWeb experience in the
future.

All old RootsWeb URLs will continue to work, whether they are
bookmarks or
favorites, links to or from a hosted page or URLs manually typed
in your
Internet browser. We will have a redirect in place so that all
old URLs will
automatically end up on the appropriate new RootsWeb URL. You
will never
need to update your old favorites or links unless you want to.
We have
worked to make the transition as seamless as possible for our
users, and
this change should have a minimal impact on your experience with
the site.

RootsWeb will remain a free online experience dedicated to
providing you
with a place where our community can find their roots together.
If you have
questions regarding this change please email them to
< mailto:> .

Thanks,

Tim Sullivan

CEO

The Generations Network, Inc."

Deborah Byrd
Webpage manager

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• [FLHERNAN] changes at rootswebs urls by "D. W. Byrd" <>