Are you an Ancestry. com subscriber, and you want to make sure you get the most
out of the platform and have the best experience possible? Then I invite you to try to change some
of the settings that you have on your trees and to protect your privacy. And in this video, I'll
show you how to do it. So whenever you log into Ancestry, I want to make sure that you go up to
this right-hand corner and click on this circle. You may or may not have a picture there just yet.
We'll come back to that a little bit later. But I want you to click on "Account Settings." The
first settings I want you to explore are "Site Preference" settings. So over on the left, you're
going to come down to the one that says "Site Preferences." And then it will look like this.
Now, there are a lot of options you can have. Show Member Tree Hints. Do you want to see
hints for other people's trees show up in your hint list? Now, I have a video about Tree Hints
versus Record Hints. And if you haven't watched that, that will be linked in the Show Notes.
But I'm not a really big fan of the Member Trees. I'll look at them later if I need them. But I like
that I can take this off. Now, Ancestor Hints are a little bit different than the Member Trees. The
Ancestor Hints will show up on your pedigree chart or in your DNA match list of common ancestors
and recommend some potential ancestors for you based on the trees of other members. Now,
I'm actually going to leave that on. And I'm going to recommend you do that as well. Not all of the
recommendations are going to be accurate. But I don't mind this one as much as the tree hints in
the hint list. So let's go ahead and leave it on. Now, you can upload more than one tree to
your Ancestry account. And as you can see here, I have quite a few trees. I am working on a lot
of research in the Southwest of the United States. So you can see the different tress I have there.
Now, maybe in my hints that show up way up here and where it says "Hire An Expert." Then there's
a little leaf with a dot. If I click on that, then there's going to be the hints that I'm going to
be looking at. But maybe I only want to see hints. Let's go back. Maybe I only want to see hints from
the Geisler/Brown tree. And whenever I really want to work on this Geiszler tree, I can have a hint
show up up here. And then, if I want to focus on some of these other trees, one at a time,
I can turn them on. There are a number of other community preferences that you want to have. Those
who are used, uh, using Ancestry to build their family tree- either the genetic genealogy side
or the genealogical side. Do you want them to be able to contact you? You can have them contact you
through the message system only. Or you can say, "Hey, yeah I. I'm never going to answer an email,
so don't even try to bother contacting me." Then you can go ahead and click that on. I hope if you
select message "Members Can Contact Me," that you'll actually respond when you get messages.
Now, some people like to change the color of their pedigree
view. So let me go up here and show you what that looks like. So, we'll go ahead and look at the
New Mexico tree that I'm working on. So, right here, this is what the coloration looks like in
the tree. Well, maybe you don't really like that. Well, there are a couple of things you can chose.
We'll go back to the "Site Preferences." We'll scroll down here, and maybe you really like purple
or blue or jade. I'm going to go ahead and try the jade and click "Save." And we'll go back. And now
this is what the color of the tree is. So, you can change the color to suit your "inspiration
style" let's just say. So, that takes care of the "Site Preferences." But I don't know about you.
I really don't like to get a lot of emails in my inbox from different websites. What can you do
over here in Ancestry? you have the option to turn on and off the different notifications you have.
So, here you can choose to have maybe you want email notifications for that Geiszler/Brown tree,
but I just want push notifications. Those are the ones that are up here when I'm on the platform.
You can send me some hints. But when I'm in my email box, I only want to hear from this tree.
You can do the same thing with your DNA test. I manage multiple tests. Do I want to have
notifications into my email when there's new DNA matches appearing? Then I can decide yes,
I want this one. Yes, I want this one. Yes, I want that one. I'm using my whiteboard just to
make it easier. Or I can just say no, just send me notifications through the actual platform.
And then collaboration, um, notifications will let you know when other members have added photos,
comments, and so on. What's different is these are hints. This is when Ancestry does their
computer-generated hints. This is when other people are adding to trees very similar to yours.
Now, that you fit into your notification settings and your "Site Preference" settings, there's one
more setting you want to do, and that is "Tree Settings." Click on your Trees. And then choose
the tree that you want to change settings for. What I want to point out to you is that you can
change the name of your tree anytime. Now, this is a Teller Family Tree from Colorado. So, I can
change it. Put in the first name. Maybe I want to put in Helen Teller Family Tree. The other things
I can do is I can add a description. So, this is a four generations of Colorado families. The idea is
to give other people who may come across your tree the starting point of what you're researching.
And maybe the purposes that you're doing with your tree. You can also click or unclick the build your
stories. I like to do that. It affects the life story page. And then I save my changes. The other
thing you do want to do that are going to impact your genetic family tree is choosing your home
person. We're going to go ahead and change this. Maybe we don't want it to be Helen. I'm going to
browse from this tree. But I'm going to put a person's name in search, and maybe I want to do
George Briggs. Now, if this is you and this is the home person, and you can go ahead and select here.
Click "Select." And what's going to happen is. Now, this is the home person, and this is you.
And if you attach DNA to your family tree, then they're going to say your DNA goes to George
Briggs. There's other training videos on how to do all of that. We're not going to cover that in
this tree. But I also want you to do the "Privacy Settings." This is definitely where your research,
as well as your genetic matches, are going to be impacted based on the selections you have. You
can have a public tree. In a public tree, no one can write on or change, but they can view all of
the resources you have. If there are living people in the tree, they will be privatized automatically
so long as you don't put a death date. There are some other things you could do to ensure
that the living people are protected, but Ancestry does not show the living people.
So, you can mark that as public, and then you can read through the benefits. This is the
privacy setting where you can make your tree not found by others. If you want to prevent
anyone from seeing any of your research and you don't want to take advantage of
the genetic matches and ThruLines, then you need to also select "Also prevent from being found by
search." So, if you've watched our other videos about DNA ThruLines and how you need to have a
tree that's private but searchable in order to make ThruLines work, then this box needs to be
unchecked. But if you want to completely lock down your tree and nobody can see anything,
then you go ahead and mark that setting. The next thing you should do is enhance your profile.
Studies have shown from Ancestry that those who have done a little bit of tweaking to the
profiles signal to the community that you want to be engaged with. So, the next thing we're going
to do is we're going to change our profile. So, this is a bit of an outdated picture. But if you
even if you don't have a picture, you can follow these steps in order to change your picture
on Ancestry. So, there's your picture. Click "Change Photo," and you can click "Select Any
Picture." So, I'm going to go ahead and select this picture and click "Open." And now I need
to just use my left mouse button to move myself up and down so that I can show up in the circle. And
you can zoom. In but I don't know that you really want to see my teeth all that much.
But if you have a different type of photo and you want to zoom in, you can do that there.
And click "Save." And now, you'll have a photo on your profile. So, you can change
information about yourself. And I just say that "hey, I'm on the Family History Fanatics channel."
But you can tell us a little bit about it. You're an adoptee. You are working on your Townsend brick
wall. Whatever you need to do to explain what you're doing. You can go ahead and edit that.
If you speak multiple languages, you can click here and then choose the different languages
that you speak. I don't know that ASL will benefit anybody, and I'm not completely fluent, so I don't
use that. So, I need to get out of it. Done. Your family history experience can be another
thing that you choose to update. You can click "Edit" and then choose from: prefer not to answer,
beginner, intermediate, advanced. I probably should go ahead and say advanced. When you
started researching and how often you participate. Another great one to update is are my interests.
So, I actually need to update this a little bit. I have the Townsends on my public tree.
um. I have the Sparks and Weakleys. I have the Geiszler's. But let's say I wanted to put in
the last name Anderson. This is from Howard County,
Missouri. And as you can see right here. I went ahead and gave a little bit of description. This
is my Swedish ancestor. I'm looking for William Anderson, originally from Sweden lived in Howard
County. He had a child with Agnes, and she's originally from Ohio. Show this research interest
so other members can see it on my profile. I do want people to go ahead and notice that I'm
working on that. So, I can go ahead and click "Save." And then when I go back and refresh,
you'll see the Andersons, the Townsends, the Sparks. And you can expand and see more
if I want to share more information about myself. I can "Do you consider yourself a
creative person?" How would you describe yourself? Do you consider yourself a creative person?
Sure, why not. And now I can keep going through and answering some of those questions.
Are you willing to help other Ancestry members with their research?
And there's some options you can put here. So, lots of great things you can do to update your
profile. And one of the reasons you want to update that profile is to let people know what you're
most interested in. If they decide to reach out to you to ask you DNA questions or genealogy research
questions, you kind of made it clear what level of participation you're open to sharing as well as
the lines that you're most interested in researching. Notice I didn't put the Claybaughs.
I'm not against the Claybaughs, but there's a lot of people who work on that line. So I won't put
that on. And yet if people want to reach out to me about our common Claybaughs ancestors,
that's okay. I'll talk to them. So, I hope you can correct the settings on
Ancestry.com and really make the experience with your subscription the best it can be.
If you want more tips and tricks on how to use Ancestry.com, be sure to check the playlist above.
And if you're ready for something new, check out this playlist right here.