Scott_J on Family Tree Circles

We saw a lot of growth in Family Tree Circles this year.

New users: 5,170
New Journals: 1,063
Spammers stopped at the door: 16,915

Here's a quick look at the weekly traffic. This increase in traffic was a result of a work I did over the summer to clean things up to eliminate spam and make the site better for search engines. This work allows us to get more traffic. As you can see Family Tree Circles is doing better than ever. About 10% of that traffic is from spammers, most of which never sees the light of day, but the traffic is significant.

Thanks to everybody who participated in week 33. I hope you found that interesting and fruitful.

Continuing on with the blogging prompts, here's week 34:

Just open up a new journal and write about whatever comes to mind related to this week's questions.

FamilyTreeCircles member Ngairedith is ahead of the game this week and has already posted one:

Ngairedith's Genealogy Challenge

Thanks to everybody who participated in week 34, Genealoy Challenges.

Here's week 35:

Just open up a new journal and write about whatever comes to mind related to this week's questions.

This past week, I had a phone conversation with Thomas Macentee, a professional genealogist, speaker, and otherwise a really great guy from Chicago, Ill. Thomas runs the excellent website and service, Geneabloggers.com, which is a network of over 2000 Genealogy blogs. (I'm a member with my own genealogy blog here on FamilyTreeCircles.)

I contacted Thomas to see how we might work together to help foster the growth of more genealogy bloggers.

The first thing we came up with is that Thomas was kind enough to allow me to use the 52 Weeks of Blogging Abundance genealogy blogging prompts. Every week there is a new topic to act as inspiration for a blog post, or to simply think about and reflect on in your own genealogy research.

As FamilyTreeCircles is essentially a blogging platform (which is just a place to write online), I thought it would be fun for people to use these weekly prompts here on FamilyTreeCircles.

52 Weeks of Abundant Genealogy created by Amy Coffin is a series of weekly blogging prompts courtesy of GeneaBloggers for genealogists and others to discuss resources in the genealogy community including websites, applications, libraries, archives, genealogical societies and more.

We're more than halfway through 2012, and we'll be starting on week 33. But that's ok. There isn't really a sequence here, just a new idea every week.

Just open up a new journal and write about whatever comes to mind related to this week's questions.

I'll be posting these blogging prompts here each weekend for the upcoming week. I'll also be including these in the weekly newsletter. If you'd like to get these prompts in your email along with other newsletter info, make sure you're signed up for the FamilyTreeCircles newsletter.

First, welcome to all the new and returning users who haven't been around a while. We've had a big boost in the past few days because I've been doing some outreach. Thanks to everyone for posting their help requests, journals, and questions.

Here's what's changed in the past week or so:

1. "Lookup Requests" have been renamed to "Help Requests". But it's the same. I felt that "Lookup requests" was a bit too specific when people are really just stuck and need help and didn't really know whether it was a question or lookup request. As you can see by the sea of purple in the list of posts, it seems to be working.

2. "Thanks" are now "Likes" on posts. Years ago when I added this, I didn't want to call them likes because I didn't want to be Facebook. On the other hand, "Thanking" is proabably a little too specific. I've also included the total number of likes a post has. We'll see if that gets used more. I'll be making it a bit more prominent when I have time to switch from developer to designer for a while.

3. We've had a bit of a changover on the sponsorship of the site. For a few years, MyHeritage has had an exclusive sponsorship which has ended and not being renewed. The bad news is that funding for FamilyTreeCircles has gone away. The good news is that I'm no longer locked down in an exclusive partnership to help pay for FamilyTreeCircles. This site costs a lot to operate, and I've always promised that it will be a free resource. I'll be testing ads and looking for new partners, which is why you see those appearing. I simply can't keep this running for long without some income to offset the costs. I'll get there. Thanks for accepting the ads.

Special thanks to everybody helping people out. I'm always amazed at how few requests for help go unanswered.

More to come...

Week 43: Memorable Genealogy Moment .?Think back to when you first started researching your family history. Is there a memorable early genealogy moment that stands out in your mind? Describe this event or discovery and how it impacted your research going forward.

Write a journal on FamilyTreeCircles about your memorable genealogy moment.

http://www.familytreecircles.com/ejournal.php

When you do, please put ?[52 Weeks]? in the journal title somewhere so I can be sure to see it and feature it right here in this post. (I?m switching to a standard thing to put in the title, which will make it easier).

My Memorable Genealogy Moment

The moment that had the most impact on me, and what is probably the earliest genealogy memory that I have is from when I was a kid. My grandfather signed up my sister and me for a lifetime membership to the Massachusetts Mayflower Society.

30 years later, I’ve tried to do the same for my own children but alas, the Society has become much more strict on their application criteria, and I must fill in many blanks with primary sources, some of which I am afraid are not available.

While I do recognize the importance of sources, this saddens me because I feel this might give them the same jolt of excitement that I got so many years ago that has kept me interested in my own family history.

52 Weeks of Abundant Genealogy ?by? Amy Coffin ?is a series of weekly blogging prompts (one for each week of 2012) that invite genealogists and others to discuss resources in the genealogy community including websites, applications, libraries, archives, genealogical societies and more.

Sorry, playing catch up here. Got a few weeks behind.

Week 44: Genealogy Conferences. What was your best genealogy conference experience? Why is it so memorable in your mind? Who hosted the event? What did you learn from this experience? How does it impact your genealogy research today?

Write a journal on FamilyTreeCircles about Genealogy Conferences

http://www.familytreecircles.com/ejournal.php

When you do, please put ?[52 Weeks]? in the journal title somewhere so I can be sure to see it and feature it right here in this post. (I?m switching to a standard thing to put in the title, which will make it easier).

52 Weeks of Abundant Genealogy ?by? Amy Coffin ?is a series of weekly blogging prompts (one for each week of 2012) that invite genealogists and others to discuss resources in the genealogy community including websites, applications, libraries, archives, genealogical societies and more.

Sorry, playing catch up here. Got a few weeks behind, but I want to keep things in sequence.

Week 45: Genealogy Speakers. Which genealogy speaker has left the biggest impression on you? What is it about that speaker that you like the most? What is his or her general focus? Does this person speak at regional or national conferences? Share why other genealogists should attend this speaker?s sessions.

Write a journal on FamilyTreeCircles about your favorite genealogy speaker.

http://www.familytreecircles.com/ejournal.php

When you do, please put ?[52 Weeks]? in the journal title somewhere so I can be sure to see it and feature it right here in this post. (I?m switching to a standard thing to put in the title, which will make it easier).

52 Weeks of Abundant Genealogy ? ?by? ? Amy Coffin ? ?is a series of weekly blogging prompts (one for each week of 2012) that invite genealogists and others to discuss resources in the genealogy community including websites, applications, libraries, archives, genealogical societies and more.