Out on a Limb: Launch Pad

Whenever I tell people I’m a magazine editor, it seems misleading. After all, Family Tree Magazine is more than just a printed periodical.

You can observe this simply by leafing through each issue’s table of contents. Alongside the article headlines, you’ll see a roster of our latest online offerings — whose breadth keeps expanding. In 2008, we added video demos, a monthly podcast and a Web site for kids to our repertoire of research tools.

As I write this, the Family Tree Magazine staff is putting the finishing touches on our new, completely revamped Web site. The next time you log on to <www.familytreemagazine.com>, you’ll discover a more user-friendly setup that makes it easy to find content the content you want: We’ve improved the navigation so you can drill down through the article archives by topic, and jump to our blogs, forum, research toolkits and other features in one click — or search the entire site from any page. Each article offers buttons to bookmark the page, share it via e-mail or social networking sites, and generate a printer-friendly version. You can even subscribe to your favorite topics via RSS (really simple syndication). Our home page will highlight more of what’s inside the site, including live blog feeds and links to the most recently posted articles. Best of all, the technology behind this new site will enable us to add more content more often.

In short, it’ll make Family Tree Magazine an even better resource for discovering, preserving and celebrating your family history. So once you’ve absorbed all the genealogy advice in this print issue, fire up your Web browser and take a tour of our new online home — then tell us your impressions. E-mail FTMedit@fwpubs.com or post a note in our Talk to Us Forum <www.familytreemagazine.com/forum>.