Help:Adopt-a-page/Getting Started

Registering
You will need to register at the Family Search Wiki Site. If you currently have a userid and password for any Family Search product, it will work on the Wiki, and you do not need to re-register.

From any Wiki page, go to the upper right corner of the page and you will see "sign in" Click on that, and when the screen comes up to sign in, on the bottom there will be a place to register a new account. Create your account and log in.

Watching Your Pages
Once registered, the first thing you will need to do is set your county/counties to "watch" status, which will notify you of any changes made to that county Wiki. Once you have logged in and are on the state or county page you have adopted, look on the upper right side of the page on the toolbar with "watch," "share" and "print." Click on "watch" and it will respond telling you that you are now watching that state/county. “Watching” will cause an e-mail to be generated to you any time another user makes an edit to your page showing you what was changed. This makes keeping an eye on the page content much easier.

Registering on The Forums
Next, you will want to register on the Forums so you will have access. Forum registration IS separate from Wiki or any other project. The forums are where queries are posted, as well as moderator/adopter/admin discussions. On the right hand side of your county page you will see a gray pull down navigation menu with the main titles of “Views,” “Community,” “Toolbox” and “Personal Tools.” Click on the small arrow out to the right of “Community,” opening up the pull down menu. Go down the menu and click on “Forums.” On the forums, under the Welcome section at the top, you will see the blue underlined “register.” Click on this and register. Take a moment to browse the forums and see all that is offered. After you register, the forum software will send an email message to the address you used to register. Open this message and follow its instructions to confirm your registration by verifying that the email address you used to register is truly yours. (This prevents people from registering with the wrong email address.) After you verify your email address, you will be able to sign in to the forum and post new messages.

Creating Your User Page
The last thing you need to do to get set up is to create your user page. This will tell users and contributors about you and your organization. Using the navigation menu on the right side of the page, expand "Personal Tools" by clicking on the arrow out to the right. The first item you see should be your username. Click on this, and it will take you to your user page. It will say "This page has not been created yet." Do not let that confuse you, just click on "Edit This Page" and begin typing. You might want to create a Personal Section telling a little bit about you and maybe what you are working on personally in your genealogy, as well as a Genealogical section, telling about your organization as well as any other information. You may want to use this area to encourage contributions to your page as well as offer help to users.

Once you have completed these tasks, you are ready to start adding information to your page.