Help:Adopt-a-page/Getting Started

Registering on the wiki
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" wiki pages
Once registered, the first thing you will need to do is set the pages you've adopted to "watch" status, which will notify you of any changes made to those pages. Here's how:


 * Once you have logged in and are on a page you have adopted, look on the upper right side of the page on the toolbar with watch, share and print.
 * Click watch and it will respond telling you that you are now watching that page
 * “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.

Learning about policy changes saves rework
Changes occur often on wikis regarding policies, governance, stylistic issues, time-saving templates, and even the roles of adopters and moderators. When such changes occur, it is good to be aware of them early because this saves one from making many page edits using obsolete rules and having to correct them later.

At FamilySearch Wiki, changes that affect adopters, moderators, and other contributors are proposed, discussed, and decided on an online forum called the FamilySearch Wiki Contributors' Corner. In order for you to be aware of these discussions, impact their outcome, and learn of changes early in order to save time and prevent unnecessary rework later, you will want to register on the forums and subscribe to the Contributors' Corner forum. This will allow you to receive notifications via email when new issues are being discussed.

Forum registration
Forum registration IS separate from the wiki or any other FamilySearch product. That is expected to change in the second quarter of 2011 when the forums will use the same usernames and passwords as the wiki and the rest of FamilySearch. For now, though, users must register separately for the forums and the wiki.

Navigating from the wiki to the forums
To get to the forums, you could just type forums.familysearch.org into the address bar of your Internet browser and press Enter. But if you prefer to use a link from the wiki to get to forums, here is the path:


 * 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.

How to register on the forums

 * On the forums, under the Welcome section at the top, click the blue register link. Follow the prompts to register.
 * 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. You will basically be 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. Take a moment to browse the forums and see the kinds of discussions that occur there.

Subscribing to the Contributors' Corner forum

 * After registering and verifying your email address, sign in to the forums.
 * At the forum home page, navigate to the FamilySearch Wiki Contributors' Corner forum. It can be found near the bottom of the forum home screen in the FamilySearch Wiki section.
 * Click Forum Tools, then Subscribe to this forum.
 * When new posts are added to the forum, you will receive notifications via email.

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.


 * 1) Using the navigation menu on the right side of the page, expand Personal Tools by clicking on the arrow out to the right.
 * 2) The first item you see under Personal Tools should be your username. Click on this, and it will take you to your user page.
 * 3) Before you make your first edit to your user page, a message will display there saying "This page has not been created yet." Do not let that confuse you; just click on Edit This Page and begin typing.

Ideas for your user page
A user page is a great place to tell a bit about yourself and link to wiki articles and other sites you find helpful. There are no requirements about what user pages must contain -- they exist to help users -- but here are some ideas of what you might add:


 * A Personal Section telling a little bit about you.
 * A section about your personal genealogical projects.
 * Links to pages you moderate.
 * Links to Help pages you use often.
 * A section about any genealogical associations with which you are affiliated, and your reponsibilities there.
 * A section that suggests the types of improvements that are still needed on pages within the topic area you oversee. (This, along with a project page is a good way to make a "call to action" that can get others working on your projects!)

To learn more about user pages, see Help:User page and FamilySearch Wiki:User page. To see a couple good examples of user pages, see User:JensenFA and User:Cottrells.

Thanks for adopting!
Now that you have completed these tasks, you are ready to start adding information to the pages you've adopted.