{"id":338,"date":"2013-04-10T09:57:00","date_gmt":"2013-04-10T14:57:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/family-history-through-the-alphabet-message-boards-mailing-lists\/"},"modified":"2013-07-02T22:58:40","modified_gmt":"2013-07-03T03:58:40","slug":"family-history-through-the-alphabet-message-boards-mailing-lists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/family-history-through-the-alphabet-message-boards-mailing-lists\/","title":{"rendered":"Family History Through the Alphabet \u2013 Message Boards & Mailing Lists"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Family-History-Through-the-Alphabet\"<\/p>\n

For 26 weeks I will take you on a family history journey through the alphabet, one letter at a time.\u00a0 I have decided that each post will be educational in nature, focusing on topics related to resources, methodology, tools, etc.\u00a0 Although the challenge is complete, there are still some people who are finishing up and Alona, the host, is encouraging others to participate anyway.\u00a0 Additional information on the challenge, can be found at Take the \u2018Family History Through the Alphabet\u2019 Challenge<\/a>.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

\n

\"m\"Message boards and mailing lists can be good tools for genealogy research.\u00a0 There are plenty of boards and lists out there covering a variety of topics, surnames, and places.\u00a0 I tend to favor Ancestry Message Boards<\/a> and RootsWeb Mailing Lists<\/a> because they are popular and because I can subscribe to them using my RSS reader and not have to worry about filling up my inbox.\u00a0 (Note:\u00a0 RootsWeb Message Boards are the same as Ancestry Message Boards, but for whatever reason, you cannot subscribe to them via RSS.)<\/p>\n

Wait a minute\u2026did she just say that I don\u2019t have to subscribe via email?\u00a0 Yes, you read right.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"ReaderList\"I personally don\u2019t like to receive a ton of email each day, so any way I can reduce that clutter makes me happy.\u00a0 About a year ago, I discovered that I could actually use RSS to subscribe to Ancestry Message Boards and RootsWeb Mailing Lists and read them in my favorite RSS reader at my convenience.\u00a0 I have a folder in my reader dedicated to message boards and mailing lists so they are all grouped together and I get to them when I can.<\/p>\n

For me, it\u2019s much more convenient than clogging up my inbox (even though when I used this method, I had those emails filtered and routed to a specific folder\u2026but for each new list, I had to set up the filter and that takes time and energy\u2014and I have to remember to do it!).\u00a0 On the right is a partial list of my message board and mailing list subscriptions, currently using Google Reader.<\/p>\n

So how do you subscribe to these via RSS?\u00a0 Let\u2019s look at Ancestry Message Boards first.\u00a0 From the main Message Boards page<\/a>, you can search for or browse through message boards.\u00a0 There are message boards for surnames, places, and general topics.\u00a0 Once you have found a message board that you want to subscribe to, click on the \u201cSubscribe to RSS\u201d link and follow the prompts to add it to your preferred reader.<\/p>\n

\"AncestrySubscribeRSS\"<\/p>\n

I like to change the name of my subscription to something that makes sense to me, so in this example, I would change it to Luxembourg \u2013 Ancestry Message Board. Then I assign it to my Message Boards and Mailing Lists folder and now I\u2019m good to go!<\/p>\n

Similarly, from RootsWeb Mailing List main page<\/a>, you search or browse to find a mailing list of interest.\u00a0 When you get to the list you want, you should see a page that looks like the one below.\u00a0 This page contains the instructions for subscribing \/ unsubscribing to the mailing list\u2014via EMAIL.\u00a0 From this page you can also search or browse the archived messages.\u00a0 You will want to choose the link that says \u201cBrowse the [mailing list ID] archives\u201d at the bottom of the page.<\/p>\n

\"RootsWebMailingListMain\"<\/p>\n

You will then come to a page that lists the archived messages grouped by month\/year.\u00a0 Scroll down to the end of the page and find the RSS button.\u00a0 Click the button and follow the prompts to subscribe using your favorite reader.\u00a0 Again, I change the name of the subscription and place it in the correct folder in my reader.<\/p>\n

\"RootsWebMailingList<\/p>\n

Of course there is more to message boards and mailing lists than following along.\u00a0 In a few weeks, when the alphabet challenge gets to the letter Q, I will discuss queries.<\/p>\n

And of course, there are more message boards and mailing lists out there besides the two I\u2019ve discussed.\u00a0 GenForum<\/a> by Genealogy.com is one, and don\u2019t forget to check out Yahoo! Groups<\/a> and Google Groups<\/a> as there are plenty of genealogy-related groups through both. And be sure to check out Cyndi\u2019s List topics Queries & Message Boards<\/a> and Mailing Lists<\/a> for even more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For 26 weeks I will take you on a family history journey through the alphabet, one letter at a time.\u00a0 I have decided that each post will be educational in nature, focusing on topics related to resources, methodology, tools, etc.\u00a0 Although the challenge is complete, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[27,25,300,29],"tags":[350],"class_list":["post-338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-how-to","category-genblog","category-resources-genblog","category-technology-genblog","tag-family-history-through-the-alphabet","cat-27-id","cat-25-id","cat-300-id","cat-29-id"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3HcLI-5s","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=338"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2777,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338\/revisions\/2777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}