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...