Genebase was temporarily down from 3:15 PM to 11:20PM PST on Wednesday December 24.  The site is now back up.

The DNA browsing feature at Genebase has been updated today.  Check it out by logging in to your account and clicking “My DNA”.

The new DNA browser will allow you to view all of the tests that you have taken in one place.

Please give this update a try!  This update is especially helpful for those members who are tracing multiple lines and want to consolidate all of their tests at one location. 

The tree merge feature has been updated to allow individuals to merge their accounts into existing family trees. 

To merge your account into an existing family tree, go to the tree, find your name/profile in the tree, go to the profile page, and click the “activate profile” link. 

This feature is especially useful for individuals from the same family tree who have started separate and accounts and want to link the existing accounts into a single family tree.

The Y-DNA STR marker table will be updated later today from Version 3.3 to Version 3.4.  Click here to view the STR marker table with the corresponding motifs counted for Version 3.4 at Genebase. 

Please note that you will not need to do anything to upgrade to Version 3.4.  All markers in the database will be automatically updated to the counting system used in Version 3.4 and all new markers added to the database will be Version 3.4. 

To follow is a summary of changes to the marker table for this upgrade:

GEDCOM upload feature has been updated:

1.  Prior to August 18, 2008, the GEDCOM upload was not able to distinguish between living and deceased individuals and uploaded all individuals as deceased because status is not a GEDCOM field.  The user had to go back into the tree to manually change deceased people back to living after the upload is complete.  The new GEDCOM upload has a greatly improved filtering system to estimate the status of individuals in your upload.  If you had previously uploaded a GEDCOM prior to Aug 18, 2008 and had not yet linked it to your profile (ie not yet converted it to primary), we would recommend re-uploading your GEDCOM.

2.  GEDCOM uploads after Aug 18, 2008 contain more detailed date information.  If you uploaded your GEDCOM prior to Aug 18, 2008 and have not yet linked it to your profile, we recommend re-uploading.

3.  Improved linking of GEDCOM files.  The merge wizard has been improved to allow users to more easily integrate and merge GEDCOMs into their existing account. 

Please give these new features a try if they are applicable to you.

A new Help Center is now available.  Commonly asked questions will constantly be added to the Help Center.  To get to the Help Center, click the “help” link at the top of the page or the “Help Center” link at the bottom of the page.  Users can browse topics in the Help Center or search for answers using the search feature.  If an answer to your question cannot be found, you can submit a ticket to us using the ticket system provided in the Help Center. 

To view the results of your tickets, go to the Help Center and click the “View Tickets” link.

The navigation bar on the left side of the Genebase main page has been updated to allow better access to the DNA Ancestry features.  The vertical navigation bar now allows Users to click directly in “Paternal Line” or “Maternal Line”.  Also, Users can now access the “Ancestry Tools” section directly from the same vertical navigation bar.

The Genemail feature was updated today to include the original message in all responses.  Previously, the original message was not tagged to the response when you responded to Genemail messages in your inbox. 

To respond to a Genemail, click “reply”:

The original message is now included in the reply:

The navigation has been updated to allow faster browsing.  The previous navigation allows you to skip 3 pages at a time.  The new nagivation allows you to skip up to 10 pages at a time both backwards and forwards.  This new navigation is now activated throughout Genebase, including Genemail, the photo section, ancestry and search results.  Give it a try!

We’ve made some changes to the profile picture feature so that the picture is larger and easier to see.

This is what the profile picture used to look like before:
(max width and height 150 pixels)

This is what the profile picture looks like now:
(max width 200 pixels, max height 300 pixels)

Profile pictures that were uploaded before today will remain small.  However, all profile pictures that you upload from now on will be the new larger size.

Once you replace or re-upload your profile picture, it will show up as the larger size. 

To re-upload an existing profile picture:

1. Go to the individual’s profile page
2. Click on the profile photo or click on “edit profile”.  If you click “edit profile”, you will be redirected to the “edit profile page” and from this page, click “profile photo”.  This will bring you to the “edit profile photo” screen.
3. Click “browse” and select the correct picture from your computer.  The old picture will appear alongside the new picture.
4. Click “save” and the new profile picture will replace the old one.