This site is a community area of the genealogy website, Ancestry.com. The stated purpose of Rootsweb is to bring people together to share and support each other regarding genealogy research. The main category links on the home page include ‘Searches’, ‘Family Trees’, ‘Mailing Lists’, ‘Message Boards’, ‘Websites’, ‘Passwords’ and ‘Help’. Users may search family trees, the Rootsweb site, or the Ancestry.com parent site.
Links are presented under the topics of ‘Getting Started’, ‘Search Engines & Databases’, ‘Websites’, ‘Tools & Resources’ and more. The site contains a confusing array of user contributed information, search results from various databases and volunteer projects. It is recommended users make use of the ‘Getting Started’ page and other help resources before beginning research on this site.
Users may request free web space on this site. Many pages are dedicated to a specific region, or a surname. Some pages are a listing of family tree names with a request for more information. There are pages that have had the information removed by the creator for various reasons. Historical & Genealogical Societies may request free web space also. Pages hosted by this site may not include re-directs to external sites, affiliate advertising, music & video files or file storage use.