One of the things we love about the internet is the way it can give us access to things we would never be able to see or experience without it. Find a Grave® is a perfect example. Through the help of other members of the Find a Grave community, we can see and read the gravestones of people who live in places all over the world from the comfort of our own homes. All because of you. Behind the scenes our team is making improvements and we hope they help you as you work on the site. We’d like to share more information about these updates, including:
- Updates to help the site be more accessible to all users
- Community Rules
- Brand guidelines for Find a Grave
Updates for site accessibility
Some recent updates are intended to help the site be more accessible for all users and you may have noticed some of those already–changes in colors, different outlines for selected fields, different labeling of fields and more. Many of the changes you won’t have noticed unless you are using a screen reader or other tools designed to make websites more accessible.
One recent update we’ve been working on is an addition to our list pages. Screen readers and other accessibility tools struggle to make sense of ‘infinite scroll’ lists, lists that automatically load more items as you scroll, like those on Find a Grave. To help with this, we’ve added Settings to our search lists that allow you to view the results page by page or to use infinite scroll. Also included is the option to view the search results in a condensed list.
Community Rules
Another recent update we’d like to point to is an update to our Community Rules. Ancestry has one set of community rules for their family of sites and we’ve updated our site to link to these rules rather than have our own. The Find a Grave community does amazing work together and the Community Rules can help by clarifying boundaries and expectations to avoid abuse and hard feelings. You can find the link to the Community Rules at the bottom of our homepage. You can read these rules in a variety of languages by selecting Language in the upper right corner. As you scroll down on the page, you’ll notice a couple of additional rules that apply specifically to Find a Grave. These have to do with suggesting edits and messaging to help our community work together to update memorials, and with ensuring sensitivity for the diverse cultural meanings of burial grounds and cemeteries and obtaining permission before adding information from them to Find a Grave.
Brand Guidelines
The third update has to do with our brand guidelines for the site. Find a Grave has been around for nearly 30 years and the site name represents our incredible community and the work you accomplish together on the site daily. Find a Grave is quite literally what people are doing when they come and search for a grave on the site and what you do when you visit cemeteries to photograph graves and transcribe them into memorials. Our brand guidelines for Find a Grave, provide logos and a style guide to use when sharing information about the site. We ask that when referencing the site, you use the full name with capital letters for the ‘Find’ and ‘Grave’ and a lowercase ‘a.’ We avoid using acronyms for the site name and instead use Find a Grave. If you need to use an acronym, please use FG.
Thanks for your input as we’ve made these updates. Our sincere thanks to the community for all your time, hard work, and efforts while sharing your contributions for this vital work. You have made Find a Grave what it is today and should be proud of all you are accomplishing together.
Find a Grave has always done such a wonderful job.
I love being able to look up graves for people that don’t live around here. I indexed our whole cemetery so people could find their lost loved ones. Have provided names to people donating stones for those buried long ago and have no relation living nearby.
Has helped people in my family and Mom and Dad’s friend.
I understand and appreciate all that you do all the time for Find a Grave. I particularly like and commend you on addressing users who use a screen reader. My late husband was blind, and he used a screen reader and my sisterinlaw now does as well. So I know firsthand how much it is appreciated that you are addressing issues. Thank you! I think FG is just getting more and more useful and helpful in my research. You offer so much information, it is amazing.
I really do enjoy Find a Grave….you could say I am not addicted. The thing I am having a hard time dealing with is not being able to post a photo or leave a flower on a new memorial that I did not create. Many are of close friends, etc How do you keep up when the 90 days is over? Carol Hoch 47059088
Found many of Relatives.
I agree that this is an unfortunate change. I’ve dealt with it by creating a virtual cemetery for those memorials that I want to come back to later to leave flowers.
Thank you.
I appreciate you putting the thing about not using acronyms for FindaGrave in writing and it’s cool that y’all are leaning into more accessibility options.
Dunno if this is the right place to make suggestions, but here it goes:
It would be nice to have the option to download entire cemeteries spreadsheet style, like you can do for photo requests. I don’t know if that conflicts with some of Ancestry’s copyright stuff or not, but it would be very useful when I’m trying to locate graves in cemeteries that are in the middle of nowhere and give me no cell service.
I’m sure I’m not the only person to mention this but it would also be great to have a generic photo to designate that a person has been cremated or otherwise has a non-traditional resting place. It’s always annoys me to see the ‘no grave photo’ thing under my mom’s memorial, just because she was cremated. It would be nice if that little byline could be updated to reflect the fields that let you put in ‘cremated’ or ‘burial details unknown.’ At the very least, doing that for ‘cremated’ would be helpful — I know sometimes burials can still be discovered years down the line.
I know y’all are probably super understaffed but I appreciate everything you’re able to accomplish for this site.
I agree with AJKR and would also appreciate knowing if a cemeteries spreadsheet option becomes available. Like her, I also appreciate all of your hard work!
I have been accessing and actively participating in the Find a Grave website since the beginning. My brother was the one who advised me of the existence of this website, and I have used it as a reference tool extensively as well as left quite a number of memorials both personal, family and friend memorials, as well as memorials to public and entertainment figures. I have to admit, I do still prefer the original Find a Grave home page look. I miss the old, familiar headstone with the big question mark on the face of it. I am used to the “new” home page by now, but I am still referring to it as “new”, even though it has been around for several years. Keep up the good work, Find a Grave.
I love find a grave and all of the people that lovingly give their time researching. I have posted many memorials and visit them quite often. It is also great for genealogy. Keep up the great work “Find a Grave”
Is it possible to do something to make it possible to find a grave even if we don’t know the exact way a name is listed ie John Doe, John E.Doe, Dr. John Doe, etc.? Thank you.
I wish there was a symbol to check if we are a relative of the person in our memorials. I would write to the manager of the memorial if I thought they might have additional family information. Most times, they have just taken a photo and created the memorial and know nothing.
most memorials are created by volunteers… we can’t expect them to know each person’s life details…
I usually just enter the last name, death year, and state… it could be a long list, but research can take work…Find a Grave is pretty good about including very close names, but if you put J. Doe, you only get those with a “J”, not J names…
Thank you for providing this fantastically useful website. Being a Find a Grave contributor for some years was one of my greatest delights. Now that I’m a bit older, getting around is more difficult, but my fingers still tingle when I pass a local cemetery or old churchyard, and I’m happy to update information I have entered on this site.
Bless all these beautiful people and thank you from our heart.
Tom Soles
My gratitude for the most valued site impacting my senior hobby.
Because of a retirement involvement, my interest sometimes covers most countries across the world. It has been a wonderful way to post, or find a burial record and details of folks we know of, or have actually met through the years. Some countries have several of interest, some countries very a few.
The co-operation between management and owners is commendable. My thanks.
I appreciate the attempt to honor veterans. Why can’t it say Veteran in red. Why do they only get a v?
Yes you are right about veterans. I agree
I say, why can’t we make the Veterans and anyone who has served (be they veteran or not) in Red and a blue star!!!
I loved the dog tags !!!
I agree !!!!!!!!
I agree that it would be nice if veterans had a more visible identification however as a former software developer I realize that it may not be a simple task. I have been a Find a Grave member for more than ten years and have used it for several different purposes. I am a cemetery manager and find users have entered records for individuals for whom we have no records. I know of one such person who is actually buried in a nearby cemetery beside her husband.
Love the new changes. I used the site to help document our church’s cemetery when we applied for a state historical marker for our church. This led to cleaning the headstones (used d/2 biological solution), so they were readable and adding over a hundred memorials to the site. I have used extensively in finding relative connections, it’s a huge gold mine.
– agree with the cremation idea, would like to see a standard “grave” photo
– would love a way to be able to find an easier way for last names for women who have had multiple husbands. multiple last name boxes perhaps, especially if you don’t know all of them.
– like the veteran’s designation, a gold star for those KIA or a blue star for those who served maybe
– we have a number of burials in our cemetery that we know are there but no headstones exist, would like to see maybe a standard “no stone” photo to use.
Thanks for all the hard work from the community.
I wonder if it would be possible for Funeral Homes to include the names of deceased whose family had cremated. Since most cremations are conducted by the funeral home, it could be possible to get permission to enter that information.
I have fond that some of my memorials ID numbers have been changed even thought I created them. If an ID Numbers is changed the person that created them should be notified.