Updates to the Cemetery Page

[Update – 2 Dec 2021] We’ve made some updates to the new cemetery page based on your feedback. Have a look at the latest and let us know what you think in the comments below.

We’ve been working on an update to cemetery pages on the site and we’d love to get your feedback on what we’ve come up with.

Please take some time to have a look at a few different cemetery pages in the beta version (be sure to look at the various tabs–Memorials, Photos, Maps–for each cemetery), give it some time to sink in and then add your feedback in the comments on this page. Feedback is most helpful for us when it includes your thoughts, questions and suggestions about specific parts of the page.

You can see the beta version of the page for any cemetery by going to a regular cemetery page and then adding /v2 right after the .com in the URL in the address bar.

Here’s an example of a standard cemetery URL:
https://www.findagrave.com/cemetery/84149/albright-cemetery

And here’s the same cemetery with the /v2 added to see the beta version:
https://www.findagrave.com/v2/cemetery/84149/albright-cemetery

If you find a particular cemetery where things look odd, please include the URL for that cemetery in your comment.

We really appreciate your time and any feedback you would like to leave in the comments on this page.

53 comments

  1. Love, love, love the cemetery photos of the individual graves….. Working on two adjoining cemeteries that have many dups and conflicting memorials . This will make reconciling the two much. much easier. Thanks. Theron Rogers.

    • Nice and fresh looking. I especially like the button for adding a memorial. It may be silly but I find the bull’s eye looking thing for percent of graves with photos a bit hard on the eyes. And if you are color blind, as many are, you do not see colors anyhow.
      Nice addition of making the add cemetery photos or see all- upfront and easy to use.

  2. Now that I’ve looked some more and see where you can click to see Famous ones, I definitely love this new layout. Everything is so much nicer and streamlined. Thanks so much!

  3. I love the large main cemetery photo!

    I looked at a couple of other cemeteries I’m familiar with.

    https://www.findagrave.com/v2/cemetery/8309/angelus-rosedale-cemetery

    The large photo isn’t what should be the main photo with the sign. I don’t know if that has anything to do with the beta or that the wrong photo was flagged to be the main photo.

    https://www.findagrave.com/v2/cemetery/57026

    The list of interments seems weird – The famous tab gives the famous ok in alphabetical order but the all tab seems to give them is some sort of random order.

  4. Looks great so far, but my initial feedback is one that isn’t new to this update but unfortunately wasn’t resolved in it either. PLEASE add an ability to back out of the huge expanded photo interface that takes over the whole screen by either clicking outside the area or preferably by hitting the escape key on the keyboard like most websites allow for. This is an issue anywhere you click to see photos, whether that’s a cemetery page or an individual’s memorial page. I’ve sent this feedback before and it’s such a small fix, I really hope that this quality of life improvement can be made at some point.

    Specific to this update though I’d like to recommend that something be added to try and prioritize memorials that have photos when displaying them on the initial cemetery page load. On the example you provided in this post the page loads up and every memorial has no photo, so it’s just a bunch of gray question marks. Perhaps something can be done to show only memorials on the cemetery’s main page where a photo flagged as a headstone is present.

  5. I love the look of the main page and the visualization on % photographed and % GPS.

    I also like the interactive map showing the plot locations based on GPS … and see that the GPS on some that I have uploaded in a cemetery is less than precise (what the heck?). I did find one thing confusing about the search of the interactive map. I was expecting the search to return any name that matched and had GPS coordinates in the cemetery. When it wasn’t returning results of some that I had previously viewed the location I thought there was a bug. I did figure out that “Search this map area” literally means it only searches what is currently in view.

    As a user I can see the benefit of both, but if I had to choose one, I would prefer that the results return any match in the cemetery vs. only the area in the current view to avoid confusion. (If you could zoom to the location that would be really cool.)

    Thanks!

  6. I like seeing the percent with GPS, and percent photographed. The main photo is a bit too large, in my opinion. It covers more than half the screen. That photo should be about half, and then the stats on the right the other half. It will take some getting used to, as many changes do.

  7. In memorial section, I liked seeing the percent with gps as well as photos and then visualization for these percentages. I liked the help information given. In the Map portion, I like the revised map that shows circles for burials. It will be helpful to use this for a cemetery that has poorly assigned gps coordinates back when the iOS app depended on where you were when you uploaded the photo rather than use the data within the photo. Now I can easily delete these coords. Also in the memorial section, I liked the nearby cemeteries listing. Nice job. Thanks.

  8. The V2 cemetery front page looks quite nice. For practical purposes it would be nice if the page opened with the cursor in the “name” field, ready to initiate a search.

    The maps feature (for me) shows graves for which I have uploaded photos. It is not of any real practical use, though.

  9. I looked at a few more pages and see a negative to the new layout. It is the “hiding” of the cemetery description. And no, it isn’t “hidden” but only the first 50 -100 letters show … and to see the rest you have to “click to show” … many times there is pertinent information contained in the description for requesting/locating burials in addition to the history. Below is one example. Preference would be to continue to highlight the cemetery description vs minimizing.

    https://www.findagrave.com/v2/cemetery/22674/elmwood-cemetery?

    Another thing I am noticing is that the default “all” list are not displaying photos … even when a photo is available for the burial. Why is that? Preference would be to display a photo vs. the “missing” icon.

  10. I love the graphic representation of the memorials/photos/gps figures and also really like having the list of nearby cemeteries.

    I also like the icons on the list of memorials (flower and/or GPS) but would laso like to see an icon for thatose with an outstanding photo request.

  11. Just commenting after my first look at the page – it looks clean and easy to figure out. I like it. My first question is – where it says “View All”, will it always bring up ALL the photos in the cemetery? (it did on a few I tried). That can be an awful lot of entries in some cemeteries. I wouldn’t want someone to think they had to scroll through thousands of them in order to find the one they want. Just curious…. I also like the area that says “Nearby Cemeteries”. Will this info show up on the mobile app?

  12. Over all I like V2.

    The ability to add information to the “about” section of the cemetery would be nice. Some have almost no information on them. Who ever created that cemetery didn’t add anything. Also, I’d like see the entire “about” section instead of “read more”.

    I like the circle with the %, but people may think that the % photographed is that of the entire cemetery and not the % of memorials made. A distinction needs to be made about that.

    I like how it was before, with the famous people listed when you are on the main cemetery page. Even though there is a tab for the famous people. I don’t like the new way with a list of people.

  13. I like the fact we can see the GPS location. Not because I’m looking to be able to find a location of a grave. But to see how many memorials have bad GPS.
    This cemetery, that I’m familiar with, has approximately 20% of memorials with GPS has that GPS outside the cemetery, some of them not even close.

  14. Really like how clean and sharp the new page looks – Also like the listing of Nearby Cemeteries – very helpful for those of us to take photos. Will this show up in the mobile app on my phone? One comment – the button that says “View All” really does pull up thousands on listings – maybe difficult for a newbie to realize they need to search by name – is there a way to make the “View All” button less enticing for someone just beginning to use the program?

  15. I think it looks very nice, and the layout makes a lot more sense. All the features you need are there and easy to find. Not crazy about the large photo but I guess I understand why it’s that size.

    I don’t think it’s necessary to show the most recent burials on the main cemetery page.

    I, too, would like to have the cursor in the name first name field when the page opens.

    Map page:
    I really like the new GPS feature, and especially being able to access the information on a computer instead of just on mobile devices.

    There’s a tip on the left that says to hold the Shift key down to select multiple memorials. The only thing that happens when I press shift is that it scrolls the screen up, which I believe is a browser function. Clicking on the map first doesn’t make a difference. I’m using Chrome/Windows 10.

    Also in the tips, it references a Plot All Memorials Button to download, but I don’t see that option. There is a checkbox to Hide Memorials. I also don’t see this option: “Select the arrow and choose Always plot all memorials on this device to always load individual pins.”

    Otherwise, the new map features are very helpful!

  16. Overall, the v2 version cemetery pages look really good. I don’t love the lack of real estate for the cemetery description – I’d rather see that expanded and replace the secondary “photo” section that’s currently below it. There’s already two other ways to see all of the cemetery photos.

    The addition of nearby cemeteries is helpful, and has already turned up a duplicate that I wouldn’t have noticed otherwise.

    I’d rather see the famous tab vs. all memorials tab, especially since there’s no obvious display order for all memorials.

  17. Misc. feedback:

    Under Maps: How to correct the GPS location on a memorial that is clearly outside the cemetery boundaries?

    Do we now need a “request GPS location” like the “request photo” ? They could be one and the same. All of my photos have GPS on them.

    No street names on the maps.

    “Get directions” is a nice addition.

    ??? Under More tips, Select the arrow and choose Always plot all memorials on this device to always load individual pins.. I guess that is “Hide Memorials”.

    Love the full screen map. Add this information to “More Tips” so we know it is up there in the corner.

    Don’t need additional cemetery photos area. .Maybe now is the time to remind people we should have more cemetery photos and fewer church photos.

    https://www.findagrave.com/v2/cemetery/37684/westview-cemetery Looking at all of the incorrect GPS locations for this cemetery will need an explanation beforehand. Or you are going to get a lot of questions.

    Adding v2/ to this cemetery does not show any location? https://www.findagrave.com/cemetery/2632590/abraham-elrod-family-cemetery
    It shows a location before adding the v2/

  18. Thanks for the work thus far as it looks nice. The thing that I don’t care for is the latest memorials showing up when you open up that particular cemetery. What is with all of the gray question marks? Even some the ones that I looked at have a photo showing when you go a step further. What is the value of this particular idea? Just show an alphabetical listing as you already had an option to find a list of No Photos or Photos posted.

  19. There are quite a few things to like–I love the graphic representation of what percent of graves are photographed or have gps coordinates. On two of the cemeteries I looked at, the brief list of burials on the front page are the newest ones, which is very handy for those of us who try to keep up with a particular cemetery, but that doesn’t seem to be true on other cemeteries. I also like the nearby cemeteries listing.

    On the negative side, PLEASE get rid of the huge photo of the cemetery and go back to the small one. Having the photo so big pushes the search bar down “below the fold” so we have to scroll to get to it–and what most of us are doing when we go to the front page of a cemetery is searching for a burial. That is by far my biggest complaint. We can always click through to see bigger cemetery photos if we want. The other negative has been mentioned above–for some reason the memorials listed on the front page all show as not having photos even if they do.

    You suggested we visit memorials, maps and photos pages, but I see no difference on anything but the front page of a cemetery.

    But PLEASE get the search bar back up higher. I’m using a laptop to view the site, if that helps.

  20. I agree with what DarkHeraldMage, Tracy and Abra said about the large photos and the search bar. Other than that, I think I’m really going to like it.

  21. I would suggest defaulting to the famous burials as before, or some ways to filter the others that are showing as the default now. I can see that they are the most recently added, and in the Cemetery I primarily work with, mostly those are placed there in error. We have all of our KNOWN burials already listed. If not defaulting to the famous burials, maybe some kind of random rotation would be better. BUT, if you leave it as is, there’s still a problem, when you click on the tab that says famous, it goes to another page without all of the previous “front page” info. Or maybe you just haven’t gotten to that yet. It ought to function like a TAB, just switching that part of the view.
    Also, for % photographed, maybe there needs to be a way to mark burials as “unmarked, unknown” because there will likely NEVER be a photo of those graves. Our initial records were lost in a fire, and we’re not alone. There are burials that will never be able to be photographed.
    GPS might also need a disclaimer for accuracy. Ours shows burials in the nearby street, at nearby homes, etc. Clearly not accurate down to the 6′ level.
    Thanks for all of your efforts!

  22. I like V2 as well. Perhaps if you have the available space maybe a small map. I realize you have the link to show the map but just wondering if showing it at the same time you bring up the page would be beneficial.

  23. The photo is too large. It took me a while to find where the “famous” are located. I like the “about” information better in the original version. Although I’ve never had occasion to use the GPS option I do like it. I do like the graphic of the memorial numbers and percent photographed. I suppose I’ll get used to it in the end. Thanks.

  24. I like the idea of adding the GPS percentage. I do NOT like the adding the memorial names on the cover page, (it can be done thru the searches as previously). I also like the Bolded AKA cemetery names, it brings it right out, where the old one was faded. And I believe the Cemetery Picture is too big, whereas the old site the pictures are too small. I do believe in change, but I think the old is cleaner and all can be seem without scrolling. I don’t know what that would look like on cell phones. Over all, I like the old sites with tweeting some changes. Thanks for allowing my input.

  25. I love the Nearby Cemeteries addition to the page. I’m not fond of the circle graph. I think it could be better. It took me a minute to find the Add a Memorial button, it kind of blends in to the background.

  26. Loving the look of V2 but the About section is shoved to the side and hidden with a text limit. I would change the Memorial tab name to About, make the bio full sized centred and default the list under the search to famous only. I would also add a flag for cemetery map photo, as seen in the example that would then have it appear on the ‘main page’ or make it known to exist because it’s a great resource hidden within the photos tab.

  27. I really like the new setup for the most part. I like having the nearby cemeteries, the photo, GPS (if it were correct) I don’t understand why the new additions are in the front page and with the ? mark when there are pictures for some of them. Doesn’t seem to go with the page.
    Thank you for all of your hard work!

  28. Overall I like the new cemetery page and have a few observations.

    When viewing the main page on my iPad, held vertically, and the cemetery photo is a landscaped orientation, the photo has a square aspect ratio on the page which cuts off the left and right sides. This cropped off the sign of the first one I looked at. Holding my iPad horizontally is fine.

    I actually like seeing the memorials sorted to show the most recently added on top. I can see a case for those wanting to see who may have been recently buried in the cemetery. I also think it will make duplicate memorials that were created from recent sources easier to notice since many are entered from obits, funeral home records and family within days of death. I noticed a dupe in the local cemetery that I never would have noticed if it had been an alpha sort.

    I really like the GPS map. Not sure if it would be beneficial to add a tip about zooming out to find any that may be way out of bounds. That would probably have to follow with an explanation that just adding a new photo with GPS (without first deleting existing coordinates on the memorial) doesn’t necessarily fixing the location, rather just “averages” it closer to the proper location. At least that’s how I believe it currently works. Regardless, I am using this already locally to try and work the ones with bad GPS back home.

  29. I prefer the the beta version. The links to the Nearby Cemeteries will be very useful for family historians, especially if they do not know the locality. The stats on that section is also a good at a glance option.

    I also like ‘Members have contributed’ section. Using this on a PC I have no problems reading it, but I agree with comments that those who are colour blind, or using on mobile phones may issues. The former I suspect will be easy to fix by using different colours that are easier to differentiate.

    The memorials on the opening page are OK for me, but again on smaller devices it could be an issue. There is no reason that I can see why the memorials tab goes to a different page. The About, Photos and nearby cemeteries could be laid out on the opening page so easier to see at a glance.

  30. imho …

    – the ‘Members have Contributed’ position depends who you are targeting:
    ** if non-findagraver: then this is not as important so belongs lower on the screen
    ** if findagraver: then it is all a game and the goal is to hit a bulls-eye on all 3 cemetery attributes (memorial count, photographed, gps) making this section important.
    ** if you’re going to move anything to this upper-right portion I believe it should be the Search Memorial in Cemetery frame. That way everyone (non-findagravers and findagravers) don’t need to hit ‘down’ to get to these most important fields 🙂
    ** my2cents: the non-findagravers are a big audience for fag to cultivate so keeping things simple and straightforward for them is better.
    *** Aesthetically, my personal choice is the old position for ‘Members have Contributed’

    – In my example the cemetery photo doesn’t fill in the entire picture box, ie has brown panels on each side (https://www.findagrave.com/v2/cemetery/639403/avondale-cemetery) (this doesn’t happen on your example ??)
    *** Aesthetically, my person choice is the old way without brown side panels

    – ‘Photos’ tab and ‘See all 3 photos’ button are redundant.
    *** Aesthetically, my person choice is the old way as ‘less is more’

    – Icons versus Labels (Location, Phone, etc)
    *** 1) Aesthetically, my person choice is the old way and 2) Labels are more clear (now if you could hover over the icon and get help description then the icons would be ok)

    – No brown bar under “Cemetery Photos Map” and not centered.
    *** 1) Aesthetically, my person choice is the old way as it makes the tab commands standout and hence makes it more intuitive and usable

    – ‘About’ section moved to the side, made smaller
    *** Definitely do not prefer this change, the About section is important and should not be minimized and demoted. Findagravers should be encouraged to beef-up the cemetery description section as there is always a lot of history to learn from them (but again who are you targeting? findagravers probably would like this change as it isn’t important to them)

    – the Burial List at the bottom of the page now has 2 tabs ‘All’ and ‘Famous’
    *** I like the format but think the Famous tab should come before the All tab, Famous people will help grab peoples attention to the cemetery

    – Photos frame on bottom right
    *** Like this format

    – Nearby Cemeteries frame on bottom right
    *** Like this format

  31. Good to see all the positive comments. As with any change, there may some confusion in the beginning, but as people get used to it they find it much more useful. Keep up the good work.

  32. IMHO (again cause I missed clicking ‘Map’)

    – Map previously showed 1 cemetery marker. Now it shows gazillions of red GPS markers (or rather roll-up markers with ‘2’).
    – I typed in a memorial name that was in the cemetery (Dell W Sefton) and Enter to search and expected the map to clear all the other makers away and show just the memorial I was looking for. That didn’t happen; rather nothing happened, I was still looking at the same map with the same gazillion red markers? And no message?
    – I clicked ‘More Tips’ and read ‘GPS coordinates are a great way to add the location of a burial site to a memorial and can make it much easier for people to find and visit a headstone or grave.’ This Help wasn’t helpful.
    – I clicked on Tutorials expecting to see a tutorial on how to use this new feature/page but instead got a list of irrelevant tutorials.
    – What happened with the search for ‘Dell W Sefton’? I knew he was in the cemetery but it told me nothing; it should have said ‘memorial found, no GPS’. Similarly if I’d typed in a name of a memorial that was not in the cemetery it should have said ‘memorial not found’.
    – Then I had to find a memorial that was GPSed. I looked at the ‘Dell W Sefton’ memorial page I had up and it had nothing about GPS on it.
    – So how to find a GPSed memorial? To do this I had to go back to the main cemetery screen, click ‘GPS Memorials’ which brought up a sub-list of GPSed memorials. I picked ‘Carl Lewis Aaron’ from this GPSed sub-list. [Note – Possibly a more intuitive way is to have a GPSed indication on each Memorial page as people will always search by name first; have a ‘Map’ tab on the ‘Carl Lewis Aaron with GPS’ memorial and clicking it navigates to the cemetery map with only the ‘Carl Lewis Aaron with GPS’ memorial highlighted.]
    – Back through the Cemetery->Map->Search path .. I typed in ‘Carl Lewis Aaron’ in the GPS search and Enter and it found him! His memorial was a highlighted with a blue marker but still surrounded by gazillions of red GPS markers. And this time, below the search box, it shows his name was found.
    – I then had to drill-down (zoom-in) to the blue marker manually. Would have been nice if it had automatically cleared all the other red markers and zoomed-in to the memorial I was searching for.
    – So I did find ‘Carl Lewis Aaron with GPS’ with the new GPS feature but was left hanging when I looked for Dell W Sefton w/o GPS

    *** Seeing an initial screen with a gazillion GPS markers is not aesthetically pleasing or useful. Maybe for the initial MAP screen go back to showing the one cemetery marker. Then when users search for a name, it removes the cemetery marker and replaces it (if found) with the searched-for GPSed memorial marker. And, if not found, some good indications of what happened: name not found, name found but no GPS, etc.

    Looks like it was a lot of work. Congrats and well done. People will love this new feature.

  33. Upon examining the Cemetery page further for Pleasant Ridge Baptist Church Cemetery # 62081, https://www.findagrave.com/v2/cemetery/62081/pleasant-ridge-baptist-church-cemetery, the closest cemetery is Keownville Cemetery #2164826 – https://www.findagrave.com/cemetery/2164826/keownville-cemetery. They are only 2 or 3 miles apart on Highway 30. They do not show on either cemetery page and are closer than any others listed on either page.. Will you please look into this?

  34. Just noticed the street address is missing on the new cemetery page. If it came to a vote, I would vote to keep the street address on the cemetery page. I know the GPS is there, but the street address is still helpful to see to help verify it is the cemetery you are searching for, especially when you have cemeteries with the same or similar names.

  35. I am old fashioned and MUCH prefer the original cemetery page. I find the new version too bright, too full of “stuff”.

  36. Oh, I really like it! I like that the area where you search is right there when you open the page and you don’t have to scroll down to get to it. It would be nice though, if my cursor was automatically in the box when the page opens.
    Also -just a quick question – when I click on the map, what are all the pink dots? I understand they are graves, but are they ones with GPS? Seems logical, but doesn’t actually indicate that on the page.
    Anyway – thanks so much for doing this!
    Sherry

  37. The number of photo requests for a cemetery in V2 is totally incorrect.
    The cemetery I’m working on right now.
    https://www.findagrave.com/cemetery/2316062/people-of-truth-hebrew-cemetery—memorial-section
    It has no photo requests which is correct.
    The V2 version of the cemetery
    https://www.findagrave.com/v2/cemetery/2316062/people-of-truth-hebrew-cemetery—memorial-section
    For me it shows 59 photo requests. That also happens to be the same number of requests that I have on my own page for those in my area-of which this cemetery is not.
    I get that same 59 number of requests on every cemetery I try. I bet that the next person who goes to that cemetery will get a different number of requests showing based on whatever number they have in their local area.

    When you click on the requests, it does take you to the correct page for the requests for the cemetery. It’s just the number by the requests on the cemetery page that is wrong.

    Back to the people of truth cemetery. While those cemeteries are nearby they aren’t the closest. I don’t know which is intended. Just to have nearby cemeteries or the closest cemeteries listed.

  38. The look is fresh and I like concept of the design with the cemetery photo getting more real estate as well as the memorials/photos of all buried in the cemetery.

    A couple of comments:

    While reviewing the following cemetery: https://www.findagrave.com/v2/cemetery/24545/morris-cemetery

    1) While I like the the cemetery photo is more prominent, it is zoomed in so much you really cannot get any sense of the cemetery at all. Why not display the entire photo in the background?

    2) “Photo requests” under Upload Headstone Photos are for the members area, not for the cemetery itself. The cemetery photo requests was nowhere to be found.

    3) Where is the “Add a memorial” link?

    4) As with last time “Search this map area” literally means it only searches what is currently in view vs the entire cemetery which can and will confuse. Search should be across the cemetery and allow them to select which burial should be highlighted.

    5) No Zoom In/Zoom Out button on Map. Once I zoomed in by double-clicking, I could not “unzoom”

    https://www.findagrave.com/v2/cemetery/22674/elmwood-cemetery
    6) Nothing was addressed related to the cemetery description. The placement is not adequate. It needs to be highly visible to the important information included is not overlooked by someone not familiar with the cemetery. Also where is the street address?

    (See prior comments on items 4 and 6 for more detail.)

    Thanks

    Melissa

  39. I like the fresh look, but some of the cemetery photos don’t display well (portrait rather than landscape, too large for the display, sign blocked). I would hope, but am not optimistic, that displaying the newest entries would discourage duplicates. I would prefer the alphabetical list up front, but I think that clicking the ‘Memorials’ tab should take you to it if it isn’t on the cemetery page. I don’t like that the cemetery photos show up in an album. Maybe they could display as thumbnails instead rather than having those off to the side. Scrolling through to find that there was none of particular interest would simply be a waste of time. I am glad the cartoon maps are gone and look forward to them being gone from the cemetery searches as well. The ‘Add Photos’ button should probably say ‘Add Cemetery Photos’.

  40. It looks pretty good but the number of photo requests is wrong in the new version. It shows just 1 no matter how many there are. And it DEFINITELY needs the street address for the cemetery on the front page! I shouldn’t have to dig for that.

  41. I viewed this on a 24″ monitor so overall is ok. A little cluttered.
    Viewed on my IPhone 11, a lot to view.
    I agree with many of the aforementioned comments and no need to repeat.
    Especially..
    Please leave the “Search Memorials in Albright Cemetery”. Some people need more instruction.

  42. My relative’s graves are missing from search in respective grave yards, even though i am positive of their burial there

    • Hi Robert, have the memorials for your relatives been added to the site? If they have been added and aren’t showing up in the Memorial Search, please contact us at support@findagrave.com with those details. If they are not yet listed on Find a Grave, feel free to add them to the specific cemetery where they are buried.

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