Ancestry.com External Link Template. Possible variations?

Question

I see that Ancestry.com external link templates are now live and functional:  https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Links_to_Ancestry.  Thank you to those who developed this.

If agreed to, would it be possible to create variations for the Library, Institution, and even HeritageQuest versions of Ancestry?  My understanding is that only the initial part of the URL changes, so

https://www.ancestry.com/interactive/1234/5678

becomes

Library:  https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/interactive/1234/5678

Institution:  https://www.ancestryinstitution.com/interactive/1234/5678

HeritageQuest:  https://www.ancestryheritagequest.com/interactive/1234/5678

It seems there would be two ways to do this, a new/different template or a switch; for example

{{Ancestry Image|1234|5678}}

Option 1:  {{AncestryLibrary Image|1234|5678}}

Option 2:  {{Ancestry Image|1234|5678|version=library}}

Even better, and I don't know how this could be done, give the user clicking the link the option of choosing the repository.  Assuming that's not possible, provide an option to generate links to multiple versions.  One confounding issue is not every target is available in every version.  Some of this is just spitballing, hoping to generate a conversation from others who are interested and have ideas.

Comments

I've not fully digested Kerry's suggestions yet, but this reminds me of another issue:

Ancestry has different domains for users in different countries and regions. Ancestry.com serves the United States, ancestry.ca is their domain for Canada, etc. The URL that a member records here includes the one for their country, but the same content would be available to members in other countries, assuming it's included in their subscription. This use of different national domains shouldn't be a problem, but Ancestry's set-up causes it to be a very serious problem for subscribers.

When I, as a subscriber with US-only subscription access, click on a URL from a domain other than ancestry.com (most often it's Canada, so that's my example here), I get banner warning that I should be using Ancestry.com instead of Ancestry.ca (so far so good), then every time thereafter when I try to view a record on Ancestry.com (while logged into Ancestry.com), I get redirected to a page on ancestry.ca where I'm told I need to subscribe. This is not a problem that goes away after I log out and log back in, or close the browser and restart it, or even if I wait a day or two (EDITED: it does seem to fix itself after about a week); the only sure cure seems to be wiping all of the saved user data from my browser installation. (Fortunately, I can get around it by using a different browser to access Ancestry, but there are only so many browsers a person can use before we have to bite the bullet and start wiping data.)

I wonder if there would be some way to make the template adjust to insert the domain specified by the user? ADDED: Could this be a setting on the user registration page?

Answer 1

Are these templates approved?

I have just experimented and found that Ancestry Record doesn't wrap the URL with text, but that Ancestry Image does.

See the changes I just made to add these to citation 8 for https://www.wikitree.com/index.php?title=Moseley-2748

I can see that I might be using the template to quickly find Ancestry trees referenced from profiles to see if those trees actually provide any records that can be brought in as sources.

Comments

These are external link templates created by the Team, and yes, they are OK for us to use.  Jamie Nelson has been working on them and likely will be interested in your feedback. (I say this because I've corresponded with her about the templates.)

As of a few days ago, the Ancestry Record template did wrap the URL with text, and I concluded that this was a bad idea, since all of the Ancestry "Record" links on a page would display with the same text, obscuring the fact that they were different URLs.

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The templates are live because they are being used in GEDCOM imports, but Aleš and I are still adjusting the display and a few other things.