Ancestry external link templates link to specific subscription country

Question

I use the Ancestry templates for linking to records and images (I also use the free Ancestry Sharing template but that is not relevant to this question).

My question is about the various country variations of Ancestry subscription. As far as I am aware the basic form of the template: 

{{Ancestry Record|1234|5678}}

... will only work if the user subscribes to the US version of Ancestry (ancestry.com). If someone in Australia clicks on the link it will ask them to login to the .com version of the site rather than the .com.au version of the site. I believe that you can use the same login details on either but it is still inconvenient.

I wonder if it would be possible to have a setting on the WikiTree Settings page (https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Special:Settings) to specify what subscriptions you have and in what country. Then WikiTree could resolve these templates to the preferred link?

Maybe I'm missing something and others do not have any problem with how it currently works?

FYI the help page for Ancestry External Link templates is here: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Links_to_Ancestry#Indexed_Record

The linked profile has one Ancestry Record Template on it if anyone who subscribes to a non-US Ancestry site wants to try it out (the 2nd source).

Cheers,
Rob

Comments

As a test I just tried changing one of my templates to have "|ca" on the end so that it goes to the ancestry.ca site. I subscribe to ancestry.com. The link took me to the ancestry.ca site with a sign up page. Then a dialog popped up suggesting that I go to ancestry.com. I clicked the button to go to ancestry.com but the site then went into an infinite busy loop (well... more than the 10 minutes I was prepared to wait) trying to do that.

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I just wanted to add - I'm a big fan of External Link Templates. I would like to see one for FindMyPast also but it would suffer from the same country specific issue as the Ancestry one. Unfortunately FMP doesn't have any equivalent of the Ancestry sharing links so an FMP record/image template would definitely be useful.

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I tried the link on the profile and my experience was similar to yours, although not quite as bad.

I am logged in to ancestry.co.uk and, even though the link is to a UK record collection, it asked me to log in to ancestry.com. Once I had logged in it had forgotten which record I was trying to access, so it just said record not found. I then clicked on the link again and it took me straight to the record (as I was still logged in to ancestry.com as well as ancestry.co.uk).

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Not sure if it's of any help to you Rob. I'm with Ancestry UK, when I clicked the link in the profile I was taken straight to the  census page on the .com site. I must have already been logged in for something else recently. I logged out and tried again; this time I had to log in, at which point Ancestry lost the plot and asked me to search again, so yes it's a bit inconvenient. I had to go back to the profile to click on the link again, at which point I was taken direct to the census. I guess the reason I get taken straight to the census is because I'm in the UK with an account that lets me see all UK & Rep Ireland records. If the record were a US record I would have been taken to a paywall.

I like the external link templates as well, especially where there's an app to formulate them. But what you suggest may not be practical. If someone like me with a country, or region, specific account clicks a link and is taken to their own region, unless the record is part of the subscription they will hit a paywall anyway. For example if the link in your profile was to a US census record I would not be able to access it whether I went via the .com or .co.uk site, either one will present me with some form of paywall eventually. Your suggestion would be fine for those with worldwide access though.

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That is good point about non-world wide subscriptions. I currently have a worldwide subscription so I'm not hitting that issue.

Here is an example of a profile with US records and Ancestry templates: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Pavey-505

If it was possible to implement the improvement that I suggest, such that it took you to your .co.uk account, it would presumably tell you that you would have to upgrade your membership to see the record.

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Yes, it would do that either way if the record is not part of my subscription plan. The US records in the linked Pavey-505 profile just take me to a subscription upgrade page on the .com site. If I try to access the same record from my .co.uk account I will get a similar message. So, either way, it's the same mild, but not unexpected, annoyance. It's no biggie.