Ancestry share link

+6 votes
594 views
Hi

Well I guess I need a tutorial on how to format ancestry shared link. See his WWII draft card link on profile

Any help is appreciated

Thank you
WikiTree profile: Maurice Bransfield
in Genealogy Help by Andrew Simpier G2G6 Pilot (826k points)
I would add a regular citation for the draft card as well. If at some future date the link ceases to work, the source will remain.

2 Answers

+8 votes
 
Best answer

There is also a template for the sharing link. The WikiTree Sourcer extension will generate a citation that includes both that and the template for the record link like this:

Maurice was in a military record on 16 October 1940 in East Hampton, Middlesex, Connecticut, United States.<ref>
'''Military''':
"U.S., World War II Draft Cards Young Men, 1940-1947"<br/>
National Archives at St. Louis; St. Louis, Missouri; Wwii Draft Registration Cards For Connecticut, 10/16/1940-03/31/1947; Record Group: Records of the Selective Service System, 147; Box: 45<br/>
{{Ancestry Sharing|2859905|7b22746f6b656e223a2264465157526f38412b396a7835756741782f346b38356e4150675159314454356d443956677a576e6563593d222c22746f6b656e5f76657273696f6e223a225632227d}} - {{Ancestry Record|2238|11807136}} (accessed 1 April 2023)<br/>
Name: Maurice Joseph Bransfield; Race: White; Age: 34; Relationship to Draftee: Self (Head); Birth Date: 19 Sep 1906; Birth Place: East Hampton, Connecticut, USA; Residence Place: East Hampton, Middlesex, Connecticut, USA; Registration Date: 16 Oct 1940; Registration Place: East Hampton, Middlesex, Connecticut, USA; Employer: N N Hill Brass Company; Height: 5 5; Weight: 125; Complexion: Light; Hair Color: Brown; Eye Color: Blue; Next of Kin: Maurice Bransfield; <br/>Household Members (Name) Relationship:<br/>Maurice Joseph Bransfield Self (Head)<br/>Maurice Bransfield Father.
</ref>

You can generate a sharing template from the sharing link manually by taking the two numbers from the URL and putting them in the template. So:
 

https://www.ancestry.com/sharing/2859905?mark=7b22746f6b656e223a2264465157526f38412b396a7835756741782f346b38356
e4150675159314454356d443956677a576e6563593d222c22746f6b656e5f76657273696f6e223a225632227
&clickref=1101lwGP89vS%2C1101lwGP89vS&adref=&o_xid=01011l4xx5&o_lid=01011l4xx5&o_sch=Affiliate+External

becomes:

{{Ancestry Sharing|2859905|7b22746f6b656e223a2264465157526f38412b396a7835756741782f346b38356
e4150675159314454356d443956677a576e6563593d222c22746f6b656e5f76657273696f6e223a225632227d
}}

Note: I had to insert some line breaks in the above to make it all showup in G2G. These links and templates used to be a lot shorter but Ancestry made a change in November 2022 that made them huge.

I have inserted the citation into the linked profile for you. There are many options in WikiTree Sourcer for how to format citations and what to include in them.

by Rob Pavey G2G6 Pilot (286k points)
selected by Andrew Simpier

Ancestry seems to be overdoing it with the long links. Those 154-digit hexadecimal numbers are large enough to label each electron in the universe 10105 times.

ancestry share links used to be much shorter
Yes, I get the impression that Ancestry doesn't really want them to be easy to use for cases like WikiTree. They also removed the zoom feature on the shared image at the same time that they introduced the long links.

Ancestry really wants them to be used as shares on Facebook etc to draw in more subscribers.
A side note to his genealogy his daughter was Miss East Hampton, Ct.  not sure the year yet and still can’t find if he actually married her mother Nora. I’d love to see a photo of her from the pageant. Researching the genealogy still

Edit: typos
My guess is they are adding additional info into the share link that they understand and know who/when it was created or something like that.They don't need that many places to make a link unique.

It is a very inefficient way of encoding some information. There is an example link:

https://www.ancestry.com/sharing/2036916?token=
7b22746f
6b656e22
3a225353
76616c33
33723074
326c7673
46726262
55317479
52693163
78357149
476f4469
55396364
304d7554
383d222c
22746f6b
656e5f76
65727369
6f6e223a
22563222
7d

If you break up the token into pairs of hexadecimal digits and use them as ASCII codes you end up with this string:

{"token":"SSval33r0t2lvsFrbbU1tyRi1cx5qIGoDiU9cd0MuT8=","token_version":"V2"}

So at least part of the link is text encoded as hex ASCII codes.

EDIT: The string : SSval33r0t2lvsFrbbU1tyRi1cx5qIGoDiU9cd0MuT8=
looks like base64 encoding of this number:
492bda977debd2dda5bec16b6db535b72462d5cc79a881a80e253d71dd0cb93f
but it may be using a different alphabet.

That doesn't seem to be useful as it is though. It is exactly the same length as the token in the previous style of sharing link but doesn't work as the token in the URL. If I worked on this a bit more I might find a way to turn the long token number into the shorter one it was using until a few weeks ago. I'm not sure if that would help anyone though.

I updated the suggestions, so too long token it is no longer reported.
+4 votes
It’s pretty easy. Type: [url text you want to be seen]

Bracket followed by the complete url then one space then the text you want to be seen in place of the url then end bracket. Then when you click the text, you’ll be taken to the link.
by T Stanton G2G6 Pilot (648k points)
I fixed it on the profile so you can see how to do it.

Thanks. I thought this was how to…but thought their was some different special linking format. Simple enough yes

There is a way that links it using the Ancestry document ID number so that when Ancestry changes the URL by changing document location (Which they do) the link will supposedly still work because of the doc ID number. I find it cumbersome and the how-to confusing...and you have to know which numeric string is the ID.

The Ancestry sharing link template is described here. But it is not clear that it still works after Ancestry changed the sharing link format. In any case, the new-style sharing images are low resolution, unless an extra step is taken.

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