How does one access the Beta site?

LAHS6

I have never gone to the Beta site before today. I tried today by using my regular username & password. That didn't work. What to do?

Carla Tobler

@LAHS6

Thank you for posting your question in the Community regarding the Beta site.

We are adding a link to an article from our Help Center that explains the Beta site, and has a direct link you can use to get there.

https://www.familysearch.org/en/help/helpcenter/article/can-i-use-the-beta-version-of-familysearch-to-teach-a-class

You must still sign in using your username and password, but hopefully this direct link will work for you.

We will also add the URL for the Beta site to see if that is a good alternative.

https://beta.familysearch.org/en/

Best wishes.

LAHS6

@CJTobler

Thank you. I'll try that.

LAHS6

@CJTobler

I went to the article that you posted & clicked on the link "beta version" that is step 1.

I wanted to get to the Following List. When I clicked on the word "following", an error page came up and then the sign-in page came up &...

Nope.... my username & password didn't work.

Even with the direct link, my username & password still didn't work and I was already signed in to the regular FS.org

Carla Tobler

@LAHS6

So sorry for the frustration. I tried duplicating your steps, and could not do it. I was able to get to my following list in Beta.

We always suggest some house cleaning, AKA clearing browser history and cookies when a feature in FamilySearch is not working. We would suggest you try that.

We can also hope others in the Community who see this post will duplicate our steps and weigh in on this issue with some suggestions.

LAHS6

@CJTobler

I figured it out. I remember that someone had said that the Beta site might hold old information. I had changed my password some time ago and I decided to try my old password. That worked.

Carla Tobler

Good job! 😊

Dennis J Yancey

that doesnt exactly make sense to me -

I mean - I get that it worked - and I understand beta is a old copy of the production version - but why arent both sites using an SSO login? a single account.

886EZLContact ID

I have learned that if you change your password for FamilySearch.org, it does not change it for beta.familysearch.org. This is good to remember. The two websites do not sync passwords with each other, so you might have a different password for beta than you do for FamilySearch.org.