We’re frantically preparing for WhoDoYouThinkYouAre LIVE show which starts on Friday at Olympia in London. For those of you who are close enough to attend and want to visit, we have a 2 for 1 ticket offer below. Final tickets are selling fast so don’t delay - seminars are already sold out.

At the show we’ll be presenting the background to the census, how we disgitised it, some tips and hints for better searching and also unveiling some of the features that are to come in the following months on the site including your first glimpse of the RG78 (Enumerator Summary Book) images. We’ll also be on hand to answer your questions one-to-one. So make sure you drop by the findmypast.com stand: we look forward to meeting you.

BUY 2 FOR 1 TICKETS!

Findmypast.com is giving you the chance to buy two adult tickets for the price of one – that’s just £20*! To claim this special offer, simply call 0844 412 4629 or visit www.whodoyouthinkyouarelive.co.uk and quote FMP241 today!

Special Q Jump tickets are now SOLD OUT for Friday and Saturday.

*£2 transaction fee applies. 2 for 1 offer ends 20^th February 09. On Door standard entry tickets priced at £20 each. Q Jump tickets not available on the door. This is not a BBC event.

So far, we have only made a single image available on 1911census.co.uk - the principal original page of the RG14 Household (or Institution) Summary.

Within the next month, we will make the following images available at NO EXTRA COST.

If you have already bought the original page of the household original page, you will be able to view any associated images for free, simply by returning to the record you have paid for via the “My Records” area on the website. Any new images that you buy will have all the associated images available at the flat cost of 30 credits for the lot.

Not every search result will have all of the following images available but many households will.

Extra RG14 Household (or Institution) Schedule images:

• The address panel from the back of the schedule, showing the address as written by your ancestors and the registration district and subdistrict
• The front page of the volume in which your schedule was stored, giving more detailed information on parishes and districts

We expect the site to be very busy at launch, and so we have taken a number of measures to make sure that as many people as possible can get their searches completed successfully.

The first is that we have deliberately restricted some of the search functions on the site, meaning that the search is not as flexible as it will be later on - please see our separate post on the extra search functionality that will be ‘unlocked’ after launch.

Secondly, we are only allowing users to download original pages, rather than view them directly on the website - an in-page viewer will be switched on shortly after launch.

Thirdly, only one image will be available at launch: the principal side of the original household (or institution) page. Most searches have up to seven associated images, which will be made available to you shortly after launch. These extra images are included in the cost (30 credits) of the original page so you will not need to pay extra to view them once available. The images include the rear of the household form and images from the Enumerators’ books (akin to images from earlier censuses but with more detail and in full colour). Please see our separate post about the extra images - they are really rather exciting and unique to the 1911 Census!

During launch, if the site becomes exceptionally busy, we will also restrict the number of new people entering the site. We want to allow the people who are already using the site to complete their searches rather than make the site impossibly slow for everybody. We have built the site to withstand a very large (but not infinite) number of visitors, so if you find that you are not being allowed in, please bear with us.

We call this ‘velvet roping’ - much as you would restrict access to a building to large numbers of visitors to ensure the comfort of those inside, we will try to make sure that the experience of those searching is not overwhelmed by new visitors if the site becomes very busy.  Real-time service updates can be found on this blog, which we advise you to check frequently for the latest news.

Obviously, we will ‘unlock’ the powerful search features, switch on image viewers and add the extra images as soon as possible after launch and let you know by email and via this blog when we have done this. We cannot commit to specific dates for this yet, so please check here for the latest news or sign up for our newsletter (in the “My Account” area on the website).

Just a quick note to remind you that you will not be able to access transcripts or images of original pages you have paid for until the site comes back online at the full launch later in 2009.

Therefore please make sure that you print out transcripts and original pages, or download them to your computer, if you want to work on them in the coming months. Everyting that you have paid for is listed in the “My Records” area.

Once the site is properly launched, you will be able to access any records used during the beta period through the “My Records” area. And of course any credits remaining on your account will be available to spend either on 1911census.co.uk or findmypast.com.