Suggestions

Now that there are signs that winter may be over, at least here in the south, maybe it is time to have a spring clean.

The current home page of GRU is a terrible rag bag of stuff which badly affects log on times as all the supporting code is run.
For the most part it is of little interest for most members many of whom bookmark the site so as to avoid it. Nevertheless much of the code is invoked anyway.
If it is meant as a way to navigate the site then I can only laugh rofh.

With no current sign in the site loads very fast. It is after the sign in that all the fun starts, maybe they have a dream of running the queues at Terminal 5 and are practicing... Sure it is down from > 1 minute to < 20 secs but that is still pretty poor.

And it looks absolutely awful.

My suggestion is that get in a proper web designer who will clear out all this clutter and drag the site screaming and kicking into NOW htm5 and all.
He should also be allowed to find somebody who can create a new implementation from scratch carrying the best features forwards but "done right".

So who would vote to retain any of this stuff on the home page ?

nnnn individuals in your tree
mini tree
fact of the year (most people know where google and Wiki are to be found)
quick search (find all the towns that have your family name)
current member activity ( quiz or find ancestors all the same)
hot matches (luckily you can turn this off)
genes community (shrinking)
my updates (on the home page ? why?)
historical records (google, wiki thank you again)
genes on twitter (no thank you)
chat to an expert (not very often)(used to be commonplace on the boards, rapidly disappearing)
puff for long lost family (mawkish tv show)
puff for British newspaper archive (see if yr ancestor was a toff or a criminal, expensive)
visit our new blog (last post other than TV puffs etc 15 Feb 2012)

privacy policy last updated 10 May 2010 and at variance with change in the law 26 May 2012

:-S