Each life beautifully remembered
Today a tribute lives on another company's system, and your website shows it through a window in the page. On the new website Nan Pike has a page of her own at burstows.com.au/tribute-centre/nan-eileen-pike, it looks like the rest of your website, and so do the pages for the other 7,979 people.
Twelve of the 7,980 people in the Tribute Centre, each as their family published them.
Pictures, brought back to the heart of it
A tribute is a person before it is a record, so the new pages lead with pictures. There are four kinds, and every one of them is either the family's own or Burstows' own.
The Tribute Centre
On the current site the Tribute Centre page arrives empty and then waits for another company's plug in to fill it. When it does, a family sees 15 people to a page with small round photos, and anyone without a photo is a grey circle. When I looked on 05/10/2026, 10 of the 15 people on the first page were grey circles.
On the new site the same page shows 24 people at a time, four across, each with a large photo, their name, the name they were known by, their years and their age. There is a search box that finds any of the 7,980 people, and your warning about scams sits above the list where a family will see it before they scroll.
Current site left, new site right.
On a phone.
A person's page
This is Nan Eileen Pike, 25/05/1946 to 23/08/2026, whose page is already public on your website. On the current site the address of her page is a long string of letters and numbers. On the new one it is her name.
The pattern her family chose runs across the top of her new page, as it does today, with her photo set against it. Your team can upload a pattern for any person in administration, and where a family has not chosen one the page uses Burstows' own.
Her new page shows her full name, her dates and "Aged 80". The funeral notice can be read on the page, where today it is a file a family has to download. The service details sit in a side panel with directions to the chapel, her service sheet is shown as its cover, the livestream is there, and so are the 8 messages that were left for her.
A section only appears when a person's record has something to put in it, so nobody opens a tab and finds it empty.
The top of Nan Pike's page. Current site left, new site right.
On the new website Burstows holds its own tributes
Today your tributes reach a family through a window, another company's plug in sitting in your page. On the new website Burstows holds its own tribute records and publishes them in its own design.
It also means that if Burstows ever changes funeral software, the tributes stay where they are.
There is a second reason. When people search without typing Burstows, they are looking for funeral notices in Toowoomba. What they want is who is in your care and when the service is, and on the new website that is written on Burstows' own pages. There is more on the Search page.
Three things families notice
A garden picture where there is no photo
George Kevin Robin Brady, 02/10/1939 to 04/07/2026, has no photo on record. The current site gives him a grey circle. The new site gives him one of ten garden pictures, so his page looks cared for like everybody else's.
A service sheet you can turn like a booklet
When a family opens a service sheet it opens on the page as a booklet, and they turn it with a swipe, a click or the arrow keys. There is a Download button for anyone who wants to keep a copy. 879 people have service stationery, and 893 of the 894 items open this way.
A proper card when the page is shared
Share on Facebook and Copy link sit at the top of every person's page. This is what Facebook shows when somebody shares Nan Pike's page with their family: the banner her family chose, her photo, "In loving memory", her name, her dates and the Burstows logo.
What came across
On 01/10/2026 we carried every person on your tribute list across onto Burstows' own pages. This is what came with them.
| What | How many | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| People | 7,980 | Everyone on the tribute list on 01/10/2026 |
| Carried across in full | 1,210 | Anyone who died on or after 01/10/2025, or whose date of death was not recorded |
| Name, dates and photo only | 6,770 | Everyone before that |
| Messages of condolence | 1,992 | Left for 676 people |
The full count
| What | How many | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Service details | 1,495 | Services, for 1,108 people |
| Funeral notices | 556 | People with a notice |
| Obituaries | 59 | People with an obituary, 58 in words and 1 as a picture |
| Service sheets and orders of service | 894 | Items, for 879 people |
| Livestreams | 839 | People with a livestream |
I want to be plain about those 6,770 people, because it is the first thing a family would ask. Each of them has a page on the new website with their name, their dates, their age and their photo. Their messages, notices and service sheets were not part of what came across on 01/10/2026. Nothing has been removed, they are all still on the old system, but as the preview stands an old link for one of those people lands on a page where a family would not find them, and I don't think the website should go live like that.
There are two ways to settle it. My lean is to carry the rest across for all 6,770 before launch day, the same way we did for the 1,210, so every family finds everything on the new page. The other way is to leave those pages as they are and send a family on to the old tribute page for the rest, but that is a continuing arrangement with the tribute company, it only works while their service is kept on, and it leaves those families' messages in somebody else's hands. I will settle it with you and Michelle before launch day.
Nothing was reworded. Every record was read back and checked against the copy taken from the old system.
Where it stands today
I want to be plain about what you can see working today and what we finish between your yes and launch day.
Built today
- All 7,980 people are across, on Burstows' own pages.
- Each person's page is there to open on the preview of the new website.
- The search box finds any of them by name.
- Service sheets open as a booklet.
- Share on Facebook and Copy link are on every person's page, with a card of their own.
- An old tribute link, shared on Facebook or printed on stationery, lands on the person's new page. For the 1,210 people carried across in full, everything is there when it does.
Finished before launch day
- Families can leave a message on a person's page again, and your team sees every message in administration. Today the new pages show the 1,992 messages that came across and cannot take a new one.
- Administration itself is switched on, so your own team adds a person and corrects a record. On the new website today, only one of our developers can do it.
- New people flow in from the day of launch. The current site already lists people added since 01/10/2026 that the new one does not have.
- The banners families chose for their pages are copied onto Burstows' own storage, so a shared link keeps its picture.
- The messages, notices and service sheets for the 6,770 people who died before 01/10/2025 are settled one of the two ways set out above, so no family opens a page and finds less than they left.
Until then the new pages are a photograph of the tribute list taken on 01/10/2026.