Ancestry search - tips please

[seadragon]

I am on Ancestry UK and starting to build up my tree. Some names seem easy enough to find on there, whereas others seem almost impossible.

If anyone has gone into some more serious/accurate detail, can you please let me know what other sites you used? Based on my current tree, I'll be focussing on UK, Ireland, South Africa and Germany.

Ned to get more detail on births, deaths, census etc.

Many thanks,