MyFamily.com Migration Tool

Migration-Tool

Stop importing your photos and news manually! Our migration tool is under development and we are very encouraged by the results.

We’re committed to building a tool which will transfer all the News (with replies) and Photos (with replies) from a MyFamily.com Site to a Spokt Hub. We hope to incorporate other sections into our migration tool like “Recipe” and “File Cabinet” but we can’t commit to those right now. We will provide updates as we get more information. The prolonged outage of the MyFamily.com website makes further research impossible at this time.

Before the outage we were able to work with a volunteer Spokt user who previously had 7 years of history on MyFamily.com. We were able to successfully extract all 2,984 of their News threads with replies from MyFamily.com.

Transfering all the News and Photos with comments is much more than you get from MyFamily.com or any other site. Your memories will be preserved, be more searchable, and presented more beautifully than ever before.

Here’s what you need to do for now:
• Sign up and pay for your hub. Our hubs have enormous capacity and cost only $29/year.
• Invite your friends and family members. In order to wire up the posts in MF to users in Spokt they need to be using Spokt!
• Start new conversations on Spokt

We will continue to provide updates every few weeks. Thanks for using Spokt!

142 thoughts on “MyFamily.com Migration Tool”

  1. By the way, the site is here is in most aspects a solid improvement over MyFamily (other than the lack of Categories/Albums). I accept that they are not part of this platform.

    There is an MyFamily Administrators site and my sites’ (only four remaining due to Ancestry.com years of misdeeds) liaison, who is a co-administrator of all my sites and a member of many more, will be asked to make sure Spokt is suggested UNEQUIVOCABLY as best so far (if true for her) due to the site’s smooth transport and unmatched migration tool on at least one post there with an appropriate subject heading saying just that. I was not allowed on this site as I fought back against Ancestry.com and they had been co-opted by the free Administrators site. Shame that we sell our thoughts for a little gruel.

    1. dan@spokt says:

      Hi Kin, I’m glad you found us. The import tool will grab everything we can automatically. I’m sorry that I don’t have answers for your specific questions at this time but as we make progress on the tool we will have more details. My hope is that you simply enjoy Spokt today and be patient during the next few weeks as we get our tool ready for all of you.

      Also regarding categories/albums, we are working on plans for this for the future.

  2. kinmapper says:

    I posted a message at Ancestry.com Facebook’s page as Spokt seems to be unSpokten about at all there.

    1. dan@spokt says:

      Thanks for spreading the word Kin! And I’m glad to see you pronounce our name correctly! 🙂

  3. Melanie says:

    Dan, thank you for your feedback. Because I am leaving town this week till August I think it might be best to wait till I get back to work on everything and invite people then because there won’t be much activity on the site while I’m gone anyway. I will definitely check in and see how things are going here in the meantime.

    Will it not be possible at all to make Albums under Photos? Will all photos go into one big pile?

    I have checked out the demo hub.

    Thanks for all your efforts. It is hugely appreciated.

    1. dan@spokt says:

      Sounds good Melanie, we’ll take care of you. I don’t have an answer at this time for you regarding the photos and albums. We’ll try to preserve as much data as possible!

  4. V A Emuang says:

    I have taken a peek into one of the Zip downlaods from MyFamily.com – only photos … no conversations. Very sad to lose all that information. I really hope the Migration Tool works.

    1. dan@spokt says:

      Hi V A Emaung, the zip files from MyFamily.com are very disappointing; You are not alone. We won’t disappoint you!

  5. Dan,
    As a former programmer for IBM (Boca Raton plant, IE function, the week after my 18th birthday), I think you can preserve one aspect of Albums. Albums are part of the text and your capture of the text would naturally grab the Album titles. Categories the same but these are at the other Sections. Your guys would have to skip that part to avoid Albums/Categories.

    That being said, there may be no mechanism to employ them further unless your search engine could find this sort of Category (one of thousands from one site) in the text

    “Frances E. Wideman [dAsEHdRdJII] (1838-1914)=18AbvlSC WmLaurensPressly”

    and we really do not need to enter the full title as the this part is enough for this one

    “Frances E. Wideman [dAsEHdRdJII]” or really even just the bracketed would work if it being in the body and not the title sufficed, which would bring in all daughters of Adam son of Emily Harris daughter or Rachel Kittrell daughter of J II known generally as son of J I or Jonathan Kittrell, SR! (explaining the shorthand for those who did not get it, you need to know the generations but it would be in our Kittrell family). If it does find in a search such as one of these, than I as the Kittrell (and other sites)guru could keep the Categories/Albums working by adding them from a master list by lift and paste, keeping my “brilliant” Category and Album systems working.

    and I think it could actually search the body and the title as unlike MyFamily’s search of titles yours does, I think I saw in the demo, the entire page review in its search.

    KM/FtC

  6. I have now been a free sneaker into the free (from Ancestry.com) MyFamily administrators site as my friend is in Europe and foolishly gave me not only her Facebook password but her MyFamily one

    Sadly they have now picked another site, but one guy, the leader of the downloaders, after stating sufficient satisfaction, indicated that now he need to one by one download his 15000 posts, so no chance of a free MyFammily migration except by his hand over hundreds of hours.

    So I posted right below that in a Reply but a new title indicating the free migration to a 29 dollar A-OK site.

    My friend may get zapped, but I apologize for being a (free) sneaker as they need to know where there just might be an above average (and sole solitary working one) MyFamily 1.0 migration too.

    As we are best friends, I know I shall be forgiven.

    People do not like drama, but I did not bring the drama as I think one week blocking us and shutting down our sites with a download that turned out to be a horrid joke all applies to only the drama of the late despised Ancestry.com

    I can not say enough about them.

    KM/FtC

  7. Patti McCreight says:

    This is very good news and I am definitely interested in this site also. Like so many, I have been scrambling to save everything from my personal MyFamily Site and also deleting as much personal info as possible from member profiles, etc., because I too have lost trust and respect for Ancestry.com. It will be a relief to be able to migrate all my photos with text and anything else that we can migrate so I can delete them from MyFamily as there is also a lot of personal information on them. Thank you for your help with this and your awareness that we have a deadline. 🙂

  8. One big question – I am prepared to go a trial, but should I start getting our 350 members across now or wait until your migration tool is ready. (i.e. if I start now will the tool place the news posts in historical context – in the correct time line?)

    Also feel free to contact me directly re: help / testing / etc.

    Larry
    2014JN26 08:30 Sydney

    1. dan@spokt says:

      Hi Bob & Ed, I’m sorry the information I posted before July 18th was incorrect. All hubs are $30 for 15GB. I’m confident you won’t find a better experience for close to the same price.

  9. ed says:

    Dan,
    Trying to understand above letter from ancestry .There was hope with some that they would export more but that response doesn’t look like it does it ? not sure what they were seeking that you already have or don’t need?

  10. Carolyn says:

    Dan, thanks for all you guys hard work on this. Am very impressed with you responsiveness. My communication with myfamily never was as good or fast or helpful.

  11. Chief Scribe says:

    The websites are all closed if you are a 1.0 and open for those newbies at MyFamily2,5.

    It has been this way for over half a day.

    Plus we have that letter showing an unwillingness to cooperate with family crossing or any site on migration.

    Warning, Dan, this may not be as easy a set of migrations as it should be as Ancestry.com is an evil genealogy corporation, on the edge of legality.

  12. frank bill says:

    It looks like myfamily is not working again.

  13. Chief Scribe says:

    It was not this morning, but it was working just the other moment at both buttons. There system fools the site checking system by having the faux front door.

    Now where is the site migration tool as I want to get in there while it is still working.

    Can anybody help?

    1. dan@spokt says:

      Hi Chief, we have begun work on our migration tool. We will provide more details as we make progress!

  14. Jim Keeley says:

    How do I delete hubs?

    1. dan@spokt says:

      Hi Jim, See our FAQ for how to delete a hub:
      http://spokt.com/faq#delete_hub

  15. Received a refund of $10.83 last week from My Family. We were paid up to Oct of this year and have been with them 9 years. Spokt.com looks promising to move to especially if they work out the migration tool to export all our information to Spotk.com.

  16. Davewv says:

    In our hub the administrator has the edit option,but the users do not. They only have viewer option.

    1. dan@spokt says:

      Hi Dave, Admins can edit or delete anything. Non-admin users can only edit and delete their own posts. Many hubs promote all users to admin.

  17. frank bill says:

    Myfamily is now working. Probably can expect it isn’t going to work 100% of the time.

  18. Alex says:

    Hi,
    Just did an export on myfamily. MyFamily.com is supplying a zip file with only photos in it (no titles, descriptions, comments or album organization). Also no news, recipes, calendar info, files, etc. Ancestry at this time at least is not exporting anything else. I’m confused, how is it even possible to batch import anything other than a nameless / unorganized set of photos to Spokt if they are supplying us with no other site content?

    1. dan@spokt says:

      Hi Alex, our import tool is unique. We are not proposing to import the files MyFamily.com supplies, we are going to export the data from MyFamily.com directly. Much more complete that way.

  19. Becky says:

    Thanks for providing this tool. We have been myfamily users for close to 10 years and I have a new group of friends who use it as well. I’m glad to have found this alternative. Do we need to do anything special to get our myfamily files moved over?

    1. dan@spokt says:

      Hi Becky, I’m glad you found us here. Right now we hope you enjoy Spokt while we finish creating the tool. Once it’s done we’ll provide everyone with instructions on what to do in order to have your data migrate to your new home.

  20. Kathy says:

    Dan, you indicated in an earlier posting today that admins can edit or delete anything. However, I cannot see a way to edit info in another member’s profile. I need to rotate an avatar…….for some reason, they are always sideways when uploaded from an iPad (not sure about other mobile devices). Any assistance in this matter is greatly appreciated. Thanks…..your customer service ROCKS!!

    1. dan@spokt says:

      Hi Kathy, I’m sorry if I gave the wrong impression. Admins are limited to the ability to edit text and titles of posts of any kind and the text of all replies.

      Unfortunately your users have come across a known issue in that Avatars cannot be rotated by users. We want to fix this but for now I can fix it for you. Would you use the contact form to give me the email addresses of the users whose avatars are sideways? I’ll fix their avatars and I may be able to understand why the are not right-side-up in the first place.

      Thanks!

  21. I am new to Spokt…from Myfamily.com trying out your site. I posted a few pix and wanted to upload a condensed version of our family tree…typed out. It would not load as an attachment, and when I tried to copy and paste, it took it, but separated all the sentences so it didn’t make sense. What am I doing wrong…I was trying to put some things on the site before I invited my members to come.???

  22. kevin says:

    Do you have migration paths for classic myfamily.com 1.0 version?

    1. RJ says:

      Yes Kevin, our export tool will grab most if not all data from the 1.0 version. At minimum we are committed to migrating the news (and replies) and photos (and replies). Watch the blog for further announcements regarding migration and how to join in.

  23. If you go to bottom of myfamily and select 1.0 for us classic users, you can get in intermittently.
    I spent a night and morning this week going to every web page on myfamily site and doing “save as”, in Web page, complete format. Started in all Photos and one, by one, hit next. Some photos had same title, so wdit the name as you go under “edit info”.
    Took 5-6 hours to get them all. Did the same in news, front page, etc. Downloaded individual files and history. I have a separate folder with the full size photos i exported with myfamily export (futzy, takes days for them to get the photos downloaded properly after ou request EXPORT). Don’t forget to get all your members email contacts.
    In good shape now to at least preserve what we have. May try WordPress or Dreamweaver when time. Will sign up for SPOKT service soon. thanks for the efforts.

  24. John says:

    Will buy if export tool works

    1. RJ says:

      Thanks, John. Keep your eyes on the blog for the upcoming announcements on the export tool.

    2. Larry Czarnik says:

      John,

      I’ve already bought. They have a 75 day money back guarantee. That will take you past the 5 Sept My Family deadline anyway.

      BTW, where else would you go?

      Larry
      2014JL01 10:00 Sydney Australia

  25. Emanur Rahman says:

    How can I be advised that the export tool is ready? Is there a mailing list?

    Also, there does not appear to be any demo/test-drive mode to explore the features of Spokt.com. Is this correct or have I missed something? Seems strange to just pay sight unseen…?

    1. dan@spokt says:

      Hi Emanur,

      We’ll let you know, we’ll email the email address you used here on the blog. We do indeed have a demo: http://spokt.com/demo.

  26. Mary Ann Pratt says:

    We are new to this site and hope that it works out for all our family. We are very interested in the migration tool for myfamily.com 1.0 version.

  27. RSteiniger says:

    Hi Dan, we’re doing a test drive of your site with a “dummy hub” – learning tool! Comments:
    Do you know if we can change a name on the sections to something else? It would be good to change Polls to History.

    I did get on and posted a photo. The site seems to be a bit slow especially compared to Myfamily.com. It will be hard to find posts as there are not any categories in the sections. On myfamily for each section there were categories such as the individual states and such that we could post it under. That would make it easier to find. Do you know if we can change the section names? It would be good to change the section named Polls to History. Doesn’t look like there is any way to post graphics or a front page picture. Just makes it more interesting.

    1. RJ says:

      Currently Spokt’s categories cannot be renamed. In the future we are looking to offer a few categories found at MyFamily. Any developments in that area will be accompanied by an official blog post.

      If you feel there is an issue which we need to address regarding Spokt’s page load time, please send us a message here: http://spokt.com/contact

      Thanks!
      RJ

  28. We were on MyFamily Dot Com for 15 Years and have a lot of history in comments & news, recipes, cabinet and of course the pictures with their names and comments too! When the “Migration Tool” is ready we will definitely want to use it! IF you still need a beta tester I would love to help. Anything to get all our shared events & lives off there & into a safe environment here! I am one of the administrators of our MyFamily website.

    I did “Export” their prepared file & it was only the pictures, with the names & info removed & numbers substituted! We have a lot of pictures there so it is a nightmare for id’ing some of them – for instance the baby shots!

    1. RJ says:

      We’re very happy to welcome you to Spokt. In reading through your comment, I am confident that the migration tool that we have in the works will resolve your concerns very well. Please keep an eye on the blog for an official announcement on the migration tool’s release.

      In the meantime, please let us know if there’s anything we can do to make your stay more comfortable.

      Have a great 4th!
      RJ

  29. RSteiniger says:

    Thanks for your patience with us myfamily.com “newbies”! I posted a PDF attachment in news and when members clicked on the paperclip it downloaded. Can they not view a PDF attachment and open it on our hub? You guys are working hard and we do appreciate your awesome willingness to work with us!

  30. Nancy Bryant says:

    We have quite an extensive My Family site. Your migration tool is of great interest to us but I am concerned that situations beyond your control could cause you to miss the deadline. Therefore I have also started manually downloading everything I can. I figure that if I start now I may be able to get everything so I really can’t wait. Once you have a migration tool I can stop the manual process
    I now have a hub where I am putting photos and news. I’m also putting History in News. However, I’m not clear where to put the files from File Cabinet. Can you please advise? Also it would be great to have a target date for completion of the migration tool realizing that it’s never a firm date.

    1. RJ says:

      Nancy,

      Thank you for your comments, your interest, and your patience. We have been busy behind the scenes preparing for our big announcement today. Please check out our official announcement on the blog where we discuss our newly released MyFamily.com migration tool, Mayflower. You can read more about it here: http://blog.spokt.com/general/introducing-mayflower-the-official-myfamily-com-to-spokt-migration-tool/

      Please let us know if you need anything!

      RJ

  31. Terry says:

    I would like to know what provision there will be for capturing the info on our hubs periodically. There is no way I am going to get involved with another company that is going to hold our information in a format that’s not easy to export.

    1. RJ says:

      Hi Terry —

      I think our latest blog post will address your concerns squarely (look especially at Stage 4 at the bottom of the post). You can read more about it here: http://blog.spokt.com/general/introducing-mayflower-the-official-myfamily-com-to-spokt-migration-tool/

  32. SB says:

    Will the migration tool be able to import the Address book?

    1. Dan says:

      Yes, we will import your address book and set up users for you in your hub.

  33. frank bill says:

    Very impressed with how fast you are keeping up with all the new changes that myfamily has caused for you.

  34. Nancy Bryant says:

    Thank you!, thank you, thank you! Today’s announcement was awesome. I have stopped my manual download process and started the migration. Please let us know if there is anything we should be downloading manually. For example -File Cabinet. We really don’t have too much there so this is very doable. And where do we put files on your site? Thanks Nancy

    1. RJ says:

      Hi Nancy,

      Mayflower should be able to handle the file cabinet files in the migration process. Keep an eye on the blog as we’ll be announcing there when you will be able to import the data into your Spokt Hub.

  35. RJ, have you been notified that they have extended the closing date of MyFamily to Sept. 30th? This was announced July 1st as a reply to the June 4th post at this link:

    http://blogs.ancestry.com/ancestry/2014/06/04/ancestry-com-focuses-on-core-offerings/#blogComments

    Hopefully this link will show for you.

    1. RJ says:

      Thanks, Patti. That’s really good news for everybody.

  36. Oops, the link didn’t post properly but hopefully it will work if you copy and paste it…here is what they posted:

    * UPDATE JULY 1, 2014: Due to recent site issues, we will be extending the period that MyFamily, MyCanvas, Genealogy.com, Mundia, and the Y-DNA and mtDNA websites will be available. These sites will now retire on September 30, 2014. An email will be sent to all customers according – See more at: http://blogs.ancestry.com/ancestry/2014/06/04/ancestry-com-focuses-on-core-offerings/#blogComments

  37. SB says:

    I’m an administrator on one MyFamily 1.0 site and a regular user on another 1.0 site. The one I am a user on has been submitted to Spokt to be migrated and I have been invited to that Spokt site.

    Am I able to pay for and use Mayflower to migrate the other MyFamily 1.0 site that I am an administrator of, and if so can I use the same login/user name or do I have to maintain separate accounts?

    Thanks,

    SB

    1. RJ says:

      Hi,

      I believe our support team addressed your question already via email, but if you still have questions, feel free to contact us again through http://spokt.com/contact. Thanks!

  38. John Payne says:

    My present experience is that MyFamily.com is slowly wilting on the vine.
    Have switched to this site and so far, like what I see.

    1. RJ says:

      Thanks, John. Glad to have you join the Spokt family!

  39. We’ve joined Spokt, are slowly getting our family her and opening conversations, photos, etc. How do we get on your radar for migration of our My Family photos, conversation threads, etc.?

    Thanks
    Mike

    1. RJ says:

      Hi Mike,

      I see in the meantime since you posted this that you were able to get your Mayflower migration initiated. Please let me know if you need anything else. You can reach our support team at http://spokt.com/contact

      Thanks!
      RJ

  40. Linnie Norvell says:

    Trying to get on here. I hope this works because the way MyFamily.com has export is a mess. Loosing lots of info and date.

    1. Dan says:

      Hi Linnie, I’m sure you’ll be very happy with Spokt and your Mayflower migration!

    2. Larry Czarnik says:

      Spokt and Mayflower just imported 10 years of posts and 740 users a few pics without a hitch. Worth the money ($69 for backup, one off and $29 per year)!!!!!!!
      Do it sooner rather than later to avoid the disappointment if everyone waits. Even Spokt has finite time before ancestry.com blows MyFamily away on 30 Sep 2014.

      Larry
      2014Ag06 16:45 Sydney Australia

    3. Dan says:

      Thanks Larry, I’m glad you’re happy with your Mayflower Migration!

  41. Suzette says:

    Will the Mayflower migration capture the actual PHOTO INFO such as ‘Description’,’Date Taken’,’Place Taken’ and ‘Comments’ of the photos posted in the 1.0 version of MyFamily.com? (I am aware by reading the blog that apperently ‘Albums’ and ‘Title’ of photos can not be captured).

    I have volumes of who’s who in the’PHOTO INFO’ of these photographs and have been doing screen prints, but now that has stopped working for some reason. The screen print is now showing broken links where the photos should be. A week ago screen print was working even though I was using alot of paper and ink.

    1. Dan says:

      YES! Description, Date Taken, Place Taken, and all the comments. We are capturing the Album names and Titles as well! Not sure where you read otherwise but I’m happy to disavow you of that mistaken knowledge!

    2. Chief Scribe says:

      Sorry Dan but it did not work on my download as
      Posted By: Chief Scribe missing
      Date Posted: Dec 25, 2007 missing
      Description: All is missing

      are all missing including the section but the ones directly below these are present!

      Namely:

      Place Taken: //www.youtube.com/v/Bj2HY4UK-co
      Date Taken: Christmas 2007, Merry Christmas!
      Owner: Hen*********

      Titles and the shown text (posted with no permission to reveal the full name of the owner.

      That is a critical flaw as Description is the one section that is always needed for genealogy sites.

      I did get most everything else including Replies at Photos, so far but I have not reviewed many.

      I have hundreds of pages of photos at each of my sites and I do need most all the descriptions with few exceptions.

      Otherwise so far the migration is well worth-while and He***** paid for three more sites tonight, but commented in a less precise way as to the missing crucial section of Description not being included at Photos in correspondence late tonight.

      Chief Scribe

    3. Dan says:

      Hi Chief,

      I just found this comment was incorrectly filed as SPAM a few nights ago. Things are happening fast around but I believe this bug has been fixed. Can you check the photos you had with truncated descriptions and confirm? Thanks!

    4. Kevin says:

      It depends on how it is presented in MyFamily.com! I just received my Mayflower Migration and on some photos the migration read only a portion of it and only copied a little of it. Nothing is fool proof! Am corrected it while going photo to photo comparison. At least I am not copying and reposting over 800 photos and 200 other entries.

      I am finding that if MyFamily.com had a vertical explanation due to the photo size, it was not read properly and left off most of it. If it had a horizontal comment. it was read and copy properly.

    5. Dan says:

      Hi Kevin,

      We discovered a bug with the photo descriptions that caused some to be incomplete. This only affects some of the sites that have been imported. Would you contact us so we can run our bug fix on your site? http://spokt.com/contact.

      Don’t worry, We’ll make it right!

    6. Kevin says:

      When? I hate not to correct it when time is running out before Sept 30Th! When you brought over History and File Cabinets, some of the censuses and newspapers did not come thru as downloads. Is this going to be check out also?

    7. Dan says:

      Hi Kevin, we’ve already fixed the bug we just need to run the fix on your site. It’s a simple procedure. Send us more details on the file cabinet and history issues through our contact form and we’ll be able to help there as well!

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