MyFamily.com 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!
That is FANTASTIC.news!! Thanks so much!
This is the best news we have gotten since learning of the demise of Myfamily.com (which for most of us includes Ancestry.com . . . because they can no longer be trusted after their despicable act and leaving so many of us in a lurch).
Good luck with the migration and your business and thank you, thank you, thank you.
Great news, but approximately when can we all use the migration tool? I don’t want to pay Ancestry to keep my site active until Sept but can’t afford to be shut out of all our data..my renewal due July 3rd.???? Any suggestions?
Hi Barbara, we’ll provide an update on the migration tool in a few weeks. I do not believe MyFamily.com will charge you on the 3rd: their FAQ said they wouldn’t.
Dan, we have set our site as a trial. How do we now make it permanent and how do we pay (from the UK)?
Dan- forget I asked! I just discovered how to do it so I answered my own questions 🙂
Thanks Elke! SO glad you found us!
WE have just maid our HUB permanent and are enjoying the site. My one question is will we ever be notified of birthdays and anniversaries as it was on myfamily?
Vern Barlow
Hi Vernon, we do plan on adding a calendar feature but the details have not been finalized. We’ll take your request into consideration.
I am paying for it now. When do I get the tool?
Hi Jeff, we’re very glad to have you as a paying customer. We will post a status update on the tools progress in a few weeks.
Barbara Meador My family has said they give refunds to any one that has paid in the last few months. At this point they may not ask you to pay to keep your site active until Sept. But you need to email them to find out.
Did You Know?
We’re sorry, but the MyFamily.com web site is temporarily unavailable. We are undergoing maintenance or resolving some errors. We apologize for the inconvenience and ask for your patience at this time. Please try again shortly.
Thank you again for your patience.
We’re sorry, but the website is temporarily unavailable. We are undergoing maintenance to resolve some errors caused by the recent DDoS attack and mitigate future attacks of this sort. We apologize for the inconvenience this has caused, as this may interrupt the work you’ve been doing on the site over the next several days.
We appreciate your patience and support as we deal with this unfortunate incident against Ancestry.
From MyFamily.com FAQs
I am a current subscriber. Are you giving refunds
Yes, eligible refunds are currently being processed and will be issued automatically to individuals paying for active MyFamily sites impacted by the retirement. The refunds are effective as of June 5, 2014 and will be pro-rated to this date. If your account is current as of June 5, 2014, you will have continued access to the site throughout the retirement period.
latest from Ancestry.com face book
UPDATE (Sunday, June 22, 10:30am PST): Our tech team continues to work on fully restoring all services, here is the status on the following issues:
* Mac version of Family Tree Maker not syncing
* GEDCOM downloads from Ancestry Member Trees are not currently available
* The following websites are currently offline: MyFamily, MyCanvas, Rootsweb, Mundia, Y-DNA/mt-DNA, and Genealogy.com (please note we will be extending the retirement date on each of these and will have details to share once these sites are restored)
Unfortunately, we do not have an ETA on when these will be resolved, but will continue to post updates as we have them. If you are experiencing any other issues not mentioned here, please contact our Member Services department and we would be happy to assist you.
Are you saying that you can only import the members information from myfamily that join Spokt? If so then for some they will need to do there own inport of there members that have died or that may not choose to join them on spokt.
Hi Frank,
We’ll import all the data from all the members. The point is that you can start using Spokt where you left off with MyFamily.com.
If we can not access our myfamily data, how can spokt?
We want to continue our test sit and have you guys backfill or should we just create a new site?
I need advice on what to do.
Hi Jim,
Continue to use Spokt as you have been. We’ll tell you how to back fill when we have finished the tool.
We can’t access MyFamily.com now but we expect the data to become available again.
Our member, who paid for our myFamily website last October, received a $10 refund a few days ago from them. That would be about right for the next four months, and she received it automatically (didn’t have to request it).
Hi –
I am VERY CONCERNED that you are now saying it would be a FEW WEEKS until the migration tool would be available.
There are only about 75 days (a little over 10 weeks) left until myfamily.com is out of business (and that’s only if they keep their word – which is highly questionable). In the meantime they are STILL not on line – and every day that passes is another day lost.
That leaves very little time to convert 15 YEARS worth of posts. What if the migration tool doesn’t work as expected. It would be impossible to salvage all my work.
Hi Spencer, we are working as quickly as we can and we understand that MyFamily.com will be closing down in September.
We do not know exactly when the migration tool will be ready but it will automatically transfer all the supported data from a MyFamily.com site to a Spokt Hub.
It doesn’t affect the fevered pace at which we are working to build this tool but you should know that MyFamily.com has said that they will extend the shutdown date because of this prolonged outage.
Dan –
I appreciate what you’re doing and it certainly sounds like you are doing your best and have the best of intentions.
Unfortunately – NO ONE at Ancestry.com can be trusted given the despicable way they are ignoring their customers (and basically, always have).
Unfortunately, the best migration tool in the world will be worthless if it is not done prior to their shutdown . . . and I simply can’t afford to wait and risk it.
Spencer, what other choice do you have? Do not think myfamily is going to do much to help. Don’t know if you did there download but it is not much help they are not providing any text of any kind. If you are like our family you have a lot of photos. It is the photos that you can download but as I say no text with them. Only there numbering system is with the photos. We have about 9000 that we now have to sort through and rename.
If we want the posting with the photos once myfamily is back up we need to go through all the 9000 pages and copy paste to our own computer. think it will not be done by the time they close myfamily for good.
I do not think Ancestry.com is bein honest about the cause of there DDOS attack. Think it has more to do with all the members of the sites they are closeing trying to download the information then any outside attact. Note it is the same sites that they have not brought back up.
Frank –
Now that I know you were speaking to me, I’ll be happy to answer. The “other choice” is that I am (1) copying and pasting to a new website as quickly as I can (WHEN) I can access the site, (2) have hired one consultant to help and (3) have another on standby, who can assign 5 or 6 people to the task (4) am asking for donations to cover the expenses and (5) anything else I can think of. Have 3 “computer experts” on standby so they can check out myfamily.com to see if they can suggest anything else – IF it is ever available.
In regard to your comment about Ancestry.com not being honest – I agree with you 1000 percent. They are bold-faced liars and (in some cases) don’t even make any bones about it!
Their problem was caused by their incompetent developers who screwed everything up with their announcement and routed things to their version 2.0 (or whatever). It has never worked properly since that time, whether you could access it or not.
Their team of developers are clearly grossly incompetent and it is the fault of top level managers, that it has been this way for many, many years.
I hope the whole world hears about this and ceases to use Ancestry.com until they deservedly go OUT OF BUSINESS COMPLETELY!!!!!!
Spencer
From what I have been reading you are not alone in wanting to see Ancestry.com go out of business.
Not sure if you looked at this site. they say there program can download a web site to your computer. I did try it but I couldn’t make it work. I did read where someone else tried but said they got some kind of message that the site was password protected and they need to change proxy settings. Maybe someone on your team can make it work.
http://www.httrack.com/page/2/
Dan, you mention News and Photos and possibly other sections in the future. What about History? That is the most important section for us (I would say even more important than photos). We use History for the important discussions that should be archived and New for more temporary and transient information. If an important discussion thread was created in News, one of the admins will often transfer it to History for archiving.
Hi Bill, we have committed to transferring News and Photos. We think we will be able to get the other sections as well. It depends on the format of those sections and since we can’t do any further research until MyFamily.com is back up we only know what we know.
Thanks, Dan. I understand your situation, especially about not being able to do any testing while their sites are down. History is similar enough to News, that it should be a very easy add once you have the initial features working. I just wanted to put in my $0.02 that migrating History is a critical feature for us.
Myfamily is now on line
I agree this is great news. We have been using myfamily.com since it first opened and were so dismayed that it was shutting down, and so happy to have found spokt, as none of the websites myfamily listed were what we wanted.
How do we sign up for the migration tool whenever it becomes available?
Hi Sandre, we’re so glad you found us. We’ll let you know how to sign up for the automated migration tool when we have more details.
Frank –
It is? I have tried it ever since I saw your comment and still get the “offline message.” I have deleted my browsing history and tried again. I refreshed (F5) the page and still see the message.
Is it possible it was up for a short time and is now down AGAIN?
Any other suggestions. This whole situation is so pathetic.
I had to reset my password and got on? Nothing is easy.
Ignore the first web address please – that now redirects to me new site. Sorry about that.
Quick question, about to make payment for this year’s subscription, I see it’s automatically charged to the credit card every year. I’d like to opt out of that, as we plan to share the cost among family members year to year. I don’t see an option to opt out, is it a possibility?
Hi Cynthia, we’ll make it possible to spread that around from year to year.
Some families use Square Cash to collaborate on the payment. It’s a free way to easily and safely send money electronically.
On the other hand a lot of people feel really good about giving their family a $29 gift each year.
You share it by check with one brave soul being the one on the hook. It makes too much trouble to split a bill among friends and even restaurants expect there to be one guy using his credit card, but will write separate tickets for those adverse to doing it among themselves.
So I would expect they would say no as if one of five fails to be still on the list to much admin time to get it right.
Just a guess, which I hope makes sense but they could let each charge one dollar, which would be a lot of processing fees.
Spencer Did you get on myfamily?
Still get CHECK BACK SOON!
I got on all my sites and am back to downloading page by page (you never know what page you may wish you had so I am doing tens of thousands as though I were the spider downloader) until Spokt says it is working for a site download or a site transfer.
As we had money for next year, I will spend it as soon as Spokt is working even tentatively on all MyFamily section downloads
Thanks Kin, I hope we can finish before you do 🙂 I also hope you enjoy using Spokt with your friends and family members in the mean time.
I am thrilled to know that you are working on a MyFamily.com Migration tool. In anticipation, I have signed up for a year. I do not want to lose 12 years of genealogical collaboration by many relatives, some of whom have passed on. I pray that my dearly departed relatives will guide you in this quest to provide an even better facility so families may keep aware of their histories and of each other. Onward, forward!
Spencer try deleting cookies and temporary internet files. Need to uncheck preserve favorites website data.
Frank –
I really appreciate your concern and support. It truly means a lot.
I had tried that several times and I just tried it again.
I even logged in with a “InPrivate is turned on” page.
Has ANYONE else been able to log in or is ANYONE else still having a problem? Once again I keep getting the “CHECK BACK SOON” page.
Do YOU still have access, Frank?
Spencer I can still get on. I did see someone posted on Ancestry facebook that they can not get on myfamily either. My guess is they limiting the numbers that can log in at any one time.
Dan –
I just joined Spokt – counting on you to do a good job with your import tool.
It appears to me that Spokt is designed in WordPress. Am I right?
If so, I would like very much to be able to speak with you. Any chance?
Spencer Are you useing a Mac? from postings in facebook some that have Macs are having problems useing some of Ancestry’s sites
Frank –
No Mac
Dell (primarily) + Toshiba + HP
Nada on any of them
Spencer
Have you reset not just delete files Internet Explore? Have you reset your modem or router? I have also found that Explore 10 and 11 don’t always work well on some sites so have went back 9.
I suspect Categories/Albums are not going to be possible, This is not a deal killer, under our extreme circumstances, but was back 7 or 8 years ago when Ancestry.com bought MyFamily and attempted to move all sites to a place where categories were not possible.
I am hoping Dan is doing 1.0 sites which are the ones that get only unlabeled photos as their entire download, for the newer ones are said to download with what MyFamily provided.
I think that is a given, as some here are 1.0 for sure.
Frank, Dan, et al
Stick with this comment and at the end I have some info that might be helpful about the “export”
As for logging in, in desperation, I called Ancestry.com and much to my surprise actually got help.
They told me to try logging in to http://WWW.MYFAMILY.COM which, took me to version 2.0
Once there, I went down to the bottom of the page for 1.0 clicked on it, waiting a second and clicked a second time (which I learned they require for some unknown reason)
But, that took me FINALLY right to my website. So, “yes” it is up and “yes” I am able to access it.
When I “begged” for my export file, I learned (even though I requested it 7 or 8 times) always got a screen that it would take 48 hours, etc. but never got a download.
I learned that they are SUPPOSED TO SEND AN EMAIL WITH A LINK TO CLICK ON TO MANUALLY START THE DOWNLOAD. I never got this email on any of my 7 or 8 requests.
While, I was logged in to my site, they had me open another window and in that window go directly to http://dl.myfamily.com/ where there was a list of a “personal” (which they told me to ignore) and another one with the name of my website. All I had to do was click on DOWNLOAD and IT STARTED.
It is, unfortunately, only the pictures with no descriptions but at least I will know what I have gotten.
At this point in time (and it shows another 16 minutes to go) it is showing that it is 54% complete. So, the whole download is taking about an hour and I estimate around 2000 pictures.
I hope that is helpful to some of you out there.
A few years ago our original site with myfamily.com was lost and they don’t know how. Another prime example of how they can’t be trusted. There were quite a few years of history on it. I am hoping the transition will be smooth or else I’ll have to take you up on the 75 day satisfaction policy.
Dan and team, you have all been amazing at responding to our needs! I had a feeling that you would be up to the task and you have surpassed my expectations! Forgive our frustrated myfamily.com rants – once you have a migration tool in place, we will spread your name like wildfire! Thank-you So Much!
Thank you RSteiniger for the kind words. We will continue to try to treat you right!
Read the authors’ blog post about a “MyFamily.com transfer tool” that works directly with the MyFamily website to recover all the material and transfer it into a Spokt family Hub. They are not planning on using the file download material. Smart, eh?
I am cautiously optimistic about the myfamily migration tool. Forgive my reticence, but like so many others who feel just betrayed by ancestry.com, it’s going to take some time for me to trust another website. However, everything you are doing and saying, and the speed at which you are working, gives me great cause for hope.
Unfortunately, I am leaving for several weeks and can’t do anything about transferring my stuff until I get back. I had been downloading my stuff manually from myfamily.com until the outage, which couldn’t have come at a worse time. When I get back, there isn’t much time left to recover my data. I look forward to your continued progress and ail try to monitor it while I’m gone, and then act on it when I get back. Thank you for all your hard work and your responsiveness to our concerns.
Hi Melanie, I understand. Being disappointed and mistreated in the past can make it hard to trust new people. We will do everything we can to treat you right. We have users who have felt treated right for 7 years.
When we say migration tool, we mean an automated process that will extract your data from MyFamily.com and import it into Spokt without you needing to do more than start it at the beginning and clarify a few things at the end. If you are able to check-in on our progress from where you are you may be able to kick off the import process as well. Either way we hope the tool will be able to import all the data very quickly.
Sorry, one more thing…. What do you mean when you say
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!
Can I wait and try the migration tool before inviting people? Part of me wants to set something up and play with it before “going public”. It’s a big deal to invite everyone to a new site. I want to be sure it’s going to be the answer for us before I make the big move.
Hi Melanie,
Inviting family members is not a technical requirement– it’s more of a suggestion so you can start enjoying Spokt today. Have you tried the demo hub? http://spokt.com/demo It’ll let you see how Spokt works. I think it’ll be a very comfortable transition from MyFamily.com
Can only the hub creator pay? I can’t find where to pay for our hub but am not the creator.
Hi Carolyn, Any hub administrator can Pay. Ask the creator of your hub to promote you to an admin (Manage Hub). Then you’ll get the “Manage Hub” link will appear in your left-side menu. On the Manage Hub screen you’ll see a button to pay for the hub.
THANK YOU VERY MUCH! I’m so glad you found Spokt and I’m glad you are enjoying it.
Dear Spenser Wulwick, Dan et al – I followed Spenser’s instructions and am downloading zip files from MyFamily.com. It’s in two bundles, and one’s 663MB (19 mins left) and another 1.5 GB (3 hrs left). For now I will take what I can get. But for everything else, the migration tool will be most GREATLY appreciated. Keeping all appendages crossed. Much thanks everyone. Onward, forward!
Dan,
Do you recommend we wait until you can import all sections with the part of each page you are doing as History, is more important on genealogy sites than any other some times although I ultimately made my Photos my prime site for history as visual thumb nail attracts more than merely a History title? So when you have all of them we migrate in one go round.
Or would you prefer we come in, join and do the News and Photos first and when it is ready do it again for the other sections History, Recipes, Polls, Review and File Cabinet (which if not done can be done by hand download to the owner’s computer)?
I suspect you might prefer some early birds to avoid what may be an onslaught, as you seem to have one of the prime places and your migration tool makes your site unmatchable of those I have looked at. So keep going and let us know if waiting is unwise.
KM/FtC