End of October Update

October has come and gone. MyFamily officially closed their doors just over a month ago, and what we wished could have been a small vacation instead turned out to be a very busy month. We are, however, starting to see a glimmer of light at the end of the Mayflower tunnel.

Mayflower
Mayflower successfully transferred over 18,000,000 messages from MyFamily.com to Spokt.com. We’ve received a lot of expressions of gratitude and it really means a lot to us. Knowing that we’ve helped you has helped make all the hard work and long hours worthwhile.

We have completed almost 100% of all the migrations that have been ordered. There are a few migrations with issues and we are working hard to resolve those issues while we still can. It is not all sunshine and rainbows though: some sites were unavailable before we were able to retrieve the data and we feel very badly about those cases. Due to the costs incurred by each order we had a no-refund policy for all Mayflower migrations but have relaxed that for cases where we were unable to access your data from MyFamily.com and have issued partial or full refunds where appropriate.

New Support Tracking System
We had some problems with our old system. We think our support team did a good job with the tool they had but we encountered inefficiencies which were holding us back. If you contact support you’ll receive automatic replies letting you know that we have received your request along with a ticket number. I know this isn’t very exciting but it enables us to better serve you, and that makes us grin a little more these days.

New Features
No, we have not forgotten about the new features we announced earlier this year. Our top priority remains Mayflower migrations but we have begun the development process of these features. We are excited about them and can’t wait to finish them for you. We will begin rolling out some these enhancements within the next few weeks.

The size and scope of the Mayflower project forced us to also put Harbor on hold until we could get a handle on the massive influx of migrations, but we are still excited about making your data available to you in a portable format. You’ll be seeing more on Harbor in the coming weeks/months.

Thanks again for all of your support, trust, and feedback. We are a better company since you’ve joined us, and we hope to enjoy many fruitful years creating and sharing life’s memories together!

30 thoughts on “End of October Update”

  1. Larry Czarnik says:

    Dan,

    On behalf of all the MyFamily users around the world, a sincere and heartfelt THANK YOU (in the biggest boldest font and with fireworks, bells and whistles). I for one have never seen a more monumental effort on the part of one company for the unforgivable drama and stuff up that another company has put users through. Please ensure EVERYONE at Spokt, from CEO to janitor / mail person, etc. gets this thank you. Each one of them had a role to play to help the organisation get the job done.

    We look forward to a long and fulfilling relationship of sharing memories with families and friends because of the people of Spokt.
    Larry Czarnik
    2014NV07 08:30 Sydney Australia, NV06 16:30 US EST

    1. Diana Jones says:

      I second that emotion. We are thankful that spokt bailed us out of the situation myfamily put us in. I am really looking forward to new features added to our sites, bring them on.

    2. Sharon Nelson Nutt says:

      I HAVE to join in here — THANK YOU, SPOKT! It’s hard for some of us to wait for these good changes and updates coming in the future, but I must say… Your SPOKT teams have gone way above and beyond!! We commend you for all the long difficult hours you must have put into getting our old family sites immigrated here! I know your work on our behalf is ever forging ahead and the holidays are here already.. We wish you all to have had a wonderful Christmas/Holiday, and are very much praying for continued success in the new year 2015! You bit off a very large piece of pie and darned if you didn’t manage to get it digested! WE THANK YOU ALL, from the bottom of our hearts! And I wanted to also tell you that if we lose some of our members because they had a hard time navigating the sites, or thought it was too “plain”… I will simply re-invite them again when we have more features going for us, and tell them so! We are so thankful to have almost all of our family info in tact! God Bless You!

  2. RSteiniger says:

    Congratulations, Kids!! You did awesomely better than anyone thought you would… I always had an innate feeling that you would be able to do it! Be proud of yourselves & take a breather…. We are all so Happy to be on your great site! Thank-You Spokt Team!

  3. Lyn Schwartz says:

    I too would like to express my appreciation for all you have done and are continuing to do to preserve all our family photos and files. This website has been a wonderful way to share family information with numerous cousins (mostly 4th and 7th) from all over the world.

    One of our files was a compilation of very old family letters that were saved in Rich Text Format. I tried to pull up the document and it was full of text commands and very difficult to read. I’m hoping when things settle down that some of these issues will be corrected. Again, many many thanks from all of us.

  4. Duffy Jensen says:

    Larry Czarnik above said it better than I could have, but I do want to add my dittos to his comment. We are all so thankful that everyone at SpokT stepped up to save us all!

  5. Melva Grant says:

    I and my family can’t thank you enough for all the work you have done in preserving all our photos, history, etc. It means the world to us. I notice that we have only 27% of space left on our site. What happens when we run out? Can we buy more space? If so, how much will it cost?
    Again, thanks so much for everything you do.

  6. John Payne says:

    A job well done, thank you. My goal was to be able to preserve what we had on file and you made that happen. Blessings.

  7. Nancy Fore says:

    Thanks Dan and SPOKT team for getting me back on the 91st website. I was able to add my NEWS ‘KILROY WAS HERE’ just in time for Veterans Day. Still looking forward to seeing what’s new for the SPOKT website. On behalf of the 91st Troop Carrier Squadron and members – THANKS. Your dedication is amazing!

  8. William Silverthorn says:

    Can’t happen soon enough … my sight is basically unuseable without some orgnization and design help of these mandatory features … Please expedite.

    Also, in looking at some files that have come over, the photos that were linked within came over but the links don’t seem to show them. How does one edit this HTML within a file to work with the new address of the photos that got migrated as well, but currently don’t show since the html did NOT get edited by the Mayflower transfer.

  9. Dan Young says:

    I’m a little late in saying this, but no less grateful. Thank you SPOKT team for the efforts put forth in helping us keep our on-line history! One doesn’t know what one has until it’s gone. You folks intervened and kept that from happening. From all of us to all of you. A very hearty “THANK YOU!”

  10. Suzi says:

    I would also like to say a heartfelt “Thank You” to Spokt. I was very upset over the MyFamily decision. You at Spokt have made a huge difference in all you have done. Wish I was computer literate so I could help you! Thanks again.

  11. One more thought, other than the very needed album/folder organization and search functions before I can really use this site …

    How about personalization, or front page capabilities? On MyFamily, I was able with HTML to make multiple portals to different albums, or sub-family locations within my site .. with any of that be possible on Spokt? I don’t see any front page capabilities or even discussion about any plans for anything, that would really personalize a particular site over another. Am I missing something?

    1. RSteiniger says:

      Can we let these poor exhausted people rest before everyone floods them with new requests, please??? They have been working hard for umpteenth months! Patience, please…..

  12. Enid Albat says:

    Two of my sites are delighted with the transfer and hoping you all will be able to get time with your families over the upcoming holidays. We appreciate all your work. My third site had problems with the invitations and most everyone did not realize what it was when they got it. I will deal with that later 🙂 I know you know what needs done and it will be accomplished faster for everyone if we don’t keep throwing up individual perceived problems. The real way to tell you have done a good job will come with time when this massive group renews their membership. In the meantime, just a note to say thank you. Your efforts are appreciated.

  13. DougC says:

    I’ve been impressed by the attitude, the promises, and the delivery by the Spokt team. For our family website usage, the dropping by MyFamily.com and the resurrection by Spokt, has caused a real REVIVAL by our family members. Because we were forced to move, and we discovered Spokt, it caused us to clean up our family member list and communicate often and widely to that group. Now we’re seeing so much more action on our family Spokt site than we’d been having recently on the MyFamily site. So Spokt has energized us all. Keep on truck’in.
    Doug C

  14. pat says:

    Thanks for getting all of our stuff over! This is so cool! can hardly wait for the other features

  15. Roger Barnes says:

    I would like to start a family site but I’ve been waiting for the new features that should make it so much better. I understand and accept that the much of your work recently has been to accommodate the folks from Ancestry. I’m just posting this comment so I can get email of future blog posts.

  16. Stevej says:

    Well said RSteiniger!!!!

  17. Irene Cowley says:

    What has impressed me the most with the migration is that my members got invitations automatically. I really need to spend the time going back and correcting or adding e-addies to my member list, but people are coming around and using the site.
    I do miss the links but assume that they will show up sooner or later, since you say you saved ALL the code with each post. So I’m not doing a lot of fiddling here, but people are adding to Photos and News, which is a lot more than was happening this last year in My Family!!

  18. p.t.nevola says:

    You people are doing great
    I have been waiting for you to have a breather
    so that I may point out a few of my desires.
    First, it would be great if I were able to edit my errors after I post
    sometimes when someone posts directly after the first post of attached to a previous post, the post becomes locked. a niggling problem, but it’d be nice if there were a way to make corrections.
    Second, the posting of pictures is somewhat of a problem for me.
    on the my family sites, to add a picture to a string already under way it is somewhat difficult and in the case of posting picture from my own picture file even more so. It’s complicated. It’d be nice if I could post a picture right from my pictures file to an already ongoing string.

  19. Some of our previous members have not yet logged in, perhaps because they failed to realize what was going on with our SPOKT site. Can you tell us how we can send a new reinvitation to those people as a group rather than use the time consuming individual method. Thanks for all you do.

  20. Debbie says:

    Seasons Greetings to Everyone!
    The folks involved with my SPOKT hub, that was set up to replace our MYFAMILY home, are happy that we still have a place to gather together in cyberspace. As site administrator, I’ve been asked if you have any plans to tweek your site a bit so we could make a previously posted picture show as the “main” picture on the cover page of our SPOKT site? This would allow us to feature specific family members on the dates of their birthdays, anniversaries, etc.

    Another thing that has come up, pertains to how our “postings” are dated. Would it be possible to tag each posting with the actual date and time they were made, rather than showing that it was done “15 days ago, 2 hours ago” etc.???

    As they say, it is all in the details! I look forward to your response. Thanks!

    1. Pete Masuck says:

      The community is world-wide. Which date and time would be relevant to all? There probably is a solution to that issue…that I am not smart enough to figure out. However, having said that, I’m not sure the exact date and time is all that important in the context of this site. This is not like the usual social-networking site (I hope). I don’t think our memories, thoughts and photos are all that time-sensitive. Maybe I’m wrong about that, but nah, I don’t think so.

    2. Larry Czarnik says:

      Time zone is set per user so that each user sees the their own timezone on posts. However there is one update that would be helpful – the ability to set the default timezone for the hub. Most users would be in the timezone of the admin, and where they might not be the admin could mention that a user should set the timezone when setting up account. Right now I have to advise EVERY user to set the timezone.
      Regards,
      Larry
      2015MR22 18:15

    3. Katie says:

      Thanks for the suggestion, Larry! I have passed your note along to the Developing Team.

  21. Chelo says:

    I also add my heartfelt thank you to all the hard working techies, engineers etc. It was incredible that you were able to transfer data from MyFamily. In the conversation threads posted to Photos and News are comments from family members who have passed and knowing that we still have that part of them with us due to your efforts makes me teary-eyed. I am patiently and eagerly looking forward to the roll out of further enhancements. PS can you please post somewhere how to make other people co-chairs for our family site. I want to give editor capabilities to at least two others (just in case) but can’t figure out how to do it.
    Aloha

  22. Brenda Johnson says:

    Roy and Gracie Wood had 10 children, 32 grandchildren, and 59 great grandchildren. We have lost count on the great-greats. I am one of the 32 grandchildren. My sister and I started our My Family website in 2005. It was a wonderful tool for keeping in touch, getting to know each other on a deeper level, and for documenting and archiving family history and sharing beloved memories. We were shocked beyond disbelief that the myfamily organization would allow all of our precious data to be lost! Several of our elder members have passed on (including my parents), and it is poignant to be able to still read their posts and ‘hear’ their voice. We will forever be thankful to SPOKT for rescuing our data!

  23. Enid Albat says:

    My second post in this string. Thank you again for the continued changes/ upgrades/ tweaks whatever term applies. I am using the book feature daily. I appreciated the video on how to do it. Trying to decide if I want to combine the old “duplicate” folders since MyFamily” kept news and photos separate. Is there a way to set our preference in how books opens? It is easier for me to use as list and alphabetically, but since the options are there I can always click if it’s to much trouble to make a saved feature. I have changed emails for family members who didn’t know their new email before the old one was disconnected, reinvited folks who have not gotten on. I look forward to visiting Spokt every day to see new posts then spend a few minutes looking around and seeing what else I can now do that will make the site more user friendly for our older or brand new to internet family members. I don’t know how many of the new things are just me finding them and how many are upgrades you all continue to release, but Thanks. REALLY!!! THANKS!!!

    1. Katie says:

      I’m so glad you’re enjoying Spokt, Enid! We do not currently have a way to save your viewing preference for books, but thank you for your input. I’ve passed your note to the Developing Team.

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