Mayflower Imports: Week 1

MyFamily.com Replacement

We recently launched the final Mayflower stage last week and we have seen quite a few successful imports since then. Happy customers makes us happy. We’ve checked in on those of you with completed migrations, and your enthusiastic and grateful responses have made the countless hours and sleepless night seem worth it.

That said, we’ve been watching the queue shrink in size more slowly than we’d like; importing the actual data—gigabytes and gigabytes of your precious memories—is taking much longer than we anticipated. Your content is safe on our servers but the job’s not done until you can see it in your own Hub.

We really appreciate your patience as we work through the many migrations we’re performing. Some of you have waited for an entire month. If you were preparing a microwave dinner, a few days would be an eternity. If you were riding the actual Mayflower from England to America you’d still have a month of sea sickness left. Not to mention the scurvy!

Your imports would all be neatly completed in a few months if we were the types to pinch our pennies, find a TV program and sit on our couches as we wait it out.

But that is not who we are.

We are in the process of upgrading our server capacities, buying more bandwidth, and restructuring our back-end network connections to be geographically closer together for improved speed. We are going over every line of code to squeeze every bit of performance out of it. We won’t stop working for you!

We won’t give up on you, and we’re so grateful that you’re not giving up on us. Please keep cheering for us and encouraging us—it is the best medicine for overworked souls. Once your import is finished and your Hub is buzzing, consider taking a moment to thank the individuals who have been working extreme overtime for the past two months and probably won’t get a break before 2015.

126 thoughts on “Mayflower Imports: Week 1”

  1. BillR says:

    We seem to be missing the last few posts from MyFamily that were made before the export started. The last imported post (from History) has a date of June 27 in Spokt – which is correct. However, we have postings in News from July 4, July 7 and July 23 that were not transferred. The export/import was not initiated until the first part of August.

    (I sent a message via the contact form, as well.)

    1. Dan says:

      Hi Bill,

      We began exporting data on July 3rd for any sites that were requested. We posted a blog post instructing Mayflower users to stop using myfamily.com. The import code was ready at the end of July and we began importing sites then.

      Support may be able to help you–especially if you asked nicely :). Thank you for contacting them directly, that is the best way to have issues addressed.

  2. Ron says:

    Dan, I was only making a comparison. The attachments to the news articles did not import. I did figure out how to do it manually, but that’s gonna be a lot of work to manually reupload them all, then put the link in the news. Maybe I’m missing something, I don’t know. A suggestion for adding admin controls is to add a resend or invite to the member list and also make it possible to send a message to some or all members. I know it’s a lot to ask. I greatly appreciate all you do. I did notice the categories imported with the news and photos, I do hope you plan on implementing them soon. The search option was good and I than you so much for it.

  3. Jim Keeley says:

    Ok my guy goy back on. I want to make sure spokt does joy have a cookie problem when he signs into another site on spokt.
    I was about to invite someone from another site, but fear it will mess her up.

    Thnx

    1. Rusty Weber says:

      Jim – I had one of my sites migrated and have been on it. Another site that I am on (not an admin of though) just finalized migration today. I did not get an invitation to it, but it showed up in a list of my hubs – I just click on which hub I want to go to – sort of like Universal Login on the MF sites, but I didn’t have to do anythingthing to link them. I don’t know how it would work if an individual invitation was sent out though.

  4. Robert e Lee says:

    Dear S-P-O-K-T…com THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU…You’ve done a terrific job. Hey folks, if you’re missing a few lines, trying scan and save and then paste to your new site…quit whining? Now then, let’s all join in and ask spokt for a File Cabinet and for a Gallery to categorize all of our pictures? 😉 lol no hating on me now…

  5. Velma Silva says:

    Dan, I have a question! When we completed -finalized the migration. Were invitations sent out automatically to all the members on that list that was brought over? For I started seeing some appear that I know I didn’t send out invites to yet.

    1. Ron says:

      Velma, I noticed the same thing on my hub. I don’t have a problem with it. They were already members on the old site and I didn’t have a problem with them. That’s a little bit less that I have to do. I’d like to know also. Thanks Spokt for all your hard work. It may sound like I rant a little bit, but I’m really not. I just want to make Spokt better for our members.

    2. Dan says:

      Hi Velma,

      Yes the unmatched members are given a username and password. You can remove anyone you don’t want to see.

  6. JimMcDonough says:

    Not sure I understand…..

    Is EVERYTHING I’ve posted on Bushwick Buddies, at MyFamily transferred or will be transferred to SPokt, or am I just engaging in wishful thinking?

    1. Dan says:

      Hi Jim,
      The short answer is Yes. If you think something is missing please contact support (http://spokt.com/contact).

  7. Kathy McNamara says:

    Members from my 3 hubs are signing in but I see that the last names aren’t showing up on my alumni site. I, also like someone else posted, had the school year after their last name so now the year shows up but not the last name. I am going to e-mail the support too about this.

    1. Dan says:

      Thanks Kathy, email support is the best way to get results. I know they are all working overtime so please be patient – we will take care of you!

  8. how long does it take to migrate a MyFamily site over? Mine seems to be stuck at a certain point… but maybe I’m just anxious to see how it’s doing?

    1. Dan says:

      Hi Mary,
      It’s very unpredictable. Each step can take a few hours or several days depending on our load.

      The status screen is how to find out where your import is.

  9. Marta says:

    Hello Dan,

    My cousins and I are SO GRATEFUL to have a place to store all of our pictures, research documents and comments in regards to our family sites located on MyFamily and soon to be on Spokt.com!!!

    My first cousin and I are currently trying to co-ordinate which one of us will migrate four different sites. So, far we have it worked out that she will migrate the Descendants of Christian Landes of York County, PA, which is huge; it was started in 2002. It has 125 members aka family researchers. And, will take alot of time to review after the migration. She also plans to migrate two other sites: The Craun Family site and the Descendants of Joseph M. & Dianna Miller Glick. I will migrate our Fifer site.

    I understand after the migration we will have 7 days to review the site prior to it going live for all of our members. Because she is migrating 3 sites to my one, she wants me to do the review on the Glick site she will migrate. So, my question is will it be even possible for me to review the Glick site since she will be the migrator and admin? Or, should I handle the migration/admin of the Glick site, so that I can review the site in the 7 days window?

    1. RJ says:

      Hi Marta,

      Thanks for the questions. The review process should be fairly simple. We have a very powerful global search feature that makes finding any content simple and fast.

      When a site migration is finalized, the members are invited immediately. Most sites migrate without issue, and for the few that have had a quirk here or there, we are usually able to fix the site while leaving the existing content in place, so I recommend you two perform the migrations how you’d like and plan on enjoying your new home on Spokt with all of the old content safely in place.

      I hope that helps!
      RJ

  10. Marta says:

    Also, what is an inline file? My cousin and I have never heard that term before.

    1. RJ says:

      This would refer to file attachments on a post (or comment), or an image that shows up with the text in a post or comment. This is different from file attachments that are found in the “File Cabinet” section and images posted in the “Photos” section in that they would have been attached while creating the post. Most people did not use this function, but for some of those who did it was an oft-used feature.

  11. Marta says:

    So, after the migration is complete, all the members will be invited to review and view the contents, you just need to be notified within the 7 day window that everything looks okay? And, any one of us members can let you know. Correct?

    1. RJ says:

      Hi Marta,

      This is correct: all members will be invited immediately, but the admin performing the migration will have 7 days to notify us in the event that there are any major issues with the migration. We ask that you carefully read the terms when you finalize the migration and refrain from contacting us regarding a known question or issue listed there. Also, we prefer to have one point of contact if there is a problem, namely the person who initiated the migration.

      Keep in mind, too, that we are eager to get this right for you. By no means will we tell you “tough luck” after the 7th day. We will help you as long as we are able, but we are obviously limited by any corrections that are reliant upon MyFamily’s servers being available. The “7 day” element is there to make clear that the onus is on you to ensure your content was migrated safely and intact. This is best left in your hands as we are not familiar with your content to the degree that you are.

      For the few that have been a bit bumpy, we have done (and continue to do) our best to make sure it gets straightened out. As always, we’re here to help, and so far the vast majority of migrations have been completed smoothly and without a hitch.

      Thanks for your questions, and please let us know if you need anything else!
      RJ

  12. Wanda Case says:

    I can not believe that I paid $69.00 for this mess! I can only describe this as having …no flow, no method to the madness. There are NO TABS for files, history, recipes, everything is crammed under the NEWS tab. Also, the migration ended up copying nearly every photo twice, so I have doubles of almost everything….I even have double MISSING IMAGE notices. Missing images that did not transfer. There is NO separation of individual family photo file folders (different surnames)

    Not happy, NOT HAPPY AT ALL!

    1. Dan says:

      Hi Wanda,

      Did you contact support? Duplicate photo imports is a bug and they’ll be able to help you resolve that very quickly. I believe one or two other migrations were affected by this bug and the resolution only took a few minutes. It may take a bit longer but if you send links to the missing images support can also help with those. PLEASE contact support and let us know how it goes.

      You also might be helped by our Mayflower FAQ where we inform our customers that We have captured the album names and categories and we will develop organizational features into Spokt.

      Mayflower migrations are very complicated, we’re doing our best to clearly communicate expectations to our customers.

    2. Dan says:

      Hi Wanda,

      I just checked with support and they told me you did contact them about the duplicates and they had them removed within a couple hours of your request.

      Send them links to the erroneous missing images and they’ll fix those right up for you as well.

  13. V A Emuang says:

    I’d like to share with others that I activated the Migration Tool at 0245 hrs Monday and the entire process was completed by Wednesday 1340 hrs – that’s about 58 hrs total – quite impressive. I am now in the process of checking “103 FILES, 1765 NEWS THREADS, 4804 PHOTO THREADS, 47 RECIPE THREADS, 47 REVIEW THREADS, 52 HISTORY THREADS, AND 763 MEMBER RECORDS” as registered by Mayflower. It might be premature to announce that Spokt has saved heritage data collected over 12 years from a global diaspora of a unique hybrid commuity – but I’ll say it because I need to be hopeful! Thank you, SPOKT and all your team members who have made it possible. THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

    1. Dan says:

      Thanks for sharing your experience V A! We’re here to help if you do find any issues. Just contact support!

  14. Marta says:

    When researching sites for use in place of MyFamily, we set up a trial (non-payment)hub and invited a few of our members to check it out. Everyone agreed Spokt. was the place to come.

    Between my cousin Kim & I we are eventually going to be migrating 5 MyFamily sites to Spokt. Kim is migrating 3 and I am migrating 2. I’ve migrated the first one (the Fifer site) and as she was a member of that site on MyFamily, she has been unable to access it.

    As I am the Admin, I found her name listed twice in the Members section. One with her email address and one with an @spokt.com email address. I understand that I am not supposed to delete anything and I haven’t & I’m not supposed to re-invite her.

    But, if she cannot get on Spokt., then, how will she be able to initiate the 3 migrations she had planned to do? Please help.

    Thanks!!!

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