Updates Coming VERY Soon!

Hi everybody. We sincerely apologize for not blogging more often and make a promise here and now to never leave you hanging this long again.

We are finally out of the tumultuous migration stage and into the updates and improvements stage. A quick note on migrations: MyFamily servers were extremely intermittent and buggy during the last 3-4 weeks of migrations. After their official shut down (September 30th) we were still able to connect to their servers and we successfully migrated thousands of MyFamily sites over to Spokt. However, as time wore on, the migrations stalled, stopped completely, and frequently came back with super spotty data and information. Many users’ photos had been replaced with a basic MyFamily photo stating that their site was over the storage limit – even though this was not the case.

Suffice it to say, we were bombarded with a deluge of requests to fix the migrations – and many of them we were able to fix. However, unfortunately, there were several people whose sites we were not able to salvage. We begged and pleaded with MyFamily for more time and better connectivity… but to no avail.

Since the dust has settled from the migration period, we have updated several seemingly insignificant parts of Spokt to make it more complete and user friendly. Some of the updates you may have already seen are:

– Credit Card Payment Information: You can now update your own payment information right on Spokt.com. To do this, just log on to your account, click on “Edit Account” at the top of the page and then click the blue “Account” button in the middle of the page. There, you’ll see credit card info. You can delete existing cards and add new cards there. Be sure to click “Save Changes” at the bottom of the page any time you make a change.

– Replace Photo Option: If for some reason you have photos that were changed by MyFamily to the “Over Site Limit” photo, or a black square, you can now replace that photo with a saved photo on your computer. All the comments and posts attached to the photo stay in place and all you have to do is simply replace it with the correct photo. If you want more information on how to do this, let us know by emailing us at support@spokt.com.

– MyFamily .Zip File Upload: If a whole host of your photos were missing from your migration, we are offering the opportunity for you to send us your .zip file that you presumably downloaded from MyFamily before they shut down. We are still working on the right way to get the photos replaced in your hub, but we’d like to get the .zip files from you as quickly as possible so we can start to work on the replacement for you. To do this simply click on this link: http://spokt.com/mayflower/uploads/new.

Now the news you’ve all been waiting for…

We are about to make the updates and changes for the new Calendar feature as well as the Album (Categorization) feature. Instead of “Albums” we are calling them “Books”. We have received confirmation from our programmers that these two features will be ready and functioning before the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve. Please keep an eye out for these changes. Once they’re live, we will post about it here.

More and more features will be added in the very near future.

It goes without saying that we really truly appreciate EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. of you for your pioneering spirit. Taking the trip on the Mayflower had it’s ups and downs, and we are SO glad you all made it. We look forward to working closely with each and every one of you over the coming years to create the best private family sharing website on the internet. With your suggestions and ideas, we will do just that!

Happy Holidays everyone!

The Spokt Team

28 thoughts on “Updates Coming VERY Soon!”

  1. Ramona Vogt says:

    Thank you for all of your hard work. It is appreciated. I think a separate category for obituaries would be very helpful. Thanks for listening. Merry CHRISTmas.

  2. Karen says:

    This is great news. Thanks for the update and happy holidays!

  3. Reg Lambert says:

    Looking forward to the new Calendar and Album features. Spokt is brilliant – keep up the good work!

  4. Nancy Caspers says:

    We sure miss the recipes section during the holidays. But glad we have SOMEPLACE to go now that MyFAM has abandoned us…thanks SPOKT for all you are trying to do.

  5. P Kelly says:

    MyFamily.com provided a print out of all the family address’s and member info. This was very useful especially when preparing our Christmas Cards. We’re hoping this will be available on this web site as well.

    1. Amy says:

      I liked that feature as well

  6. Millie says:

    Glad to hear about the updates. Especially the calendar feature. We’ve missed several family events the last couple of months, so we’re really excited about the calendar…..as well as the ‘book’ feature.
    Thanks for everything and I wish you all a Very Merry and Safe Christmas.

  7. Carmen says:

    This made my day! Thank You for such a great Christmas present!

  8. Linda Needles says:

    Even if all my info from my Family didn’t come through I will be forever grateful for having a new place for our family to connect. I can’t tell you what a blessing it is. We were so sad when the my family site announced they would no longer be operating. Your site is a true gift. Thank you so uch for your hard work.

  9. I was beginning to worry, since most sites bombard our e-mail withEXCITING NEWS!, and Spokt has been remarkably silent. I was at an online publishing seminar and talked you up as an alternative to users creating their own sites, and felt a tad bit uncomfortable with the fact that I had not heard a peep about promises made bef and during migration.

    The news about BOOKS is exciting, frankly, anything step that is more granular within NEWS and PHOTOS will greatly improve acceptance and browsing on the site. Happy Holidays to everybody there (wherever there is).
    Clinton

  10. Books will be a help to me for sure! My administrator decided to pursue other interests until the change to get more organized occurred. To her Spokt seemed more a social hub than a Family History Hub.

    I am 72 yrs old and could use her help. Books are going to be the answer!

  11. Debbie says:

    Thank you! Looking forward to books. Once you have books in place, will it eventually be possible to feature different photos on the hub home page or feature a book as a slide show?

  12. Leon Lowe says:

    For the most part, no news has been good news. Repeating what I’ve posted here previously, please keep things simple! There’s little need for “improvements” that have meaning for a small minority of users.

  13. Phillip Moulder says:

    Barbara, I had my dna taken and it is loaded on ancestry.com
    Phil

  14. Marie Porter says:

    This is exciting news! And despite some problems, we are very happy with our choice to migrate to Spokt.
    However, as far as our pictures that were migrated to Spokt, there are many duplicates of many pictures-sometimes 2 pages worth of the same pictures.
    Considering the amount of pages of pictures that we had over on our other site compared to here, I’m pretty sure all of our pictures did not transfer over.
    I do have the zip photos, but am unable to click on the link that was included in the update notice above. I copied and pasted the link into Google when the link didn’t work- that didn’t work either. I’d appreciate any help I can get for this, thanks. Marie

  15. IritaC says:

    Thank you spokt for the new ‘books’ feature! This is something we’ve been anxiously awaiting … and you made it before the stroke of midnight Dec. 31!!! THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!!!

  16. Will we be able to click on an individuals name and send a personal comment that only the two individuals can read?

    1. Dan says:

      Hi Jim, that isn’t on our radar but it sounds like a good suggestion. We’ll look into it.

  17. Wendy says:

    I can’t wait for the calendar. I hope it allows us to track our family memebers milestones , birthdays, anniversarys and such on it.

  18. becky says:

    Thank you for all of your work: the “book”, the migration, and the continued improvements. I am also anxious for the calander!

  19. Phil says:

    A coupla members have asked about being able to delete their own photos or content. I think thats very important and is mentioned as being possible in the FAQ.

    Don’t see how non-admin can delete their own posts or photos – is that possible?

    Thanks very much for your effort in recovering our myfamily site – much appreciated!!!

    1. Ken B says:

      Thanks for the suggestion. When Spokt was originally conceived we wanted the control of the hub to be in the hands of the person who created and paid for the hub. When any member posts a photo or news item in the hub, it becomes a part of that hub. After people start commenting on or replying to the post or photo, we feel that it should not be able to simply be deleted by the posting user – as the subsequent comments and information may have value to other hub members. The posting user can delete their post up until someone comments or posts a reply. Once that happens, only an Admin has the rights to delete it.

      Please let us know if we should reconsider our stance here. Overall, our number one priority is to make Spokt.com the very best private family sharing site on the web.

  20. Ryan Kidd says:

    Thanks for the new feature “books”.It is really helpful.

  21. so WHERE IS THE CALENDAR- WE ARE LOOSING PATIENCE

  22. Terry Ratcliff says:

    I am happy to see that all of my photos have come through and the books roughly correlate to the albums I had in MyFamily. Had some duplication, but I was able to fix that. Overall, the site is looking pretty good. Wondering if it might be possible to implement a change that would allow the user to reorganize photos within the books. I had all of my photos in a specific order which seems to have been lost in the transition. Thank you!

  23. Bob says:

    Dan – We are still awaiting the enhancements that will give us control of our Hub front page and will provide us with tools to create custom front pages with photos/images of our choice. Except for the good migration we paid for and the photos section, it’s a pretty bland site the way it is today compared to our other sites. We also need full use of HTML tags and attribute rather than just the handful allowed now and we need to be able to upload music and files to a file cabinet where they can be viewed, played and commented on. Are we any closer to providing some of those really needed enhancements which will make our hubs more comparable to our old MyFamily.com websites?

  24. Hopefully, the upgrades will be available shortly. I agree with others, books and a calendar are truly necessary. Please help us!

  25. As most of our family have quit coming to our Spokt site due to the lack of features and a calendar, How do we go about downloading all of our data to our PC like we were told we would be able to do when we paid good money for the migration, I think the time has come we need to move to a different site, but I do want my data that was promised to us when we started this venture, we had over 50 active members on a weekly basis with myfamily and we are down to less than 10 to date, logins don’t work, no cover page, no calendar let me know how to download our info so we can try to regain our families trust in a family site.
    Jerry

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