This is great news. There’s a good chance that the advertisements shown on RootsWeb are not generating enough revenue to pay for this upgrade. Certainly it is not generating the profit margin that Ancestry’s DNA business is generating. From a good business standpoint, it doesn’t make sense to update RootsWeb. I believe they are making this upgrade to generate good will. After the RootsWeb crash back in February, you, the RootsWeb community, expressed yourselves effectively and they are responding. When they gobbled up RootsWeb, they said they would keep it running. No one should expect that means forever. But thanks to them and thanks to you, they are making good on that statement.
Users are complaining that new additions to RootsWeb are not being index. This includes GEDCOMs uploaded to WorldConnect, Obituary Daily Times, and mail archives. Once this upgrade is finished, Ancestry will work to fix that.
You may have experienced some data loss the last time RootsWeb went down. That will not be happening during the outages this week, as these are planned, controlled, outages.
Roots Web/Family Search/Ancestry--I've worked 20 years on Ancestry.com and joined Roots Web only to find entirely too much work involved updating families. I used GEDCOM to transfer info. My unsuccessful try at Family Search gave me much incorrect information I gave up on that site that was a hassle, also. I'm up there in years and find genealogy exhausting for me. Should I continue RW or stay with FS? How can I make the transition easier?
ReplyDeleteFamilySearch's FamilyTree is steady upgrading and continuing corrections by all involved. FamilyTree is complete opposite of what is in other sites. It's all as ONE, and with corrections, sources and photos constantly added, it is evolving to be more accurate than before, despite some hiccups along the way.
DeleteIf you are going to participate in FamilySearch's Family Tree, you need to buy-in to the objective of everyone collaborating to build a single tree reflecting mankind. It's more work than doing your own thing because you have to budget time for interactions and you must budget time for teaching people with less genealogical maturity than you. Without your assistance, they may corrupt the information you share.
DeleteFamilySearch also has a tree farm like RootsWeb's WorldConnect. It is called FamilySearch Genealogies and replaces the old Pedigree Resource Files offering. Expect it to take the same amount of work as RootsWeb to keep it upto date, plus the extra time it will take you to learn a new system.
There are a number of interactive, online family tree managers. I only follow FamilySearch and Ancestry, so I can't intelligently comment on others. I'm unclear as to whether you have an Ancestry Member Tree. That is another option. If you haven't used it, there will be a learning curve. Further, your tree will not be freely visible to everyone on the Internet. You decide if that is a good thing or a bad thing.
---tai
RootsWeb is a dead project, has no functional future. I'm not sure about the future of Ancestry's trees - they seem obsessed with DNA now. Based on your comments I don't think you will be happy with FamilySearch - its purpose is one big world wide tree, not individual trees. It would be better to use a live, growing product.
ReplyDeleteAny updates on the Rootsweb hardware upgrade? I have not seen any indication of work in that area. Obituary Daily Times is hoping that the database indexing will start working again soon.
ReplyDeleteI asked about the site not recognizing my login for ftp. They are still working on the upgrades, per support.
ReplyDeleteThe Freepages server now requires that you connect via ftp-authssl://
ReplyDeleteAs of this writing, ftp:// still works for Homepages and WWW accounts.
Has the Freepages file manager been repaired yet? Is there a different pathway than .....fileman/file_manager.cgi? I wish we had a better idea when this stuff would work again.
DeleteI just heard back, finally, from RW Help Desk: "We are currently anticipating the work to be finished by the end of this week. We apologize for the inconvenience that this has caused you and appreciate your continued patience as these issues are resolved."
Deletecan you please provide the full address for us to enter into our browser to get to the freepages file manager now? thank you
DeleteRjt,
DeleteThe only address I know is freepages.rootsweb.ancestry.com/fileman/file_manager.cgi and it isn't working.
I plan to give them a few more days, then I will ask my contact at RW again when the file manager will be available.
DeleteI heard back from RW and they said their upgrade to the Freepages file manager had not worked. They would try again but could not give me a fix date. I will contact them again this week some time and stay after them.
DeleteI have sent another query to RW as follows:
DeleteChecking in once again on the repairs to the Freepages file manager. RW has over 15000 sites listed in this category. It would be nice to know that they are still working on the issue and have a completion date in mind. It is very frustrating for those of us who have devoted hundreds of hours to these pages not to be able to upload new material or make corrections. Surely, someone in IT can throw light on this matter.
Bob
Got another reply this evening as follows:
Delete"Thank you for contacting RootsWeb in regard to maintenance to the site.
We sincerely apologize for the length of time the maintenance is taking. We had hoped it would be completed by now. Our development team is working on getting this completed as quickly as possible, it is just taking longer than expected. We appreciate your patience and understanding during this time.
If there is anything else with which we might assist you, please let us know."
The freepages file manager is working again as of this morning.
DeleteServers on the mailing lists appear to be down now but I don't see any messages posted or alerts on the website - so frustrating!
ReplyDeleteMailing list servers appear to be down - though no alerts appear, just an error message - so frustrating that they never give any info!
ReplyDeleteOh happy day! It is working for the time being!! Thank you!
ReplyDeleteusers.rootsweb.ancestry.com seems to be down--I am wondering if the massive Denial of Service attack on the Internet today had something to do with it, and when it will be functioning again...
ReplyDelete