Suggestions

It's awfully slow :-(

You are right Joy. I emailed support this morning because each page was taking about 30 seconds to load (and I'm on 50 mb broadband). It seems to be very slightly better this evening but it's the only website I use that is anywhere near this slow. Most other sites come on instantly.

As you say - nothing to do with which browser you use - it's down to Genes. They need to spend more money on the site.

Kath. x

It seems to me that Genes is trying to do too much with the existing infrastructure.
Since it was taken over & more searches were offered along with more expensive memberships, there have been constant problems which rarely happened when we all had just basic membership.
Without money being spent to update the systems, this will continue.
Genes appears to be the poor relation.
Don´t bite off more than you can chew.

yes lots of e messages very slow

sally w :-(

Very slow at the moment.
In fact any slower and it would not be working at all

Seems to be working normally now.

Maz


I've been saying for months that I'm on here mostly over the UK night


.... and it seems just as slow at 2 or 3 am as I see people complaining about at 2 pm or 8 pm


I think wisechild has hit the nail on the head. I posted something similar a few days ago.


The whole system needs re-doing .......... but then that would mean closing the site down, and what happens to all the information on people's trees?




sylvia

This is probably a very good educational and rewarding project
http://www.genesreunited.co.uk/school.page/competition_winners
but surely it just takes up more space in what is probably, as has been suggested, an overloaded site? and money spent on it could have been, in my opinion, better spent on making this site work as well as others.

Well at least they were fairly prompt putting it on the Announcements board.

Site slow again tonight but thankfully not as slow as last night

Seriously I could almost cry. Yet again a thread has disappeared and I have just sent a message asking Phil to restore it again:


Genealogy Chat : INFORMATION ONLY for those Searching for IRISH Gen
http://www.genesreunited.co.uk/boards.page/board/genealogy_chat/thread/951721

It is nice that Bright Solid is working in partnership with the British Library -

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/nov/29/british-library-newspaper-archive-online

http://www.thecourier.co.uk/Community/Heritage-and-History/article/19268/a-digital-aladdin-s-cave-brightsolid-s-british-newspaper-archive-project-brings-history-to-life.html

http://www.brightsolid.com/news

http://www1.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/

- and I hope that Bright Solid will expend money on genes reunited soon to enable it to work properly.

..................... maybe that is why BS is NOT spending any money on GR?



I'm becoming even more convinced that there is a plot ............. and GR will not be around in, say, 2 years ................. it will either have been shut down, or rolled over into fmp


all of which, of course, is against what the British Competion Board (whatever the correct name is) ordered last year.



One other thing I note, is that most of the people posting on the various threads on this board, and complaining about the poor quality of service, are names that I recognise as being Helpers on the other boards.


The helpers are one of the reasons why GR has the good reputation that they do have, and GR does publicize themselves by saying what good help can be obtained on the Community Boards, provided by their volunteer helpers




but if we are all being driven away in frustration at poor service from GR .......... ????????????????????????????




sylvia

Like Sylvia, I don´t wish to appear cynical, but feel that GR are subtly trying to do away with basic membership & encourage us all to take out the more expensive subs.
They have clearly bitten off more than they can chew since the introduction of records to the site. It was fine when we were all basic members & using other sites for research.
As it is, even for the expensive subs, all that happens is that the member is transferred to another site, because Genes don´t actually hold the records themselves.
A large number of the people who have either left or not renewed were basic members & because of this, the site has lost many helpful & experienced members.
I can´t see any other reason for allowing the site to deteriorate as it has done over the past couple of years.

"As it is, even for the expensive subs, all that happens is that the member is transferred to another site, because Genes don´t actually hold the records themselves."

That statement is not correct.

Estelle confirmed a few months ago that GR do in fact host the records themselves. It is not the same database as, say, FMP, even though it might have been sourced from there in the first instance. GR records are maintained independently of any other site.

Phil has also intimated the same when he advised that when corrections are sent to GR, the team endeavour to make the same corrections on all the other databases BS manage, and vice versa.

Inspector Green Pen:
http://www.genesreunited.co.uk/boards.page/board/genealogy_chat/thread/1281462
http://lostcousins.com/newsletters/latesep11news.htm
"Genes Reunited have replaced their census data since I last reviewed the site - they now have the same transcriptions as at findmypast (previously the censuses were provided to Genes Reunited by S&N, owners of The Genealogist)."

In the same way that Ancestry has the same transcriptions as FreeBMD, GR may well have the same transcriptions as FMP for certain records.

However, as far as I know, members are not directed to "another site" as has been suggested on here in the past.

On the other issue, surely GR has it's own management, independent from the parent company. No different to other organizations.

We have just completed the first phase of an exercise to rid the site of some of the most common faults and performance issues. This work has been going on for about 10 days now, including upgrading servers (newer versions of Windows), upgrading components, changing baseline code, adding extra configuration on the database.

This work did involve changes to the site over the last week or so, but the end result from a technical position is that we appear to be running far better than we have for a while.

There are still some issues that we are working on and we have two more releases planned before Christmas to address these, some Message Centre bugs and give a little extra.

My thanks to the team that came in to work on this, which included Toby, Duncan, Phil (another one) and Martin.

I would be very keen to get some feedback from those that have suffered the most, and also hear about any areas that still appear to be causing issue.

My thanks also to members for their patience over the last 12 months while we have battled through so many issues.

Phil

Thank you Phil

Well can't say fairer than that!
And yes the site does seem to be responding much faster.

Personally, I have had very few problems using IE8 on XP. I suppose my biggest niggle has been that during the last couple of weeks, every time I quit explorer after having been into Genes, I get errors about Explorer not shutting down properly. There are a few problems with my tree not dispaying as it used to as well but nothing much to worry about.
I am sure the fixes will come.

Jeremy

EDIT:
Now removed comment that Internet Explorer seemed to be behaving itself. As of 15.30 GMT Monday the shutdown errors are back again

Thank you Phil