General Chat

Will we still be able to access our family tree data on this site if it is bookmarked or do I have to print/copy to CD to save it?

kind regards.
Margaret.

Although there has been speculation amongst members for a number of years, no one from the company has ever suggested it will. Are you confusing Genesreunited with Friendsreunited? It has been announced the latter will close.

Regardless whether GR continues, it's always advisable to have a back-up copy of your tree and research elsewhere. It could be on another site, on your own computer, the Cloud or wherever you choose.

I have a recent Gedcom :-D :-D
Might be best to0 stop the auto renew button :-( :-(

I had not heard about FR ......

but interesting to read that DC Thomson had approached the founder of FR Steve Pankhurst to buy it back!! The trial period failed

I still go on there occasionally to keep up with the 2 or 3 people who don't use any other site.

It's certainly nothing like it used to be .............. just as GR is nothing like it used to be :-(

It would be interesting to know how much DC Thomson had wanted Steve Pankhurst to pay for FR :-)

I found some of the quotes by Pankhurst to be interesting ...........

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In an emailed entitled “the sunset of an era”, Pankhurst wrote that “the world is now a very different place” and that Friends Reunited is no longer able to compete with Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

The site, Pankhurst writes, still has a “handful” of users but that its continuation would not be viable.

“It is clear that the site is no longer really used for the purpose it was built for … therefore, it is with a heavy heart, that we have decided to close the service down.”
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ALL of those apply to GR ................


and several of us were told last year that the members of GR are basically on their own now.

............... and that is showing

Don't expect any more upgrades to the site.

Don't expect much interference by the very limited staff.


In other words .............. NEVER have GR as the only place to have your tree.

Use it as a secondary place, and do all your building elsewhere.

I feel they 'upgraded' FR so much, it became confusing to use :-(

If GR were to close, to where could I move my tree? Please.

LindaAngela It's just a guess but as FMP have recently mentioned on their FB page that they are working on making 'sharing trees' a feature on their site, that people with GR trees ( should GR close as an independent site) would be able to move their tree to FMP quite easily?

I moved my tree from here to Tribal pages, it's simple, it's free unless you want to add features, and I like the layout.

I have mine on my own computer, and a small version on ancestry ........... but that one is made Private so that it cannot be seen by all and sundry and information "stolen" willy nilly.

Names show up if searched for, but interested people have to contact me to see any more.

Haven't had my tree here for a while. Really should put a gedcom version on here. My main tree is on family tree maker for mac- I don't know what I'm going to do when they stop supporting it in a year's time.

Squirrel, unless you use the sync with Ancestry, you don't need to do anything.

FTM will still work on your computer the same as it does now - it's a stand-alone programme. There just won't be any new versions.

I am not the only person on here who still uses an old version of FTM (in my case 2005) and find it quite adequate for my needs. :-) :-)

Am I right in thinking though that FTM is not supported by windows 10?

you can also put your tree on the free Mormon website - www.familysearch.org

I'm like Andysmum. I use FTM 2005 and it does all I want it to do. I only have a very small number of people on my family tree on Genes - in fact I haven't updated it in about 10 years.

I don't think it will be long before Genes goes the same way as FriendsReunited.

I don't know whether or not FTM is supported by Windows 10 but you can certainly use it with Windows 10. It's what we are on.

Kath. x

Read somewhere today FMP and Mocavo are joining together. I have never heard of Mocavo :-S

FMP acquired origins.net and Mocavo back in June 2014 :-)

Mocavo is a purely US site

Looks like I am behind the times then lol - but someone on one of the Facebook genealogy sites posted the link to an email they had received today about the merger :-S

The news about FR ending was apparently put up on FR back in December by Steve Pankhurst

http://www.friendsreunited.co.uk/friendsreunited-sunset/People/6e6ee4da-4c42-4e43-81d0-a57d0117ff22



The Group is called FriendsReunited Sunset, and this comment he made in response to members is very interesting

.......... and alarmingly like GR

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I have seen people ask about saving the boards. However, this is close to impossible. The code behind the FR site has been written, changed and hacked about for over 15 years by many different people and companies. I wrote the original back in 2000, and some of that even still exist. As you can imagine it's a bit of a mess by now (understatement!) and needs a huge amount of effort to make any significant changes to it. I no longer personally have the skill set to do so, and 2 years ago the whole development team left leaving just one developer and myself (and Will in support) to take over. The developer has since left leaving no tech support. I could find someone - and that is hard in itself as the technology is old and no-one wants to work on it. But it would cost a lot.

The site already costs many thousands a month to support and maintain with little advertising income. Therefore you can see the reason for the closure is mainly down to it not being financially or technically viable to continue it.
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The title of this thread is very misleading

Not a word has been said officially about the site closing .......... although many of us think it is being wound down.

But people are now getting very worried when they read the title

All the news items today have been about Friends Reunited.

Our FTM 2005 was originally on Windows XP, then transferred to W8.1 and then to W10, all without problems.

If you are upgrading to W10 from W8, then the file just transfers with all the others - you don't even need the original CD.